Second Amendment Project Newsletter. July 26, 2000.
The Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence
Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.
http://i2i.org
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Table of Contents for this issue

1. Kopel on falsified British crime statistics, and gun control
2. Recommended links. From Weekly Standard, National Review, Salon,
much more.
3. Statistics on household accidents.
4. Pope John Paul II on self-defense.
5. Kopel article in Chronicles, on a firearms exception to
the Fourth Amendment.
6. Vin Suprynowicz on the two most threadbare gun control lies.
7. Vin Suprynowicz on the BATF harassment of "Unintended
Consequences" author John Ross.
8. John Lott on press non-coverage of self-defense incidents with firearms.

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1. New Kopel article:
Fear in Britain. They have no guns - so they have a lot of crime. National Review Online. July 18, 2000. With Drs. Paul Gallant & Joanne Eisen.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment071800c.html


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2. Recommended links

Russian Roulette with Cops' Lives. Politicizing the safety of our police officers.
Michael F. Cannon.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment072600e.html

Taking the Second Amendment Seriously.
Finally, and for good reason, a gun control statute has been struck down as unconstitutional.
The Weekly Standard. July 24, 2000.
By Nelson Lund
http://www.weeklystandard.com/magazine/mag_5_42_00/lund_feat_5_42_00.asp 

"The ATF fired first"
Interview with Dan Gifford, Producer of "Waco: The Rules
of Engagement."
SALON MAGAZINE
July 25, 2000
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/07/25/waco/index.html 

Excellent but little-known firearms law website. Includes Laws, Supreme Court Cases, State Court Cases, Other Court Cases, Hearings, ATF records issues, Historical ATF forms, GAO, Links, Jim Jeffries' Articles, AG Opinions.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wbardwel/public/nfalist/

Unified Sportsmen of Florida sue South Miami for passing mandatory
trigger lock ordinance in violation of state preemption law.
-NRA sues to block South Miami law. Orlando Sentinel.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,32500000000109339,00.html
-County to weigh gunlock proposal. NRA Sues to Block South Miami Law
Miami Herald. July 21, 2000.
http://www.herald.com/content/today/news/dade/digdocs/057786.htm

Ohio judges enjoins enforcement of state law against concealed
handgun carrying.
-Ohio's gun laws being challenged by four workers
Cinn. Enquirer, July 18, 2000
http://enquirer.com/editions/2000/07/18/loc_ohios_gun_laws_being.html
-Second Amendment Foundation press release:
http://www.saf.org/pub/rkba/press-releases/OhioCarryTRO.htm


MILLION MOM MARCHER charged with attempted murder with a firearm.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40501-2000Jul13.html

The Florida Times-Union
July 18, 2000
Have gun, will not fear it anymore
By Paul Pinkham.
"Susan Gonzalez was afraid of guns until the night she and her husband became robbery victims and she had to use a gun to save their lives. She shot and killed one of the robbers and now she's never far from a gun."
http://www.times-union.com/tu-online/stories/071800/met_3568307.html 

Article on Priests, self-defense, and guns.
Washington Post, July 15.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48151-2000Jul15.html

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3. Consumer Product Safety Commission

a. Recall Notice for Trigger Locks
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml00/00149.html

b. Accident Data for household items.
http://www.disastercenter.com/CPSC/nursery.html 
Data for:
1. Child Nursery Equipment and Toys Accident Rates by Age
2. Sports & Recreational Equipment Injuries by Age and Sex
3. Home, Heating, Plumbing, and Appliance related injuries by cause,
age and rate
4. Furniture, furnishings, household, and personal use items accident
injury rates by age
5. Home, Work Tools and Misc. items accident injury rates by Age

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4. Pope John Paul II on Self-defense

From the 1995 Encyclical Letter EVANGELIUM VITAE:
http://www.newadvent.org/docs/jp02ev.htm

"....Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding
of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. There are in
fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve
a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate
defense, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not
to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice.
Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less
than others are the basis of a true right to self-defense."

