<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Monday, May 15, 2000
Story last updated at 10:12 p.m. on Friday, May 12, 2000
CRIME: An important ally
Anyone who doubts the value of having a gun for self-defense should keep the case of Howard Dale Smith in mind.
According to news accounts, a man knocked on Smith's front door last week at about 10 p.m. Smith told the stranger to go away and shut the door.
But the man ran to the back of Smith's house, smashed a window and barged inside.
Smith, 49, who has Parkinson's disease, was waiting with a handgun when the man entered. He shot the man once in the chest, and the 29-year-old intruder stumbled onto a driveway, collapsed and died.
Smith's brother summed up the situation this way:
"Had he not had an equalizer he would be a victim today,'' he said. "I thank God for the right to bear arms.''
Stories such as Smith's often get lost amid tragedies such as last year's Colombine High School shootings in Colorado, which cause people to look for answers.
But the root cause is not guns themselves. No legislation will stop a person who is bent on taking another's life or property. Taking guns away from potential victims will make criminals safer, not their victims.
Researchers have calculated that guns are used for defensive purposes about five times as often as they are for crimes.
After the 1997 school shootings in Pearl, Miss., that killed two high school students and wounded seven others, the teenage shooter had additional rounds in his gun. He was stopped by an assistant principal who retrieved a gun from his car and used it to hold the boy until police arrived. Without his intervention, how many others might have been shot?
Reason magazine reports that the assistant principal's efforts with a gun went unmentioned by all but one of the major TV networks that night. Given such coverage, it isn't hard to understand why advocates for responsible gun use believe that news organizations often present a one-sided perspective on firearms.
Confronting burglars, robbers or other criminals with a gun is dangerous. But, doing so may mean the difference between living and dying -- perhaps for more than one person.
Incidents such as the one in Jacksonville last week are unfortunate, but they might make would-be assailants think twice before deciding to commit crimes.
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John/az
"When freedom is at stake, your silence is not
golden, it's
yellow..."
RKBA!
See
The Legacy of Gun Control film at:
www.cphv.com
Do it for the children...
