The forgotten virtue of firearms
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| Wed, 01-06-2010 - 4:41pm |
EDITORIAL: The forgotten virtue of firearms
guns save lives
During Christmas week, a registered sex offender with a conviction for attempted murder used a gun to take three hostages at a Wytheville, Va., post office. Not too surprisingly, the national media gave the crime extensive news coverage. Such sensationalism leaves a distorted image about what happens with guns every day in the United States. When guns work to stop crime, there's not nearly as much drama to sensationalize and, as a result, that much less coverage.
In Oklahoma City the previous week, an armed citizen singlehandedly stopped an attack that surely would have resulted in a multiple-victim public shooting. The media gave the event scant attention. The scene went down when a Marine, who was on leave and came home for the holidays, started firing in an apartment parking lot. Before anyone was harmed, another man aimed his permitted concealed handgun at the attacker and ordered him to put down his weapon. The shooter dropped his gun and ran into his father's apartment, barricading himself in. Three-and-a-half hours later, the man surrendered to the police.
A Marine with a gun who wanted to cause harm would surely be able to maim or kill a lot of people. Those dead bodies would have attracted exhaustive coverage. Of course, corpses are newsworthy in our sensational culture, but when an armed citizen stops an attack, the heroism rates barely a blip on the national radar screen. In this case, a search found just one television news story on the incident, and it left out the identity of the man who saved the day. In our confused times, murderers, it seems, are more interesting than heroes.
An important detail that is neglected in news coverage is that all the multiple-victim public shootings in America - crimes in which more than three people were killed - happened where legal concealed handguns are banned. The Wytheville post office is such a gun-free zone, not to mention that the felon who committed the crime was banned from possessing a firearm anywhere. The Oklahoma City attack was stopped because the man who stopped it could carry a concealed handgun.
Often what's true and what makes good TV are two different things. But either way, news standards don't give people any idea about the costs and benefits of people owning guns. Police are extremely important in stopping crimes, but police understand that they almost always arrive on the scene after a crime has occurred. Heroic actions of citizens who stop attacks deserve a lot more attention.
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martinisnsushi - living the good life since 1963

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The man is lucky only his TV got "killed."
I'm not against guns, I'm against idiots and criminals owning guns. Unfortunately, gun advocates aren't.
"guns are used more often to stop crimes than to start them."
Really? Do you have any statistics/facts to support that statement?
I'm not against guns, I'm against idiots and criminals owning guns. Unfortunately, gun advocates aren't.
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
Commissioner's 2010 resolution same as 2009: take guns off the streets
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bal-md.hermann08jan08,0,4992548.story
Here's the tally from the Baltimore police commissioner's war on bad guys with guns during the opening minute of 2010:
•A blue .38-caliber Smith & Wesson with four rounds in the chamber.
•A 9 mm PA-63 semiautomatic handgun.
•A .38-caliber Rossi revolver.
•A Mossburg 12-gauge shotgun.
•A chrome two-shot, .38-caliber Derringer pistol.
Five guns, four suspects, two houses.
These guns and arrests were made at rowhouses in East and Northwest Baltimore by police officers who were out by the hundreds over New Year's hunting for holiday revelers celebrating by shooting guns into the air. In all, on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, city police confiscated 29 guns and made 41 gun-related arrests.
It's a dangerous but prolific way to start another year on the war on "bad guys with guns," which Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III has made into one of his signature programs and pet phrases. Last year, his cops seized more than 2,600 guns and made more than 1,100 gun-related arrests. In 2008, they took 2,708 firearms off the streets and put 1,226 suspects in handcuffs.
For police, five guns in one minute is not a bad way to start the year. Of course, the people arrested don't see it that way.
Robert M. Booze Sr. is a 68-year-old retired bakery worker who said he bought his Derringer about 25 years ago from a gun store on Broadway in Fells Point to "protect my home."
He hardly fits the stereotype of a Baltimore gunman, and the Derringer is hardly the gun of choice on the city's drug corners, though the company's Web page describes the gun as having "long stood as the ultimate full power concealable firearm." The site notes it is "the best little shooting iron to ride out of Texas."
Booze, released on bail, answered the door in sagging white painter's pants and no shirt. He was busy fixing the back door to his rowhouse on Norfolk Avenue, off Reisterstown Road in lower Park Heights, kicked in by police after they saw people fire guns in the backyard and run inside.
"We were just shooting in the air," Booze said, adding that he didn't think it was such a big deal that it required a half-dozen cops to raid his house.
"We were just celebrating the new year. It's how we do it in Baltimore." The house had pictures of grandchildren on the walls and plastic toys scattered about.
There were children home when the foursome began firing off their guns, Booze said, explaining, "They were inside. We were outside." Police said they found the Derringer in Booze's pants pocket, the .38 Rossi in a book bag, the Mossburg in a carry case and the 9 mm in a basement utility room.