"...legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty
for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of
the family or of the State. Unfortunately, it happens that the
need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm
sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal
outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose actions brought
it about, even though he may not be morally responsible
because of a lack of the use of reason."


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5. No Firearms Exception to the Fourth Amendment.
From the "Cultural Revolutions" sections of Chronicles magazine.
August 2000, pp. 7-8.

By Dave Kopel

The Supreme Court attracts the most attention when it does something new, or does something so old that it seems new. For example, the decision last May in the Morrison case-declaring that Congress had no authority to enact the Violence Against Women Act under the guise of regulating interstate commerce-got lots of deserved media attention. Since 1995, the Supreme Court has begun some tentative enforcement of the Constitution's limitations on the powers granted to Congress. Since the Supreme Court had ignored this part of the Constitution from 1937 to 1995, the Supreme Court's renewed attention to the Enumerated Powers Doctrine does merit media attention.

But some of the Supreme Court's most important work is performed when the Court refuses to do something new-when the Court declines to create an "innovative" exception to constitutional rights. Thus, the most important Bill of Rights decision of the 1999-2000 Supreme Court Term came when the Court refused an invitation to invent a loophole that would have nearly destroyed the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

In Florida v. J.L., an anonymous telephone tipster had claimed that young black male wearing a plaid shirt, and standing at a certain bus stop, was carrying a gun. Some police officers went to the bus stop, and saw three young black males, one with a plaid shirt. They frisked him, and found a gun.

Under existing Fourth Amendment doctrine, the search was plainly unconstitutional. The teenager, a fifteen-year-old, had not been doing anything illegal or suspicious, or which would make a police officer afraid about safety. The tipster was completely anonymous, and had said nothing beyond a bare accusation, so there was no way to evaluate the tipster's credibility or basis of knowledge.

After the Florida trial court, following current doctrine, suppressed evidence of the gun (since the gun had been illegally seized), the Florida Attorney General appealed the case, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the Attorney General argued that there should be a "firearms exception" to the Fourth Amendment. Because guns are so dangerous, the Attorney General reasoned, searches for guns should not have to meet ordinary Fourth Amendment standards.

Writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disagreed. Her opinion noted how easy it would be for citizens to be harassed if anonymous tips about guns could, by themselves, serve as the basis for an anonymous stop and frisk.

In the 1968 case Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court created a large Fourth Amendment loophole by allowing police officers to stop and frisk people who seemed to be acting in a suspicious manner. Although the Terry case was premised on the need for officer safety, in case the suspicious person were a criminal who might use a gun against the officer, the Terry case became the foundation for dozens of new Fourth Amendment exceptions, in situations having little to do with officer safety. Had the Florida Attorney General prevailed in Florida v. J.L., the case would have become the foundation of many more exceptions to the Fourth Amendment.

Although the J.L. case involved a frisk of a pedestrian, there would have been immediate pressure to apply the "firearms exception" to searches of automobiles, businesses, and homes. All over the country, prosecutors would have argued, sometimes with success, that the Fourth Amendment should also disappear in the alleged presence of other dangerous things-such as knives, brass knuckles, or drugs.

And since ordinary Fourth Amendment restrictions would not apply, mere assertions-rather than probable cause or reasonable suspicion-would have become the basis for searches, and everyone would be in jeopardy of being searched at whim.

The Supreme Court's swift and unanimous ruling may signal that the Court is unwilling to let political hysteria over guns be used to weaken the Bill of Rights. If so, today's Court is wiser than the Supreme Courts of the 1920s (when fear of communism was allowed to trump the First Amendment) or the 1980s (when the "drug war" was allowed to degenerate into a war on the Constitution).

Not since World War One has there been a Democratic President so aggressively hostile to the Bill of Rights, so it was unsurprising that the U.S. Solicitor General filed an amicus brief in favor of the "firearms exception."

