BELLEVUE, WA – The District of Columbia’s gun ban has claimed another victim, and this time a veteran newsman has died, all because criminals know citizens in the nation’s capitol cannot fight back, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today.
“Our hearts and prayers go out to the family of veteran New York Times reporter and editor David E. Rosenbaum, who died Sunday from injuries he suffered during a brutal robbery Friday night near his home in northwest Washington, D.C.,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb, who is also publisher of Gun Week, a nationally-circulated firearms newspaper. “We cannot know whether Mr. Rosenbaum would ever have kept a gun for personal protection, but we do know that every law-abiding citizen now living in the District can’t. And we also know that for years, criminals have taken advantage of this environment of public disarmament, as hungry wolves prey on defenseless sheep.
“How many more victims of the District’s gun ban will it take,” Gottlieb wondered, “before common sense once again returns to the city? By all accounts, Mr. Rosenbaum was minding his own business, as have so many previous victims of violent thugs, when he was savagely beaten and robbed. His slaying will get plenty of attention, as it already has from the Washington Post, because of his stature and his professional background.
“But what about all the other victims, whose names have largely been forgotten,” Gottlieb continued. “Because criminals in the District have known for years that the public was legally disarmed, they’ve become bolder. They know that the odds are all in their favor, that in a victim disarmament zone like Washington, they won’t be facing a legally-armed citizen the next time they want to rob and kill. It is an outrage that city officials so callously defend this gun ban, while the body count of innocent victims continues to pile up.
“How sad and pitiful it is,” Gottlieb concluded, “that the New York Times has a record of supporting every deplorable, restrictive, anti-self defense gun law that ever came along; laws that disarm good people while doing nothing to stop the bad ones. These are the kinds of laws that have created risk-free working conditions for murderous predators in the District of Columbia, and ultimately, it is decent, honorable people like David Rosenbaum who so often pay the price for such despicable public policy.”