Bealefeld noted there were children in a home that he said also contained "a mini-arsenal." It's not the celebratory gunfire, he said, but "the mentality of guns in particular. I think people have a very low threshold about the possession of guns.
"For every day, week, month and year I'm in this job, I'm going to continue to agitate. It's wrong for the wrong people to have guns. ... These aren't guns that somebody's hunting rabbits with. These are the weapons we see every day on the streets of Baltimore doing robberies, shootings and murders. There is a cavalier attitude about carrying guns on the streets of our city."
How brazen?
Across town and just after midnight, a detective in an alley said in a report he watched a man walk out of his house on Whitridge Avenue, between Guilford and Barclay in East Baltimore, and was 15 feet away from him when he "looked both ways in the alley way and then discharged one single shot into the air."
Police arrested Jason A. Jones, 31, and said they found his gun, still loaded with four bullets, in a basement garbage can. Jones refused to comment, saying, "I'm in the process of going to court."
Jones and Booze and his three friends were each charged with discharging a firearm in city limits and released on personal bond. Booze said his Derringer is legally registered. "I want it back," he said.
http://championnewspaper.com/news/articles/224keeping-weapons-out-of-the-hands-of-criminals224.html
The VIPER unit of DeKalb’s district attorney’s office destroyed 115 firearms on Dec. 17 that had been used in a variety of crimes. “It is particularly reassuring to know that the firearms we destroyed will never again be used for criminal activity,” said DeKalb District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming.
VIPER stands for Victim/Witness Incident Protection Emergency Response. Fleming’s office established the unit in 2007 to protect victims and witnesses who need to appear in court. Destruction of the firearms is “one of the many significant contributions” of the unit toward protecting DeKalb residents, Fleming said.
None of the weapons were voluntarily turned in. Authorities confiscated the weapons, which were used in the commission of felonies, including aggravated assaults, homicides and armed robberies, while gathering evidence.
A recycler with equipment that renders the firearms totally unusable destroyed the weapons, eliminating the possibility that they will enter the illegal firearms trade.
A 2008 report, titled “The Movement of Illegal Guns in America,” placed Georgia on the list of 10 states responsible for the bulk of illegal guns shipped across state lines for use in crimes. The coalition of more than 300 mayors, including Atlanta’s then-Mayor Shirley Franklin, produced the report—based on statistics from federal agencies.
It reports that federal agents traced about 30 percent of the guns used in crimes in 2006 and 2007 to gun dealers in states other than the one in which the crime occurred. The group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, blames lax gun laws in some states for the trafficking of illegal guns.
They are particularly critical of so-called gun show loopholes in some states that allow individuals to purchase firearms without a background check at gun shows.
New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been one of the most outspoken critics of mostly Southern states that tend to have less restrictive gun laws. In a two-month sting operation, New York sent teams of private investigators posing as gun buyers to stores in five states whose guns had been linked to more than 500 crimes in New York City from 1994 to 2001.
That effort led to a federal lawsuit that named eight Georgia gun dealers among 26 defendants caught in illegal transactions. Two of the gun dealers, located in Augusta, agreed to submit to monitoring by a court-appointed special master as part of a settlement. Under the settlement, the gun dealers agreed to provide records, undergo video monitoring and take special training in conducting legal sales.
One of the dealers named in the 2006 suit, Adventure Outdoors in Smyrna, filed a countersuit. But in September 2009, a Cobb County judge dismissed the countersuit. New York argued that the gun dealer’s suit violated Georgia’s anti-SLAPP law. The Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation statute bans the filing of lawsuits for the sole purpose of silencing criticism. The judge found that the dealer failed to prove that his suit sought justice rather than to quiet his New York critics.
Before destroying the 115 firearms, Fleming’s office said forensic testing revealed that the guns matched closed cases and had not been identified as evidence in any unsolved criminal cases.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Decatur ranks second—behind Atlanta—as one of the top 10 Georgia cities where the bureau recovered firearms in 2008. Lithonia and Stone Mountain were also on the list.
My husband has a concealed permit (michigan) and he had to take classes, including target range and safety. He had to get fingerprinted and they did a background check.
It reports that federal agents traced about 30 percent of the guns used in crimes in 2006 and 2007 to gun dealers in states other than the one in which the crime occurred. The group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, blames lax gun laws in some states for the trafficking of illegal guns.
There are a lot of "gun shows" here, in which private sellers can sell to anyone, no questions asked.
If they put the same effort into studying and fighting the growth of gangs and organized crime that they put into creating roadblocks for law abiding citizens, they might actually make the country safer.
Consider - which did more to hurt the mafia? The gun control act of 1934, or aggressive enforcement of tax and banking law?
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martinisnsushi - living the good life since 1963
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
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