What was surprising, however, was the broad collection of amici who wrote in support of the Fourth Amendment. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers supplied amicus briefs, as they often do in Fourth Amendment cases. But so did the Rutherford Institute, which focuses mainly on freedom of religion. The National Rifle Association joined with the Independence Institute (a free-market think tank), in a brief which I co-authored, to point out that firearms carrying is common and legal in most the United States, and not inherently suspicious. (Available at http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/Crime/Briefs/JL.htm.)

Even the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has spent much of the last decade raising direct mail revenue from credulous donors panicked about "militia terrorism," contributed an amicus brief on J.L.'s behalf.

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, has observed the growth of a "Leave Us Alone Coalition"-in which disparate people come together to uphold principle that the government should leave people alone. People such as homeschoolers, gun owners, and hemp activists are realizing that protecting the lifestyles of people they don't like is the best way to ensure protection for their own lifestyle. Florida vs. J.L. was a great victory for the Bill of Rights. As groups such as J.L.'s very diverse amici come to understand their common interest in protecting every single one of the Bill of Rights, there will be more victories for the Constitution.


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6. The two most threadbare 'gun control' lies
By Vin Suprynowicz. JULY 9, 2000

I don't know if they're the two biggest lies told by the victim disarmament gang, but they're easily the most threadbare, climbing out of their graves over and over to spread their stench like rotting vampires that have been killed but never properly staked.

First, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and others of his ilk keep insisting the reason we need "mandatory child safety trigger locks" is to substantially stop the "12 children killed by firearms every day in
America."

Let's give a tip of the hat to historian Clayton E. Cramer (writing in the July 1 edition of Shotgun News) for going directly to the web site of the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/mortabs/gmwki.htm  -- search under ICD 922.0) and looking up the actual number of American children under The age of 15 who are killed in handgun accidents each year.

For 1997, that number was 21 -- down from a high of 55 in 1990.

No, that's not a typo. Twenty-one children dead in handgun accidents in the whole of America in the entire year 1997.

Now, those are sad incidents. But compare them to the number of Jewish and Gypsy children who died in Europe -- not as collateral casualties of war but at the hands of "legitimate" governments -- in each of the years 1939 through 1945, because their parents allowed themselves to be disarmed under "gun control" laws which never disarm government police or other criminals.

Government-mandated airbags seriously injure more children than die in handgun accidents. Lightning and amusement park accidents and drowning in mop buckets beat out handguns in causing accidental deaths of children under 15. So why the national hysteria -- and more importantly, where do Mr. Gore and the "gun control" gang come up with that "12-a-day" statistic?

They get to "12 a day" by adding in all deaths of "children" up through the age of 19 which are firearm related, including suicides, 18- and 19-year old drug gangsters shooting each other in disputes over drug
distribution turf, and even 19-year-old "children" righteously shot dead by cops or law-abiding citizens while in the act of committing rapes, murders, and armed robberies.

The question I'd like to hear someone stand up and ask candidate Gore (assuming we still had a system in which real citizens could ask unscreened questions of our candidates, of course) is: "Mr. Vice President, I was the victim of a sexual assault, but I managed to get to my nightstand and get my dad's old Smith and shoot my assailant after he'd blackened both my eyes and broken my jaw. You say mandatory trigger locks would stop 12 child gunshot deaths every day -- I assume you're leading up to a law that would require those locks to be in place all the time.

"But the CDC says that in order to get to that number, you're including in the so-called 'children' in your statistic 18- and 19-year-olds righteously shot while committing rapes and other serious crimes. Is the death of my 19-year-old assailant one of the 'child gunshot deaths' you want to prevent? Is it your plan to require my gun to be locked up in such a way that I won't be able to use it to defend myself the next time a 19-year-
old thug decides to break into my house and try to rape me? Are you saying it's 'safer' for me to be beaten and raped than for me to have an unlocked gun to defend myself?"

# # #

The second most threadbare and putrescent "gun control" lie is that those of us who want to maintain the great American tradition of a populace armed and thus free, consistently misquote and misunderstand the Second Amendment.

