"Home-Front Arsenals ",send letter to the editor

Josey1

Home-Front Arsenals Wednesday, October 10, 2001; Page A22 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34281-2001Oct9.html THE TERRORIST attacks of Sept. 11 have sparked dramatic increases in gun and ammunition purchases around the country, particularly by women, older citizens and first-time gun buyers. "Compared to what it used to be, this week is like someone kicked an ant hill," a gun appraiser at a shop and shooting range in Pompano Beach, Fla., recently told the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. "Business is up about 90 percent. They're wanting basic handguns for protection, and they're also looking for basic instruction." Requests for concealed weapons permits are up as well, according to authorities in a number of states.Given concern about how well air marshals and cockpit crews need to be trained in firearms use, how safe will people really be in their newly armed neighborhoods, surrounded by edgy people with guns at the ready but little or no weapons training? It's hardly calming. Anyone loading up for the first time ought to at least undergo thorough firearms safety training; more often than not, this won't happen.More likely are reports of ill-stored weapons discovered by children. In Spotsylvania County, Va., a 3-year-old fatally shot himself Sept. 15 with a handgun that his father said he had brought into the house for protection after the terrorist attacks. According to the county sheriff's department, the .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol was hanging on a window curtain rod above the child's bed.Advocates of armed self-defense point to other news reports of people pulling out guns and fending off attackers, but many studies -- and common sense -- point up the far greater dangers of having handguns in the home.c 2001 The Washington Post Company

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Josey1

In D.C., the Gun Is Still Terror's Weapon of Choice Courtland Milloy can be reached at (202) 334-7592 or by e-mail at milloyc@washpost.com. By Courtland MilloyWednesday, October 10, 2001; Page B01 The young men were walking along the curb, kicking through leaves, when they found what they were looking for: spent casings from a TEC-9 submachine gun that had been fired at one of them the night before."I thought I was shot. I thought I was dead," one of the men said, picking up a shell casing and squinting to read the caliber markings."Don't touch it," another man said, flipping open a cell phone to report the findings to police. "Now your fingerprints are on it."On Saturday night, two of them had been walking and the third was riding a bicycle through their neighborhood in Northeast Washington. They were looking for a place to drink the beer they had just purchased when they noticed three other young men approaching fast on foot, all with guns drawn.Terror can take many forms, and much attention is now being paid to the possibility of chemical and biological warfare. But in urban America, the handgun is a proven weapon of mass destruction, and there is no terror quite like staring down the barrel of one."I said, 'Take anything you want. Just don't kill us,' " one of the men recalled.It happens thousands of times a year in the city: Someone pulls a gun during the commission of a robbery, carjacking or assault. And if the gunmen were able to hit everything they shot at, the yearly homicide count would be in the thousands, too.Hearing his companion plead with the gunmen, the man on the bicycle fled."Never beg for your life," he would later explain. "That'll only make 'em want to kill you more."While pedaling furiously to round the nearest corner, the man on the bicycle heard shots ring out as one of the gunmen fired at him."It was like bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap -- real fast, almost like a machine gun," he recalled. "I saw him come out in the street after me, but after that, I didn't look back. I was just trying to get the hell out of there."Several residents who heard the gunfire called police and came outdoors to see if anyone had been hit. One of them, a military officer, seemed especially exasperated at hearing echoes of a battlefield on the streets of the nation's capital."I hate to hear that sound," he said.Stray bullets could have hit passing motorists or pedestrians and probably did strike someone's house. The new Office of Homeland Security certainly couldn't do anything about it.D.C. police, aware of a spate of armed robberies in the area, arrived on the scene but were unable to apprehend the gunmen, who had fled. So the young men began their own investigation, interviewing one another while kicking through leaves along the curb for clues."Who they look like?" one of them asked."Like us, in their twenties," another replied.Yet another said: "As soon as I saw them, I knew they weren't right. They looked real suspicious, walking fast and making fast motions with their hands."The victims are unemployed and said they earned the $70 that was taken from them by doing odd jobs. One said he had been laid off from a construction job four months ago.Another said he had quit his job as a sanitation worker two months ago. "I wish I hadn't quit now," he said. "I can't be hanging out on the streets like this."After the gunman began firing at the man on the bicycle, he and the other robbers ran for a getaway car that was parked nearby. A half-hour later, the man on the bike was found unharmed by his friends."When I saw that my friend [on the bicycle] had not been hit, I began to cry and hug him," one of the men said. "I prayed to God that I would never experience anything that like again."In the street, they found four 9mm shell casings. The man with the cell phone got through to a police dispatcher."She says how do we know these are the same shells from the other night," he told his bewildered companions. "She wants to know did any of us touch them."The man holding the shells shook them like dice before tossing them to the ground, conceding that the evidence was useless."At least we're still alive," he mused glumly.E-mail: milloyc@washpost.com c 2001 The Washington Post Company http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34349-2001Oct9.html

JudgeColt

The Glock accident in the first post again reaffirms my belief that all self-defense pistols, particular house guns, should have safeties. With a Glock, all you have to do is pull the trigger and it goes bang. With an on-safe pistol, most small children, and, according to actual tests, many adults, will not be able to fire the gun without a lot of trial and error. This child might never have been able to shoot himself or herself if the pistol had been a Smith & Wesson, etc..

SP Tiger

The Glock in question was "hanging on a window curtain rod above the child's bed". Yes, that's the best place to store a handgun. It's the owner's fault, not the gun. That's a very stupid place to put any gun, external safety or not.

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Better to have and not need, than need and not have.

Lowrider

External safety be damned. If the pistol had not been left with a round in the chamber a three year old kid would never have been able to fire it.And, about being hung from a curtain rod above the child's bed?...that sounds like more liberal, anti-gun, editorial B.S. from the newspaper. What were the real facts? Where was the pistol really left?

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She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.

Judge Dread

If we are to rule law in all things miss-used there will be nothing for us to use.

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I judge Thee!, Not for what you are , but for what you say !