

The New American * November 11, 1996

                       GUN REPORT
                       ----------
                     THE BRADY BUNCH

During her speech at the Democratic National Convention on August
26th, Sarah Brady, chairman of Handgun Control, Inc., claimed that
the Brady waiting-period law, named for husband James who was
wounded during John Hinckley's attempt to assassinate President
Reagan in 1981, "has stopped more than 100,000 convicted felons and
other prohibited purchasers from buying a handgun."

In January of this year, a General Accounting Office (GAO) report
on the controversial statute noted that "no comprehensive or
national data on handgun purchase applications and denials are
available," since neither gun dealers nor law enforcement officials
are required to report such data. The GAO was able to cite only
seven persons nationally who had been successfully prosecuted under
the Brady law. None were murderers, rapists, armed robbers,
aggravated assaulters, or other violent types. The GAO further
found that of more than 7,000 application denials included in its
survey, 38 percent resulted from "gun dealers sending handgun
purchase applications to the wrong law enforcement agency," while
another 7.6 percent were rejected due to outstanding traffic
warrants.

The Brady law has annoyed and harmed many law-abiding Americans,
but as a crime fighting tool it is a farce. Nevertheless, on
September 9th President Clinton awarded James Brady a Medal of
Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

When Guns Are Outlawed

On September 16th in Brooklyn, 24-year-old James Parker barricaded
himself in the family apartment of his pregnant 18-year-old
girlfriend, Danielle DeMedici. Following a standoff with police,
during which he shot and wounded three of 11 hostages and pistol-
whipped another, Parker killed Ms. DeMedici and committed suicide.

The deaths and injuries will appear in the year's gun-related crime
statistics, which will in turn be cited by anti-gun polemicists to
promote further gun control. Here, however, are some details that
the cold statistics will not show.

Parker, a small-time drug dealer, was a convict with a record of
assault (he had served a year and a half in prison for beating
another girlfriend), burglary, and drug offenses (at the time of
the shootings he was on probation for a 1993 drug conviction). It
is illegal for a felon to have a gun, but Parker simply ignored the
law to acquire the .38-caliber revolver he used in his bloody
rampage.

On June 28th, during an argument, he had beaten Ms. DeMedici with
a baseball bat. On other occasions, according to DeMedici, he had
bitten, cut, and punched her, and burned her feet with cigarettes.
Parker was arrested, charged with assault, then released on the
ludicrously low bail of $7,500. The court issued an order of
protection for Ms. DeMedici and authorized her to wear a necklace
"beeper" so that she could warn authorities of further trouble. On
the day of the shootings, however, she did not activate the device.
According to a sister, she once said that since the pendant made a
noise she feared that it would anger Parker if she triggered it.

On August 29th, wielding a hammer and an Uzi submachine gun, he
abducted Ms. DeMedici. A few days later she either escaped or was
released unharmed (police said her account was unclear). Police
guards were posted around-the-clock outside her home until the
Friday prior to the shootings, when surveillance was reduced to
hourly patrols since Parker had not been seen for weeks and the
police did not think he was in the area.

Note that the court's "protection" order did not safeguard Ms.
DeMedici. Nor did the "beeper" necklace. Nor did the police
surveillance. And a 911 call that eventually brought police to the
scene was too late to prevent the tragedy. Nevertheless, according
to the New York Times for September 17th, "law enforcement
officials insisted that the criminal justice system had done all it
reasonably could, and that the police protection provided to Ms.
DeMedici at her home had been adequate for the circumstances. There
is almost no way, they said, to guard against a man determined to
kill to get his way."

But there is a way. Had Danielle DeMedici or any of the adults who
were held hostage with her been armed, they would have had a
fighting chance. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anything but
one or more firearms that would have given them parity with Parker.
New York's draconian gun control statutes failed to keep guns out
of the hands of a murderous thug with an extensive criminal record;
they apparently helped, instead, to give him a decisive advantage
over his victims.

Feminizing the Equalizer

Writing in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Washington,
DC attorney Laura Ingraham noted approvingly that women are "the
fastest growing segment of the gun-buying public." She suggested
that if "feminists are serious about ending what they see as the
subjugation of women they will shelve their political agenda long
enough to recognize that women who choose to become responsible gun
owners are, in their own way, feminist trailblazers."

Anti-gun zealots went ballistic at Ingraham's suggestion, prompting
syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko to rush to her
defense. Admitting that there was a time when he would have agreed
with Ingraham's critics, Royko wrote that he was now convinced that
if "every woman in every big, high-crime community in America had
a gun in her purse or strapped to her thigh, we would have a safer,
more courteous society." He speculated that if "men were society's
prime rape targets," they "would not ask for workshops and self-
esteem counseling or wear rape-whistles around their necks. They
would demand the right to protect themselves, politicians would
promptly respond, and it would soon be legal to pack a mini-cannon
in our belts."

One of Ingraham's antagonists claimed that "only a small percentage
of violent crimes against women are committed by strangers." Maybe
so, Royko noted, but "more than half the people in our society-
about 140 million-are females. So what is a small percentage? One
percent? That's still 1.4 million." Percentages are "piffle," he
contended, when a woman awakens "to see a stranger crawling through
her window and heading toward her bed." In that event, "he is not
a small percentage. He is a 100 percent fiend. But if she had a
pistol under her pillow and knew how to use it, she could make him
a 100 percent corpse. And the world would be a far better place."

                                                            -
Robert W. Lee

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