(For the record, by the way, the Bill of Rights only acknowledges pre-existing human rights -- these rights would not disappear even if the populace were foolish enough to attempt a repeal.)

Anyway: As this argument goes, we gun nuts insist on quoting only the second clause of the amendment: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," while purposely dropping and ignoring the
introductory clause, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, ..."

What this introductory clause proves is that the Founding Fathers didn't want each and every law-abiding American to continue owning firearms of military usefulness, the victim disarmament gang patronizingly explains. Instead, it proves that Americans were meant to retain a right to carry firearms only when they're actively on duty in the regular army or the National Guard.

Don't laugh -- this bizarre reading was actually offered up with a straight face by U.S. Attorney William B. Mateja in oral arguments before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month in the case of U.S. vs.
physician Timothy Joe Emerson, a Texan charged with illegally possessing a firearm because his wife had filed a routine restraining order against him during his divorce proceedings.

(A federal grand jury indicted Dr. Emerson, who was "greatly surprised" to learn he may have violated any law, but the case never got to trial. In April, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Cummings in Lubbock properly found that the law denying guns to those under a restraining order was an unconstitutional infringement of the "individual right to bear arms." The federal law, Judge Cummings wrote, "is unconstitutional because it
allows a state court divorce proceeding, without particularized findings of the threat of future violence, to automatically deprive a citizen of his Second Amendment rights.")

On the bright side, the three judges hearing the appeal in New Orleans could barely conceal their incredulousness when the U.S. attorney told them yes, even the shotguns at home in the judges' closets could be outlawed with a flick of the wrist, since they weren't using them in the course of their National Guard duties -- see www.saf.org/EmersonViewOptions.html, or www.2ndlawlib.org.

Now, Congress enacted the law which gave birth to the American "National Guard" as we know it in the year 1917, partially in horror at the demonstrated effectiveness of citizen militias in giving hives to the central authorities in Mexico in the recent revolution there, and during that same decade of hideous "progressivism" which brought us the personal income tax, the Federal Reserve Board, alcohol Prohibition, and the beginnings of our delightful and long-running Drug War via the Harrison Narcotics Act.

That the Founding Fathers gathered together in 1789, peered into their crystal ball, and wrote a Second Amendment which meant the word "militia" to be read in light of a statist ordinance which wouldn't even be written until the First World War would require a bit of a leap of faith, even if we didn't have Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, who drafted the Second Amendment along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, on the record Advising us (in 1788): "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves. ... All regulations tending to render this militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia or distinct bodies of military men not having permanent interests and attachments in the community (are) to be avoided. ... To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

I, and others deluded into believing we were engaged in a rational discussion, where facts and evidence might count for something, have offered up reams of documented statements from the Founding Fathers that "no free man is to be debarred the use of arms" (Thomas Jefferson's proposed draft for the Virginia constitution) and that "The main thing is that every man be armed -- everyone who is able must have a gun" (Patrick Henry, 1788), etc.

But the other side just keeps croaking out their memorized little Chant about "ignoring the first clause."

# # #

So imagine the interest with which I received last week from Yale University Press a copy of the weighty and definitive new 400-page tome of history and analysis, "The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction," by that leading constitutional scholar, current Southmayd Professor of Law at Yale University, Akhil Reed Amar.

For those who have been in a cave for some little time, let me point Out that the law school at Yale is not what we would call a nest of right-wing militia activism. In fact, I don't think it would be unfair to characterize professor Amar's politics as leaning somewhat to the left.

Yet how does professor Amar deal with the "You forgot the first clause, nyah nyah nyah" argument?

Beginning on page 51, he explains: "Several modern scholars have read the (second) amendment as protecting only arms bearing in organized 'state militias,' like SWAT teams and National Guard units. ...

