Sorties into Enemy Territory:
the LA Times
Op-Eds
Southern California has only one newspaper that is widely distributed
throughout the state: the Los Angeles
Times. Its editors like to compare themselves only to The
New York Times.
In January, 1992, when the Op-Ed page of the Los
Angeles Times published the first of four opinion pieces
of mine putting forth a defense of civilian
firearms, it had probably been over a decade since the last
time they had published an article with this viewpoint. The editor
of the editorial pages, Thomas Plate, doesn't believe in the Second
Amendment - he has referred to it in a letter to the NRA's
Sacramento lobbyist as a "blip on the Constitution"
- but when a subscriber pointed out to him the Times's
lack of balance on this subject, he felt chastened and promised
the subscriber to do something about it.
The Times subscriber was Dafydd ab Hugh, a fellow novelist
and firearms-rights activist. I had unsuccessfully submitted
three articles to the Times at that point. When Dafydd
told me of Mr. Plate's promise to him, I decided to submit again.
An incident at a Shoney's Restaurant in Alabama gave me the opportunity
to update one of my articles, and I made my first sale to
the Times Op-Ed page.
That article got me on two major Los Angeles radio talk shows,
and started a friendship with the most-respected talk show host
in Los Angeles, KABC's Dennis Prager. My article
was the final straw that convinced Dennis to abandon his
opposition to civilian arms, and to embrace a philosophy
of citizen self-defense that includes both
widespread gun ownership and what he sees as necessary gun regulations.
During the almost-two-years that I was selling articles to the
Times Op-Ed page, the Times Editorial Page was calling
for what it self-described as only modest gun-control measures.
But on Friday, October 15, 1993, only three weeks after the Second
Amendment Foundation gave me their James Madison
Award for my fourth Times Op-Ed piece, published on September
20th, the Los Angeles Times Editorial
Page began a series of weekly half-page editorials called "Taming
the Gun Monster."
In these editorials, the Times editors called for a national
ban on handguns and any semi-automatic
firearm that could be lumped into the undefined category
of "assault weapons," and denied
that there were any insuperable legal or constitutional
barriers to doing so.
I probably didn't do my career any good when I organized a demonstration
against the Los Angeles Times which
took place the Monday morning following the first of the
editorials. A dozen other firearms-rights activists and I,
dressed in business suits, handed out copies of articles in front
of the Times offices to anyone going in or out who
would take one. The hand-outs included several of my articles
- both from the Times Op-Ed page and the Times's
nearest rival, the conservative Orange
County Register - and additional articles refuting the Times
editorial contention such as a Times news article from
May 20, 1992, titled "Assault Rifles Are Not Heavily
Used in Crimes."
Thomas Plate "balanced" these editorials by running
several excellent pieces by pro-firearms criminologists and
Second-Amendment scholars on the Op-Ed page.
But I wasn't invited to be one of the balancers, and my one submission
to the Times since the demonstration was rejected. I believe
that the Times's editor of the Op-Ed page, Bob Berger,
likes my articles. I suspect his boss, Mr. Plate, has overruled
him.
I can't say I blame Mr. Plate. I had bit the hand that was feeding
me.
But Thomas Plate's hand was attempting to destroy the most important
of the Bill of Rights.
It deserved to be bit. -JNS
The following article appeared in the January 1, 1992 Los
Angeles Times.
A Massacre We Didn't Hear About
This is the story you saw on the evening news:
At lunch hour on Wednesday, Oct. 16, George Jo Hennard of Belton,
Tex. smashed his Ford pickup through the plate glass doors of
Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, injuring some patrons immediately.
While other patrons rushed toward the truck believing the driver
was a heart-attack victim, Hennard calmly climbed out of his pickup,
took out two 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistols,
and started shooting people in the cafeteria's serving line.
Hennard continued shooting for 10 minutes, reloading five
times. One of his pistols jammed repeatedly, causing him to discard
it. There would have been plenty of opportunity for any of the
cafeteria's customers or employees to return fire. None did
because none of them were armed. Texas law forbids private citizens
from carrying firearms out of their home or business. Luby's
employee's manual forbids employees from carrying firearms.
Police officers were inside Luby's within minutes. But before
they were able to corner Hennard in the cafeteria's restroom,
where he turned his gun fatally on himself, Hennard had killed
15 women and 8 men, wounded 19 and caused at least five more
to be injured attempting to flee.
The Killeen massacre was ready-made excitement for the media:
a madman with a gun, lots of gruesome pictures. CBS News devoted
an entire "48 Hours" Dan Rather report to it. Sarah
Brady of Handgun Control
Inc. capitalized on it in a nationally published column to call
Congress cowardly for voting down more stringent gun laws the
next day.
Now here's a story you probably didn't see:
Late at night on Tuesday, December 17, two men armed with recently-stolen
pistols herded 20 customers and employees of a Shoney's restaurant
in Anniston, Ala., into the walk-in refrigerator, and locked it.
