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Editorial: Guns make society safer Those bent on murder are deterred when people are armed Sunday, September 05, 1999
Buford Furrow, the Nazi pig who shot up a Jewish day-care center in Los Angeles Aug. 10, dominated the evening news the night of his dastardly deed, and for days afterward. So did Mark Barton, who murdered his family and then killed nine people in two suburban Atlanta office buildings July 29.
But television news ignored what happened in Santa Clara, Calif., on July 6, when 21-year-old Richard Gable Stevens took three hostages at a local gun club and said he intended to kill them.
Stevens did not get to join this summer's roster of highly publicized mass murderers because one of the hostages he'd taken had a .45 caliber handgun concealed beneath his shirt. He pulled it out and shot Stevens in the chest, bringing him down. Stevens was subdued until the police arrived to arrest him.
Sgt. Anton Morec of the Santa Clara police department said the gun-toting hostage almost certainly prevented a massacre.
"It certainly looks like [Stevens] intended to take a lot more people out," Morec was quoted in a Reuters dispatch, one of the few news accounts of the event.
Was tragedy averted in Santa Clara not news because tragedy was averted - or because the manner in which tragedy was averted does not support the media drumbeat for more gun-control laws?
Plenty of air time has been given to those who argue that Furrow, Barton and Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, who killed two people and wounded nine in drive-by shootings in Illinois and Indiana over the Fourth of July weekend prove that more gun controls are needed. The facts suggest otherwise.
Consider Furrow. He'd been arrested for felony assault in Kirtland, Wash., on Nov. 2, 1998, just three days after a psychiatric hospital he'd tried to admit himself to obtained a restraining order against him. It was illegal for him to have the guns he had. Police could have confiscated them. They could have locked Furrow up. They just never got around to it.
Consider Barton. Police in Alabama suspected him of having killed his first wife and her mother.
Consider Smith. When he tried to buy a gun legally from a federally licensed gun shop in Illinois June 23, he was turned down because he failed the background check. By lying on the application form, he committed a felony, for which he could have been arrested. But the police never got around to it. The guns Smith used for his murder spree he obtained illegally.
The cases of Furrow, Barton and Smith suggest that what is needed are not more gun laws, but better enforcement of existing ones. I say this not to be critical of the police. Cops at all levels comprise just half of 1 percent of the nation's work force. Only 25 percent are on duty at any given time, and many of these are in administrative positions. There just aren't enough lawmen to watch over us all.
Which raises another point about Furrow. He attacked the Jewish Community Center because there was too much security at the three targets he scouted first. He knew there'd be no armed adult on the premises to protect the children.
Furrow is a lousy shot. He fired 70 rounds at unarmed women and children and only wounded five. Had he pulled his stunt at, say, the National Shooting Club in Santa Clara, chances are he'd have been goose-stepping into hell long before he got the chance to murder postman Joseph Ileto, whom he killed on his way out of town.
Two other recent news reports pour cold water on the case for gun control.
In North Carolina, a gun-control nightmare: Authorities report the law the Legislature passed four years ago to permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons has been a huge success. The state issued 40,506 concealed handgun permits between Dec. 1, 1995, and Aug. 4, 1999. Just 137 permits - three-tenths of 1 percent - have been revoked, most for technical violations. The rate of violent crime in the state fell precipitously during this period, from 660.7 incidents per 100,000 people to 591.8.
"People predicted there would be shoot-outs on the highways," said Democratic state Sen. Fountain Odom. "This has not been the case."
In Australia, gun controllers got their dream. In 1996, authorities passed a "firearms elimination program" in which the government forced law-abiding gun owners to surrender some 640,381 personal firearms, including shotguns and semi-automatic .22 caliber rifles in addition to handguns.
Crime rates had been declining steadily in Australia for the 25 years prior to enactment of the gun confiscation law. But in the 12 months afterward, homicides were up 3.2 percent, assaults were up 8.6 percent, and armed robberies were up a whopping 44 percent.
The evidence is clear. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
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