"This reading doesn't quite work. The states'-rights reading puts  great weight on the word militia, but the word appears only in the amendment's subordinate clause. The ultimate right to keep and bear arms belongs to "the people," not the states. As the language of the Tenth Amendment shows, these two are of course not identical: when the Constitution means 'states,' it says so.

"Thus, as noted above, 'the people' at the core of the Second Amendment are the same people at the heart of the Preamble and the First Amendment. Elbridge Gerry put the point nicely in the First Congress, in language that closely tracked the populist concern about governmental self-dealing at the root of earlier amendments: 'This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government.'

"What's more, the 'militia,' as used in the amendment and in clause 16, had a very different meaning two hundred years ago than in ordinary conversation today. Nowadays, it is quite common to speak loosely of the National Guard as the 'state militia,' but two hundred years ago, any Band of paid, semiprofessional, part-time volunteers, like today's Guard, would have been called "a select corps" or "select militia" -- and viewed in many quarters as little better than a standing army.

"In 1789, when used without any qualifying adjective, 'the militia' referred to all citizens capable of bearing arms. The seeming tension between the dependent and the main clauses of the Second Amendment thus evaporates on closer inspection -- the "militia" is identical to "the people" in the core sense described above. Indeed, the version of the amendment that initially passed the House, only to be stylistically shortened in the Senate, explicitly defined the militia as 'composed of the body of the People.' This is clearly the sense in which 'the militia' is used in clause 16 and throughout The Federalist, in keeping with standard usage confirmed by contemporaneous dictionaries, legal and otherwise. As Tench Coxe wrote in a 1788 Pennsylvania essay, 'Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves?'"

Thus endeth today's reading from professor Amar.

A word of advice to those who would deprive law-abiding Americans of their historical and unalienable right (not a "privilege" subject to license or permit or registration or taxation -- or do you propose to start having Americans apply for "Freedom of Religion permits" and "Freedom of Speech licenses"?) to keep at home and carry in their cars weapons of military usefulness, including belt-fed machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles:

Get yourself some new lies; the old ones are wearing thin.

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7. Has your bookshelf been approved by the BATF?
By Vin Suprynowicz. JULY 18, 2000

The Bill of Rights has an integral structure, like a castle. Folks who believe they can give up one of the first 10 amendments to the claim of "compelling government interest" -- yet still keep the others intact -- are like soldiers who fight to defend nine of a castle's gates while leaving the tenth gate open and unguarded.

The ninth amendment, for instance, tells our government that the people retain inalienable rights too numerous and obvious to enumerate. One of these is clearly the right to manufacture, possess, and traffic in alcohol,tobacco, and any other medicinal plant derivative we please, including opium, cocaine, and Indian hemp.

We know this because our great-grandparents were free to do all these things without any government interference from 1607 until 1916, and because a specific constitutional amendment (the 18th) had to be enacted to ban a single one of these drugs -- alcohol -- in 1919 (an amendment since wisely repealed.)

Since no parallel constitutional amendment has been ratified to allow the "War on Drugs," all current drug laws violate the Ninth Amendment. Yet do we jealously guard this medical liberty? No, the mass of modern Americans figure, "What the heck, as long as they say it'll 'keep kids off drugs,' let them do whatever's necessary."

As a result, we have subsequently lost most of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure, with random traffic stops and police SWAT teams breaking down doors in the middle of the night becoming routine features of our evening news. And as for the Fifth Amendment -- ever tried to get "just compensation" for a truck full of government-seized drugs or guns?

Likewise, most Americans today figure it's OK to let the government violate the inconvenient Second Amendment, so long as we're promised that jailing or killing gun owners and dealers for possessing a rifle with a bayonet lug might "save the life of a single child." But were the Americans who thus ignored Pastor Niemoller's advice prepared for this single open gate to subsequently erode their First Amendment right to read any book or magazine they please?

Already, in the 1997 Viper Militia prosecution in Arizona, defendants were charged with "conspiracy" to pass around books and magazines and show each other videos that described how to build weapons.

