NY.;More seek security in handguns

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More seek security in handguns Pistol permit clerks, dealers and firearms safety instructors all report spike in business since Sept. 11By CATHY WOODRUFF, Staff writer First published: Sunday, December 16, 2001 The number of people requesting pistol permit applications has skyrocketed since the Sept. 11 attacks, as Capital Region residents reached for guns to help fight off a new sense of vulnerability.Pistol permit clerks in Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer and Saratoga counties were swamped with application requests. And a monthly handgun safety course required for pistol permit applicants in Saratoga County was filled to overflowing. Local gun dealers report seeing scores of new customers checking out their stocks. "It's not much of a mystery,'' said Gary Hobbs, an Albany psychologist. "What's going on is people obviously identify with their countrymen who have been killed en masse in a totally unpredicted and unpredictable catastrophe, an attack. Among other things, it raises a sense of vulnerability and insecurity, and that comes out in different ways.''Gun sales are soaring too." 'I'm scared,' that's what I get. Anti-gunners coming out of the woodwork. Now they want guns,'' said Michael Zullo, who has a firearms sale business and also teaches handgun safety courses mandated for pistol permit applicants in Saratoga and Schenectady counties. Zullo estimates he saw a fivefold increase in sales right after Sept. 11.Sales also surged at Wayne Shrome's Accurate Arms & Ammo store on Central Avenue in Niskayuna immediately after Sept. 11."Home-defense shotguns was a big thing,'' Shrome said. "Even older people here, who never had guns, came in and got them.''The practical value of obtaining a gun for protection from terrorists is debatable."I don't know why,'' Vic Ferrante, a retired Air National Guard firearms instructor who teaches gun safety for Schenectady and Saratoga counties, said of the apparent increased interest in acquiring guns. "I guess they expect the Afghans to come in by parachute or something.''But mental health experts recognize the phenomenon -- particularly among regular folks who have not experienced combat or carried guns before. It is, they say, part of a craving for comfort.In county clerks' offices around the region, pistol permit applications flew off the shelves for a time.Schenectady County had to print up extra permit forms, said County Clerk John Woodward. The county issued 184 permits all last year, but since Sept. 11, the office has handed out some 300 applications, Woodward said.Joyce Sullivan, who handles pistol permits for Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, said she issued more amendments -- the paperwork that adds a new gun to a permit or makes other changes -- than ever. She also noticed an unusually high number of women seeking pistol permit applications."That's all I did for three weeks after it happened,'' she said. She estimates she distributed 20 forms a week, four times the norm.It's too soon to say, however, how many will follow through with their permits. The process of securing references, submitting fingerprints, awaiting a background check and obtaining approval from a judge -- who also has wide discretion to reject applications -- takes at least four or five months and sometimes close to a year.Albany County Clerk Thomas Clingan said permit applications have risen perhaps 50 percent, but won't guess how many of the applications will be completed and approved.The process varies greatly according to county. Saratoga and Schenectady counties require applicants to take handgun safety courses from certified firearms instructors.The three-night Schenectady County class has seen no increased participation because enrollment is capped at 20 each month. But attendance at the Saratoga County course skyrocketed from the normal 20-30 to 91 people in October, instructors said. There were more than 60 last month and 58 on hand for the four-hour December lecture session with Zullo and co-instructor Dean Guenther last Wednesday night.None of roughly a dozen students interviewed at the Schenectady and Saratoga county classes cited the 9-11 attacks as influencing their decision to seek a pistol permit. Most are seeking standard permits for target shooting and hunting, and a few -- including an armored car driver and an assistant to a private detective -- are applying for permits that will allow them to carry their guns.Some students said they expect to inherit guns, and others said they want to be more comfortable with guns belonging to a spouse. A few said they had been contemplating a pistol permit for years and just decided to act now.That's not to say fear from Sept. 11 isn't at work, psychologist Hobbs noted. When people react to traumas -- particularly if the reaction comes weeks or months later -- the connection between their behavior and the event may not always be apparent to them, he said. And even if the connection is clear, the reaction often is more symbolic than practical, he said.Feeling motivated to buy a gun after 9-11 "is a sense-of-security-related issue,'' Hobbs said. "It's an emotional thing. It's just far-fetched that they're going to protect themselves from a terrorist.''Some people will avoid airplanes or don gloves before opening mail, reacting to the mailing of anthrax spores. Others will count rosary beads and pray. "We do a lot of things symbolically to help ourselves calm down and feel more secure,'' Hobbs said.Because the pistol permit approval process takes several months and many clerks don't record or count each application picked up, there is no way to precisely quantify the current interest in pistols, but the state Department of Criminal Justice Service has started to see an upswing in the number of fingerprints submitted for permit background checks.FBI statistics support gun dealers' observations that new customers unwilling to take the time and trouble to apply for pistol permits are opting instead to buy rifles and shotguns, which can be purchased on the spot with an instant background check.Nationally, there was a 12 percent spike in transactions submitted to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS, immediately after Sept. 11, said Daniel Wells, assistant operations manager for the NICS system. For New York, NICS checks were up 24 percent in September, October and November over the same period last year.Wells likened the unexpected increase to an uptick at the end of 1999, when experts surmise Y2K anxieties prompted citizens to stock up on weapons.Potential terrorist threats aside, Ferrante and his fellow firearms instructors work hard to disabuse their students of any notion that a pistol or revolver is a practical means of self-defense at home -- though they suspect that's what prompts at least some of their students to buy handguns."We don't teach marksmanship, self-defense, anything like that,'' Ferrante said. "This is strictly safety. We try to advise people here not to have a handgun. Too many of 'em watch TV.''In Schenectady County, in a unique curriculum approved by County Judge Michael Eidens, students get to handle and examine a variety of unloaded guns, and they target shoot using a pellet pistol at an indoor range at the final class before taking a written test.For home defense, Ferrante recommends "a big ugly dog.'' If a student insists on a firearm, he and his fellow instructors suggest relying on the distinctive sound of a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun being"Me, I have the cat from hell,'' Guenther told his students. "The last thing you want to do is hurt somebody, in home defense or any case. You've got a few seconds to make a decision. The judges and the lawyers and the juries have years to make theirs.'' http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyKey=72860