Their long-distance exchange from the campaign trail came after Handgun Control Inc. released an ad featuring a top NRA official touting the group's clout in a potential Bush White House.

"If we win we'll have a president ... where we work out of their office," Kayne Robinson, the NRA first vice president, tells a gathering in ad footage from a tape bought for $20 from the NRA Web site.

Gore moved quickly to capitalize on the ad.

"He wants to take the gun lobbyists out of the lobby and put them right in the Oval Office. Maybe he would pick (NRA president) Charlton Heston as the next surgeon general," Gore, the presumptive Democratic nominee, told a conference of health care journalists in Chicago.

On the NRA tape, Robinson calls Gore an "antigun fanatic" and said electing him would be a "horror story." But with Bush, the likely Republican nominee, they will have "unbelievably friendly relations."

"If we win, we'll have a Supreme Court that will back us to the hilt," Robinson added.

Bush distanced himself from the NRA.

"I don't want to disappoint the man, but I'll be setting up shop in the White House," he told reporters at a campaign stop in Mission Viejo, Calif. "It'll be my office, I'll make the decisions as to what goes on in the White House. I'll make it clear what my positions are, and if some people on sides of the issue can't agree, so be it.

"My job is to do what I think is right."

"This is an attempt by my opponent to frighten people," Bush added. "I'm not going to let that happen."

The NRA contends that the politics of guns would be considerably friendlier under a Bush administration.

"The antigun people have had literally unlimited access to the (Clinton) White House ... working right out of the office," said Robinson, who also chairs the Iowa Republican Party. "We've been on the outside of the fence looking in. We will do everything we can to support the candidate that supports the Second Amendment."

Gore regularly talks about his support for gun control, appealing to suburban woman and independent voters who will decide the election and who favor Bush by significant margins. At the same time, recent polls find that about six in 10 Americans say they want stricter gun laws.

The vice president supports licensing all new handgun purchases, a waiting period for buying guns and limiting individual gun sales to one per month. Gore also supports mandatory child safety locks and has worked to require background checks for gun purchases at gun shows.

Bush supports instant background checks at gun shows. The problem, gun control advocates say, is when a check turns up something questionable and cannot be completed instantly. Bush does not want to deny purchases under these situations, critics say.

The Texas governor now supports mandatory child safety locks, after first saying they should be voluntary.

Bush also supports raising the minimum age for buying a gun from 18 to 21, and Gore agrees. Texas is one of the few states without a minimum age requirement and critics say Bush has not worked to institute one.

Gore, in criticizing his rival, points to two pieces of pro-gun legislation that Bush signed. One allows Texans to carry concealed weapons; the second prevents Texas cities from suing gun makers.

The Handgun Control ad focuses on the concealed weapons issue, saying he signed a law that allowed guns "in churches, nursing homes, even amusement parks."

Actually, the law bans concealed weapons from such places, but Bush signed follow-up legislation saying the law can only be enforced if visitors are notified of the rules in posted signs or with hand-out cards.

The 30-second spot began airing Thursday in seven states, including several in the Midwest, and will run for a week. The group, which would not identify the states, said it was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, negotiations have broken down between gunmakers and 31 cities that have sued them in an attempt to hold gun manufacturers liable for gun violence, accusing them of failing to use safety features. Talks broke down after the White House wanted to join in, gun advocates said.

Now, gunmakers are looking ahead to a new administration, said Paul Jannuzzo, general counsel for Glock Inc., and Robert Delfay, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

"If there is a Republican administration in 2001," Delfay said, "there will be a much more favorable view of an American's right to keep and bear firearms than there currently is."

Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, involved in the talks, said of the NRA, "They're banking on George Bush becoming President Bush, and he will do for them what he did in Texas, which is immunize gun manufactures."