Now, novelist and federally licensed machine gun collector John Ross, author of the magnificent novel of the gun culture "Unintended Consequences" ($33 postpaid; 800-374-4049; P.O. Box 86, Lonedell, MO 63060) has apparently been singled out for federal intimidation for writing a fictional novel in which American gun owners finally get fed up and start offing their oppressors, including characters clearly based on Janet Reno and gun-grabbing N.Y. Rep. (now Sen.) Charles Schumer.

In a June 30 letter to BATF Director Bradley Buckles, writing on behalf of Ross, attorney James H. Jeffries III of Greensboro, N.C. states:

"Mr. Ross is an investment broker and financial adviser with a respected investment firm in St. Louis. He ... is the grandson of President Harry Truman's press secretary, Charles Ross, and was himself the Democratic Party candidate for the United States House of Representatives from the Second District of Missouri in 1998. In short, Mr. Ross is an upstanding and productive member of his community. ...

"Of central importance to the purpose of this letter is the fact that Mr. Ross is also the author of 'Unintended Consequences,' a highly popular novel about the trials and tribulations of legal gun owners and dealers in the United States. Although the book is manifestly a work of fiction, it accurately depicts documented historical events in the long and sordid history of misconduct by personnel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. ... Because the book is highly critical of the Bureau, it appears that some in your agency have undertaken to suppress it and to intimidate its author.

"For example, in 1997 the book's publisher became aware that individuals purporting to be BATF agents had threatened vendors of the book in at least three different states with 'problems' if they did not cease their sales of the book. A full-page ad in Shotgun News offering a $10,000 reward for the identity of these individuals put a stop to that particular business.

"Now we have learned that in late May of this year agents from your St. Louis field office have engaged in an official effort to enlist Mrs. Ross, who is amicably separated from her husband, as an informant against her husband. On or about May 24, at about 7:30 a.m., two agents approached Mrs. Ross on the street while she was walking her dog, identified themselves by displaying their BATF credentials, and proceeded to inquire what she thought about her husband's book. ... This contact had been preceded in previous weeks by pretext telephone calls to Mrs. Ross, by what were undoubtedly your agents, in an attempt to draw her out about her husband's book. An agent, using the pseudonym of Peter Nettleson, and pretending to be a great fan of 'Unintended Consequences,' sought Mrs. Ross's agreement that the book was, in fact, 'a manual for the murder of federal agents.'

"I note in passing that best-selling author Tom Clancy in recent books has murdered a director of the FBI, the President of the United States, the entire Congress, the Supreme Court, the entire cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a few lesser functionaries. I presume he has not thereby become subject to investigation by your literary critics.

"As an experienced federal prosecutor I am fully aware of what is going on here. Disgruntled former spouses are a prime source of intelligence for law enforcement, having as they frequently do both a strong bias against the subject of the investigation and proximity and intimacy. ... A structured approach such as this required, according to your manuals, formal agency approval. It required the investment of time and effort in setting up the approach: determining Mrs. Ross's new address, learning her new telephone number, physical surveillance to determine her routine so that she could be approached in a way that she could not simply shut the door, etc. ...

"What kind of people are you? Is there no honor within the ranks of your agency? It has long been clear, from repeated court decisions and congressional committee reports, that your agents have no familiarity with the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Now it appears that they have not even been introduced to the very first Article of the Bill of Rights.

"I am writing to express our outrage about this conduct and to formally demand that your agency cease and desist from this unconstitutional abuse of power. ... By copies of this letter I am requesting the Inspector General of the Treasury Department to formally investigate this unlawful conduct and the Attorney General to investigate to determine whether Mr.
Ross's civil rights are being violated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."

I called John Ross in St. Louis this week to ask how he feels about having his literary efforts singled out for such attention. "This may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but I would ask that they reflect and imagine how they would feel if it happened to them, if they had written a letter to the editor or an op-ed piece or gone on a talk radio station or something like that ... how would they feel if they were suddenly confronted with incontrovertible evidence that a federal agency had targeted them to suppress their viewpoint?"

