EDITORIAL • March 4,
2000
Washington Times
Two
sides of the gun issue
Amid the recent spate of shootings,
the media has focused on the ghastly attack in which a 6-year-old
boy, leading a "life of chaos," shot a female classmate,
and on a Pennsylvania case in which an apparently racially
motivated black male gunned down two white persons and wounded
three more. There is no question about the newsworthiness of these
horrifying incidents. But the selective approach to reporting on
gun violence in these cases, perhaps not coincidentally, invites
viewers to infer that the sole end of firearms is mayhem and
violence — not self-defense — and further that the mayhem and
violence would disappear if only guns would, too.
The victims hadn't even been buried
before President Clinton decided to use the carnage as a backdrop
for a photo-op on the need for gun control. "I think it's
long, long past time to license purchases of handguns in this
country," the president said. He added, "These two
incidents were very troubling and they have individual causes and
explanations," he said. "But they do remind us that
there is still too much danger in this country, and for eight
months now Congress has been sitting on . . . common-sense gun
safety legislation."
There are other cases, though, that
you are less likely to hear about in the press. One such is the
case of A.D. Parker, who awoke one night last month to what he
thought was the noise of an unruly neighbor. Unfortunately for the
83-year-old San Francisco man, it was not a neighbor, but, as the
police reported later, an armed intruder. The intruder was within
inches of the terrified Mr. Parker, who might easily have wound up
as just another homicide statistic but for one thing: He had a .38
caliber Smith & Wesson stashed under his bed. Happily for him,
it had no gun lock on it. He aimed and fired. "If I had
waited a second longer," he told the San Francisco Examiner,
"I don't think I'd be around to tell my story."
Mr. Clinton was referring to the
kind of safety gun locks that would have kept Mr. Parker from
using the gun to defend himself. Mr. Clinton and his fellow
gun-control advocates perhaps consider Mr. Parker, and countless
other citizens who have used firearms to defend themselves,
expendable in the pursuit of their political agenda.
Mr. Parker's story, and life, aside,
it is not at all clear that licensing or gun locks or anything
else would have stopped the more publicized shootings. Partly
that's because criminals and the deranged don't always OK their
plans with the anti-gun folks at Handgun Control, Inc. In the case
of the 6-year-old Michigan boy, law-enforcement officials say he
apparently got the .32 caliber revolver he used in the shooting
from the bedroom of a fugitive being sought on drug charges.
Another man in the house, identified as the boy's uncle, was
arrested on an outstanding felony warrant for concealing stolen
property and is also being held on drug and weapons charges. They
don't sound like the kind of people who would handle firearms
according to the ever-so-good intentions of distant lawmakers in
Washington.
Likewise, 39-year-old Ronald Taylor,
accused in the Pennsylvania shootings, probably wasn't much
concerned about the status of gun locks. A black witness to the
crime told a local television station the suspect explained his
motive bluntly to her. " 'I'm not going to hurt any black
people. I'm just out to kill all white people.' That's exactly
what he said," she said.
Mr. Clinton is wrong in supposing
that gun control would have stopped either of these killings. What
it might easily have stopped, however, is Mr. Parker's attempt to
defend himself. As is invariably the case, gun control is off
target.
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc. |