Continuing to hold the manager at gunpoint, the men began robbing
the restaurant.
Then one of the robbers found a customer who had hidden under
a table and pulled a gun on him. The customer, Thomas Glenn Terry,
legally armed with a .45 semi-automatic pistol,
fired five shots into that robber's chest and abdomen,
killing him instantly.
The other robber, who was holding the manager at gunpoint, opened
fire on Terry and grazed him. Terry
returned fire, hitting the second robber several times and
wounding him critically.
The robbery attempt was over. The Shoney's customers and employees
were freed. No one else was hurt.
Because Terry was armed, and used his gun to stop
two armed robbers who had taken a restaurant full of people hostage,
there was no drawn-out crisis, no massacre, no victims' families
for Dan Rather to interview. Consequently, the story hasn't received
much coverage.
Among those who rely on national news media for their view of
the country, the bloody image of Luby's Cafeteria is available
to lend the unchallenged impression that guns in private hands
serve only to kill innocent people. The picture of 20 hostages
walking out of Shoney's refrigerator unharmed, because a private
citizen was armed that night, is not.
As we celebrate the bicentennial of the Bill
of Rights, it's worth noting that the Framers wrote the Second
Amendment so the people's defense would be
in our own hands, and we wouldn't have to rely on a "standing
army" or "select militia" for our
security. Though no police departments existed in America then,
there's no historical doubt that the Framers had considered centralized
public defense, and considered it not merely
ineffective, but itself dangerous to public safety. Recent vigilante-type
police attacks, such as the beating of Rodney
King, lend credence.
Yet, it's fashionable to relegate constitutional
protections to the dustbin of history. Judges sworn to defend
the Constitution ignore its clear provisions,
as do legislators. Virtually every major organ of society - both
political parties, the media, the American Bar Assn., the ACLU
- urges them to do so.
Today's "consensus reality" asserts that private firearms
play no effective role in the civic defense,
and that firearms must be restricted to reduce crime. The
media repeat these assertions as a catechism, and treat those
who challenge them as heretics.
Yet, we have before us an experiment showing us alternative outcomes.
In one case, we have a restaurant full of unarmed people who rely
on the police to save them. The result is 23 innocent lives lost,
and an equivalent number wounded. In the second case, we have
one armed citizen on the scene and not one innocent life lost.
How can the choice our society needs to make be any clearer?
It's time to rid ourselves of the misbegotten idea that public
safety can be achieved by unilateral disarmament of the honest
citizen, and realize that the price of public safety is, like
liberty, eternal vigilance. We can tire ourselves in futile debates
on how to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Or we can decide that
innocent lives deserve better than to be cut short, if only we,
as a society, will take upon ourselves the civic responsibility
of defending our fellow citizens, as Thomas Glenn Terry
did in Alabama.
My account of Thomas Glenn Terry's actions in this article was
based on an Alabama newspaper account. I later interviewed Terry
for a weekly radio program I was hosting and discovered that the
account was mistaken on several points.
Postal clerk Terry was finishing a late-night
dinner with his wife when the robbers came in and took over the
restaurant. Terry hid his .45 Colt Government Model
under his sweater, not seeing any immediate opportunity to use
it. Terry's wife was captured with the other customers and herded
off to the cooler, where one of the robbers proceeded to collect
wallets and jewelry.
Terry did not hide under a table; he had separated himself from
the other customers and managed to get to a back door in the Shoney's
to see if it was open so he could escape and call the police.
The door was chained shut. At that point one of the robbers discovered
him and when the robber drew on him, Terry pulled
his own handgun from under his sweater and returned
fire, incapacitating this robber, who ultimately survived.
The second robber heard the exchange of gunfire and also
drew on Terry; it was the gun fight between Terry
and this second robber which resulted in the robber running out
to the parking lot, where he died from his wounds. It was at this
point that Terry told the store manager to phone the
police, informing them that an armed customer was present; Terry
then proceeded to the cooler and released his wife and the other
customers.
Both robbers whom Terry shot had previous armed robberies
on their record, and one had murdered a motel clerk just a few
days earlier. A third robber escaped as soon as Terry
exchanged gunfire with the first robber.
The only national media outlet to cover this incident as news,
just two months after the Killeen restaurant massacre, was the
Christian Science Monitor. -JNS
The following article appeared in the Los
Angeles Times of June 8, 1992.
Joining Forces against a Common Foe
There are about 200 million guns in America in the hands of about
60 million Americans. The sale of guns nationwide following the
Los Angeles riots has reached record levels, many of them to first-time
buyers. Firearms training classes are filled to capacity.
The National Rifle Association currently has 2.8 million
members - ten times the membership of the American Civil Liberties
Union - and expects to exceed 3 million by the end of 1992.
