-Caveat Lector-
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
-- Euripides
PART V
Gun Control
Gun Report
by Robert W. Lee
Conceal-Carry Update
Prior to 1987, most states either precluded the carrying of concealed
handguns by ordinary citizens or only allowed conceal-carry at the whim of
law enforcement authorities. In that year, however, Florida adopted
legislation requiring authorities to grant permits to citizens who satisfy
specific, objective licensing criteria. Similar "shall-issue" statutes have
since been adopted by another two dozen states.
An in-depth report released by the Washington-based Cato Institute in
August, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of Florida’s groundbreaking
law, reviewed the history of firearms legislation, examined the pros and
cons of the conceal-carry debate, and evaluated the record of "shall-issue"
laws to date. Authored by New York attorney Jeffrey R. Snyder, Fighting
Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun concluded: "From
the available evidence, the experience of states that have enacted
shall-issue licensing systems demonstrates that (a) almost no person with a
criminal history applies for a permit; (b) permit holders do not become
embroiled in arguments or traffic disputes leading to gun battles or ‘take
the law into their own hands’ (or such is the very rare exception), despite
dire predictions by opponents of the laws that ‘blood will run in the
streets’; (c) shall-issue licensing states have almost no problems with
violent criminality among permit holders; and (d) some permit holders have
used their weapons to defend themselves."
Snyder stated: "As of this writing, shall-issue licensing laws are creating
no reported law enforcement problem in any of the 25 states that have
enacted them. After 10 years, there appears to be no reported case of any
permit holder adjudged guilty of murder committed outside the home or
licensee’s business premises (the only locations where permits would come
into play) with a handgun carried in public."
Exercising the Right
One death can be traced to the shall-carry law which went into effect in
Texas on January 1, 1996. Less than two months later, a confrontation
occurred in Dallas after a delivery van and a pickup truck scraped side
mirrors. In his Cato Institute study, Snyder recalls that "the drivers
stopped, an argument ensued, and one man began punching the driver of the
other vehicle in the head through the open window. The seated driver, a
licensed permit holder, drew his gun and shot his assailant, killing him."
A grand jury subsequently cleared the permittee, holding that the shooting
was justified and that he had acted in self-defense.
The Utah Experience
On December 1st, an Associated Press dispatch in Salt Lake City’s Deseret
News reported that the number of Utahns legally authorized to carry
concealed handguns has increased tenfold since May 1995, when the state’s
shall-carry policy went into effect. The bloodbath predicted by anti-gun
zealots has failed to materialize. "Police," the dispatch noted, "are quick
to point out they haven’t recorded a marked increase in incidents involving
people with concealed weapons." Weber County Sheriff’s spokesman Sergeant
Klint Anderson was quoted as saying: "It hasn’t bothered police officers a
bit.... It’s the illegally held gun that gets you."
When Guns Are Outlawed...
A number of recent incidents have further confirmed the common sense
conclusion that gun control laws are virtually useless in keeping firearms
out of criminal hands, and that our criminal system of justice is sorely in
need of repair.
• On November 20th, Deon Bailey (one of many aliases) walked into a Chinese
restaurant in Long Branch, New Jersey, and shot to death police Detective
Sergeant Patrick A. King. He stole King’s handgun and police car, then led
police on a 60-mile chase before committing suicide.
It was subsequently learned that authorities in Massachusetts had been
searching for Bailey since August 1996, when he stabbed a relative during a
bar fight, and that he had since 1990 been convicted of armed robbery,
assault, rape, promoting prostitution, and other crimes. He had nevertheless
been set free in 1996.
Gun control laws did not prevent him from securing both the gun with which
he killed Officer King (a .38-caliber revolver which had been stolen in 1995
from a Massachusetts businessman) or King’s own service firearm.
• On December 1st, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, a self-professed atheist,
killed three girls and wounded five other students after a pre-school prayer
session at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky. The next day, a
spokesperson for Handgun Control, Inc. attempted to exploit the tragedy
during a CNBC interview, but could not explain what gun laws might have
prevented the tragedy. As pro-gun activist Neal Knox, who heads the
Maryland-based Firearms Coalition, has observed, Carneal "was prohibited
from possessing the gun by Federal law because of his age, and by another
Federal law prohibiting guns within 1,000 feet of a school. And he had a
seven year waiting period before he could buy the handgun, or a four year
waiting period before he could buy the long guns that he had with him. But
that made no difference because he had stolen the guns — which is a
violation of state and Federal law. And it was a violation of Kentucky law
for him to have carried the guns anywhere. And it was a violation of man’s
law and God’s law for him to have killed those kids. So what additional law
could have prevented it?"
• On December 9th John Edward Armstrong, a suspect in the fatal shooting of
a man in Winter Park, Florida earlier in the day, barged into a duplex in
nearby Orlando at the end of a police chase. After forcing their mothers to
leave at gun point, he held two young cousins (ages two and four) hostage
for 68 hours until a police SWAT team stormed the house just before dawn on
December 12th, killing Armstrong and rescuing the children unharmed.
Armstrong had prior convictions for robbery, burglary, and attacking his
wife. He was not due to be released from prison on a robbery conviction
until May of this year, but was freed in March 1997 in the wake of a U.S.
Supreme Court ruling that allowed the state to release prisoners to relieve
overcrowding.
Not only did the "justice" system turn this violent recidivist loose
prematurely, but the federal and state gun control measures supposedly
intended to keep his ilk from obtaining firearms once again proved to be
paper tigers.
© Copyright 1999 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/1998/vo14no02/vo14no02_gun_report.htm
Bard
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