BATF Director Bradley Buckles could not be reached for a comment last week, though the BATF public information office promised someone would call back.

-----------------------
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid by dialing
1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

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8. The Gun-Shy Press: Few Stories Appear When Citizens Use Arms To
Save Lives
By John R. Lott Jr.
Investor's Business Daily
July 18, 2000. Section A, page 26

Just weeks ago the press carried numerous stories of a robbery and murder at
a Wendy's restaurant in New York. The five slain victims were, said one
report, "bound, gagged and blindfolded with duct tape, their heads covered
with plastic bags and shot one by one as they knelt in the freezer room."
Police described the brutal murders as part of a "calculated plan" to
eliminate any witnesses.

The New York Times explained that the crime illustrated the "high price
America pays for having too many guns that are too easily available" and that
"stronger" gun control is needed.

How the legal system would have managed to enforce gun control laws when it
wasn't even able to track down one of the killers - who had jumped bail last
November while awaiting trial for robbing other fast food outlets last year -
was never discussed. Further, these criminals obviously did not obey existing
gun laws. One murderer even bragged to police about the ease of obtaining an
illegal gun on the street.

Contrast this with the meager news coverage of citizens who use guns to stop
similar crimes. On June 28, Will Lee, a janitor at a McDonald's in Houston,
was leaving work at 11 p.m. when he heard shots by three armed robbers
threatening people inside the restaurant. Lee, a concealed handgun permit
holder, returned to the restaurant with his gun and confronted the robbers.
He wounded two of the robbers, enabling their arrest.

Did Lee's act of bravery garner any national news coverage? Of course not.
The Houston Chronicle, the major Houston newspaper, didn't even carry a news
story. A local TV report noted it, but only to report that McDonald's was
considering firing the janitor for violating its rule forbidding employees
from carrying concealed weapons.

No editorials expressed outrage over threats to Lee's employment. No one
called for McDonald's to reverse its policy and allow employees to protect
themselves and customers in the absence of police. And there has been no
discussion of whether publicizing Lee's heroism might deter future criminal
acts against the restaurant. Though the dominant media won't admit it, the
truth is that citizens use guns to save lives frequently. The best estimates
indicate that they use guns defensively about 2 million times a year, five
times more frequently than guns are used to commit crime.

Within days of the Wendy's massacre, several instances of citizens using guns
to combat crime occurred. In Florida, a robber at a Wal-Mart store who had
slashed two employees with a knife was stopped by 53-year-old Sandra Suter
after she pulled out a pistol and said, "I have a concealed weapons permit.
Either drop the knife or I'll shoot you."

In Indiana, 70-year-old George Smith stopped two armed robbers at a variety
store. "I think George was the real hero. He saved my life," said one clerk.

It is true that more police are generally the best way to reduce crime. But
as they themselves recognize, they virtually always arrive on the crime scene
after the crime has occurred.

So the forgotten issue is: What do we advise people to do when they are
confronted by criminals? More than anecdotal stories reveal the risk of
passive behavior; so, too, does the Justice Department's own surveys showing
that having a gun is by far the safest course of action. Consequently,
violent crime is significantly reduced by the passage of concealed handgun
laws.

Does McDonald's really believe its restaurants are safer places when the
employees in right-to-carry states are not able to defend themselves? Here is
a challenge to McDonald's management: Would you dare put up a sign openly
declaring that your employees don't carry concealed handguns?

----------------
John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School and author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws."


==============================
As always, the Independence Institute website contains
extensive information on:

Criminal Justice and the Second Amendment:
http://i2i.org/crimjust.htm 
The Columbine High School murders:
http://i2i.org/suptdocs/crime/columbine.htm  and
The Waco murders: http://i2i.org/Waco.htm
The Independence Institute's on-line bookstore. Start your
browsing at the Second Amendment section:
http://i2i.org/book.htm#Second


That's all folks!