McCarthy, 54, would appear to be the perfect front-line symbol for gun-control advocates: her husband was killed in a random shooting incident on a New York commuter train in 1993 and her son seriously injured.

The deeply personal tragedy propelled her into political life, after she challenged the incumbent Republican Congressman because he voted to repeal a ban on assault weapons. Her upset victory makes for classic Hollywood material.

The NRA, through its own movieland icon, Charlton Heston,immediately branded the film as biased.

``Ms Streisand has become the `Hanoi Jane' of the anti-gun movement,'' Heston said, referring to the monicker actress Jane Fonda earned in the 1970s for visiting the North Vietnamese capital during the Vietnam war. He said: ``Streisand has used her power as a producer to promote her own anti-gun agenda, a position that is out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe in the Constitutional right to own a firearm.''

But polls have shown the US public increasingly supportive of measures restricting or prohibiting the sale of, for example, assault weapons.

And on Wednesday, it was McCarthy who stood in front of 10 television cameras in a bright orange suit to announce the Child Gun Violence Prevention Act. The Bill would, among other things, require gun manufacturers to make safer, child-proof firearms.

Even her Republican colleagues ``are realising that the violence in our schools has gone too far,'' McCarthy said, citing recent schoolkillings in Arkansas and figures showing that in 1995 firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France but 5,285 in the US.

``Guns, I'm sorry to say, are a dangerous product,'' she added, noting that the US has mandated the use of childproof caps on prescription drugs but that guns have no such precautions.

The film and the controversy it has provoked with the NRA have suddenly raised her profile in Congress and, according to her staff, resulted in many telephone calls to her New York office.

Generating such a reaction ``was not the original plan for the movie,'' she said, adding that she agreed to work with the producers of the film only if they agreed not to sensationalise the shooting scene. ``But obviously it brought it up to a national debate and I welcome that debate. What we're talking about is just common sense legislation,'' she said.

Republican Congressional staffers, however, said they doubted such legislation Would be seeing action anytime soon --especially because this is an election year. Democrats, meanwhile, intend to keep emphasising the issue, hoping it will result in election victories. McCarthy, after all, with no political experience beat the incumbent Republican 57 per cent to 41 per cent two years ago.