When WABC Radio in New York City early last month interviewed John Michael Snyder, CCRKBA Public Affairs Director, about the hullabaloo following the showing of the anti-gun movie, “The Long Island Incident,” on NBC television May 3, Snyder said he thought the most important thing about the movie was what it left out.
It left out, he said, any discussion of the fact that, because of the strict anti-gun laws in the New York area, there apparently was not a single armed law-abiding citizen on the Long Island Rail Road train in 1993 when crazed gunman Colin Ferguson murdered six people.
Snyder said that anti-gun laws obviously don’t prevent criminal types from perpetrating violent criminal acts but do prevent law-abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves and others from those very criminals.
Among those murdered in the Long Island incident was Dennis McCarthy, whose widow, Carolyn, was able to turn public sympathy for her into a successful run for a congressional seat. That was a focus of the movie, for which Hollywood celebrity Barbra Streisand was the Executive Director.
Movie actor Charlton Heston, NRA First Vice President, blasted the movie, saying it misrepresented the Second Amendment, and challenged Streisand to a public debate on the issue. Streisand declined.
The movie’s release seven months before the election, in which anti-gun Rep. McCarthy will be running, caused Joseph Mondello, Chairman of the Nassau County, New York Republican Party, to complain that “that’s one hell of a campaign advertisement.”
In Springfield, Massachusetts, anti-gun protesters marched May 2 outside handgun manufacturer Smith & Wesson to demand “safeguards” they say will reduce the thousands of deaths they say result each year from the use of firearms.
The protest was one of several outside the country’s gun makers in Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia.
The “Silent March” protesters, as they call themselves, want handgun manufacturers to make guns “childproof,” drop laser sights and hollow-point bullets, display prominent warning labels on firearms, reduce production, and raise prices.
On the same day, a dozen anti-gun activists gathered in the rain to place 109 pairs of shoes in front of an Alexandria, Virginia gun importer, Interarms, saying the footwear represented the 109 children killed by the use of guns in Virginia in 1995.
Jim Sollo, of Virginians Against Handgun Violence, told those who attended the protest that gun manufacturers and distributors should be held responsible for “gun violence” and should be pressured to make guns safer by adding trigger locks and other “improvements.”
An Interarms spokesman said of the protest that “I’d have to say no comment. We don’t generally dignify that sort of stuff.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said May 6 it has taken security measures to prevent people from boarding airplanes with tiny new guns that look as harmless as a key chain.
The 20-dollar gun is three inches long and an inch wide, but it can fire two .32 caliber bullets and would be deadly from 20 yards away, according to the Associated Press.
The gun is cocked by pulling on the ring and fired with the push of a button.
“It doesn’t look like a weapon. If you showed it to airport security, they would probably think it’s a key ring,”
Brian Hurrell, Director of Customs in Perth, Australia, told THE NEW YORK TIMES, which first reported about the gun.
Its simple shape also makes it difficult for X-ray machine operators to identify the gun as a weapon.
The FAA, which is charged with U.S. aviation security, said it was warned about the gun earlier this year by Greek officials and has since warned all airlines and airport managers.
The guns, which are widely available in southern Europe, have turned up in airports in Australia, England and Greece since September.
An Interpol official said the gun apparently is manufactured in Bulgaria.
Anti-gun Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced S. 1984, a bill to prohibit the transfer of a handgun by a licensed dealer unless the transferee states that the transferee is not the subject of a restraining order with respect to an intimate partner of the transferee, child of the transferee, or a child of an intimate partner of the transferee. It was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Firearms are a part of many teenagers’ lives, according to a NEW YORK TIMES/CBS NEWS Poll conductedApril 2 through 7 by telephone with 1,048 teenagers throughout the United States.
Nearly four in 10 say a member of their household owns a gun, and 15 percent say they themselves own one.
Thirty-one percent have had instruction in shooting. The TIMES reported on the survey in its April 30 edition.
By 56 percent to 31 percent, Americans believe that juveniles under 13 who commit murder should be tried as adults, according to a WALL STREET JOURNAL/NBC NEWS Poll conducted by Peter Hart and Robert Teeter and reported in the JOURNAL on April 24.
In the poll, 75 percent of Americans back a proposal that would hold adults criminally responsible if they let young children have access to firearms used to kill or injure. By 55 percent to 39 percent, according to the Hart-Teeter poll, the public favors a bill to limit handgun purchases to one a month or 12 a year.