?An Armed Society is a Polite Society?

Josey1

A customer takes aim at bin Laden at a shooting range in West Palm Beach, Fla. `An Armed Society is a Polite Society' After Sept. 11, the gun lobby is working hard to capitalize on a nation's fears about personal safety By Jane SpencerNEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE Nov. 8 - At Tactical Edge, a gun shop and shooting range in West Palm Beach, Fla., the rafters are plastered with bullet-chewed posters of Osama bin Laden, created by visitors who made a $10 Red Cross donation in exchange for the privilege of taking aim. THE STORE IS LOCATED just a few miles from an apartment where several of the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers lived. In the weeks following the attacks, some combination of fear, panic and rage sent local residents flocking to the shop, driving guns sales and overall business up 60 percent. Many of the visitors took a moment to sign their handiwork. "Eat that, sucker," reads one bin Laden poster. "Courtesy NYPD," reads another, created by a New York City cop on vacation. An estimated one third of those who purchased guns after Sept. 11 are first-time owners, and the NRA says membership inquiries shot from an average of 300 per day to 700 to 900 per day in the immediate aftermath of the attack. A shooting range is the only place gun owners are likely to encounter bin Laden-or any other known terrorist. But after Sept. 11, Americans in areas directly linked to the attacks continue to show elevated interest in arming themselves. There is no accurate measure for tracking national gun sales, but the Professional Gun Retailers Association estimates that in the two months following the attacks, guns and ammunition sales rose 10 percent over the same period a year ago. Gun-control advocates say that the industry's numbers may be inflated. But beyond sales, gun owners are showing new interest in handling their weapons. The National Rifle Association's firearms-training classes are booked solid through December, an unprecedented backlog. And applications for concealed-weapons permits have risen dramatically in states where statistics are available, including Colorado, Texas, Washington and South Dakota. "People fear some type of threat, they don't what form it will take or what the consequences will be," says Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the National Rifle Association. "They don't know if the attacks will be in their backyard or their neighborhood, and they'd rather face that threat with a firearm than without one." The NRA and other gun groups have zeroed in on the political opportunities created by the situation, playing to elevated concerns about personal safety. An estimated one third of those who purchased guns after Sept. 11 are first-time owners, and the NRA says membership inquiries shot from an average of 300 per day to 700 to 900 per day in the immediate aftermath of the attack. In late September, the California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA), an NRA-associated group, rented 300 billboards to launch a campaign encouraging gun ownership. The signs feature a photo of an ethnically diverse group of people and read "Society is safer when criminals don't know who's armed." The campaign was actually developed before the attacks, but the group decided it carried new resonance when it was launched at the end of September. "Before the attacks, people had a false sense of security" says Chuck Michel, spokesman for the CRPA. "They thought the police could protect them. Now they're thinking about the value of firearms as a deterrent and for self-defense." The gun lobby also has opposed any temporary restrictions on gun sales put into place by retailers immediately after Sept. 11. When Kmart briefly removed guns from its shelves because of panic buying and hate crimes, the NRA soon issued an alert on its Web site condemning the action and encouraging its members to contact Kmart management. In addition, the NRA has jumped at proposals to arm airline pilots, contacting all members of Congress and encouraging them to support the legislation. It also spread the word to its members with a cover story in America's First Freedom, the group's monthly magazine, titled "We Can Trust America's Pilots." A few local sheriffs have gotten into the game, encouraging gun ownership among citizens. In Larimer County, Colo., Sheriff Jim Alderden waived the normal $100 application fee for a concealed-weapons permit application after Sept. 11. More than 1,500 people in the county have applied for the permit since the fee was revoked, nearly double the number that applied over the last two years. "An armed society is a polite society," says Alderden. "If you don't know much about guns, you might think that a gun will make your family safer. But the statistics are clear: a gun is 22 times more likely to be used against a family or friend than against an intruder." - MICHAEL D. BARNESPresident of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence The NRA and other gun-lobby groups are also sounding warnings to members about a potential crackdown on gun rights in the wake of the attacks. Member support tends to surge at times when gun-rights appear challenged. "We can expect the antigun community to become far more brazen in it's efforts to capitalize on a national tragedy and push its gun-ban agenda," states the after-hours recording at the NRA headquarters in Virginia, which also urges members to watch for "renewed, aggressive attempts to pass licensing and registration schemes, shut down gun shows as we know them today and revive old issues." Despite the warnings, all national gun-control legislation, including a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman to close the gun-show loophole, has been tabled until next year. "The NRA tries to create this image that the government is coming with black helicopters at 3 a.m. in order to take guns away to attract members," says Michael D. Barnes, president of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.), who dismisses the crackdown rumors as political strategy. Sales of handguns have been falling since 1993, and until Sept. 11, 2001 was a particularly bad year for the firearms industry. Gun-control advocates say the post-Sept. 11 surge in gun sales creates new public-safety concerns. Days after the attacks, a 3-year-old boy in Spotsylvania, Va., fatally shot himself with a handgun his father bought into the house after the attacks. "We're all focused on the safety of our families and neighbors right now," says Barnes of the Brady Campaign. "If you don't know much about guns, you might think that a gun will make your family safer. But the statistics are clear: a gun is 22 times more likely to be used against a family or friend than against an intruder." Even some gun-rights supporters wonder whether stockpiling guns is best way to combat terrorism. "What're you going to do, shoot an anthrax spore?" asks Stan Holz, owner of the Village Gun Store in Whitefield, N.H., who's had his busiest season in all his 27 years this fall. "There's no logic to it, it's purely emotional." http://www.msnbc.com/news/654986.asp?cp1=1