Both advocates of gun control and advocates of gun rights agree
that there is an epidemic problem with the criminal use of guns
in America. But every time a gun-control advocate points to the
latest atrocity committed with a firearm, the gun-rights
advocate will surely ask: why was there no armed citizen who could
have tried to stop the criminal?
The difference between the advocate of gun control and the advocate
of gun rights lies in a perception of the cause of the criminal
use of a gun. Those who advocate gun control think the cause is
wide and easy availability of guns. The advocates of gun rights
think the cause is a legal system which leaves criminals free
to prey on a public which is socially discouraged, and often legally
forbidden, from using guns for personal defense.
The war over gun control is fought with news reports. Advocates
of gun control have no shortage of reports that prove guns in
the hands of criminals are a plague on our society. Advocates
of gun rights find, however, that the use of firearms
to prevent or stop a crime is often left unreported by media which
are worried that reporting gun defenses will
encourage irresponsible vigilantism.
The war over gun control is fought with statistics. The number
of gun attacks in the United States is easy to compile: just count
up the thousands of bodies in the morgues, and the hundreds of
thousands of gunshot victims treated in hospitals. The number
of times a gun is used for defense, however,
has a built-in problem: the use of a firearm to deter, prevent,
or stop an attack is unrecorded, overwhelmingly because the defense
was accomplished without pulling the trigger, and less often,
because the person using the gun for self-defense
was legally forbidden to be in possession of it at that time or
place, and thus did not report it.
The war over gun control is fought with historical debates about
the intent of the Second Amendment. Those
who advocate gun control say the Second
Amendment has no Supreme Court ruling which
defines the Second Amendment as protecting
an individual right of the citizenry to keep and bear arms for
personal defense. Those who advocate gun
rights say that the intent of the authors of the Second
Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment which would apply it to
the states, is indisputable, and it is a politicized Supreme
Court which does not have the courage to enforce it.
It's likely that the only other issue with such polarized and
deeply felt world views is abortion. Oddly, those who advocate
the right of choice on abortion are often the same people advocating
eliminating the right to choose firearms as a defensive option.
It's also likely that a final Supreme
Court ruling on the Second Amendment would
fail to end the issue. A ruling in favor of an individual rights
interpretation of the Second Amendment
would probably coalesce gun-control advocates into a movement
to repeal the amendment. A ruling against an individual rights
interpretation of the Second Amendment
would alienate and radicalize the millions of Americans who believe
in that right as firmly as the advocates of abortion rights
believe in theirs.
As long as the advocates of gun control write laws and court rulings
that abridge the right of private citizens to buy, own, and carry
the firearms they feel are theirs by right to have for defensive
and sporting use, gun owners will continue to be alienated and
radicalized, and become more and more willing to engage in civil
disobedience against such abridgements.
Advocates of gun control need to realize that passing laws that
honest gun owners will not obey is a self-defeating strategy.
Gun owners are not about to surrender their rights or their guns,
and only the most foolish of politicians would risk the stability
of the government by trying to use the force of the State to disarm
the people.
If gun-control advocates do not acknowledge the right of the people
to keep and bear arms for individual and civic defense
before they attempt to remove guns from the hands of those who
abuse them, then sensible gun laws will be out of reach, and the
criminal plague of gun victimizing will continue.
Can't advocates of gun control see the advantage of recruiting
gun-rights advocates to a joint cause of eliminating gun tragedies?
We can all agree that guns need to be kept out of the hands of
the violent criminal and the lunatic. We can agree that the solution
to gun accidents is safety training. We can agree that those who
own and carry firearms for protection must
take responsibility for knowing how to use them safely and appropriately.
Surely, instead of fighting one another, we can join forces
to fight our common enemy: the armed criminal?
The following article appeared in the Los
Angeles Times of October 27, 1992.
Gun Fight at the 4 'n 20 Pie Shop
Here's another story you didn't see on the network news.
At midnight on Friday, September 18th, 1992, former top-ranked
boxer Randy Shields was sitting at his usual table
at the 4 n 20 Pie Shop in Studio City, writing a screenplay. Suddenly,
two masked robbers burst in with a shotgun blast and handgun
fire. Shields dropped to the floor; the
robbers immediately shot at him, winging his leg. Dragging himself
into the darkened back room, Shields watched as
the robbers pistol-whipped a busboy to get him to open the cash
register, then shot through his shoe when he couldn't do it. "Somebody's
gonna die tonight!" one of the robbers yelled, then opened
fire toward several customers and waitresses, ordering them
to hand over their wallets.
Shields saw his opportunity to fire without endangering bystanders.
He pulled out his concealed .380 Walther PPK/S pistol, which he
carries licensed as a part-time private bodyguard,
and opened fire on the robbers, wounding them. They ran out
to the parking lot where their driver was waiting; Shields
put a couple of bullets into the getaway car, then ran out of
ammunition. The robbers opened fire on him again and he dived
back into the restaurant. The robbers squealed out to Laurel Canyon
then pulled a U-turn so they could fire a few extra rounds
into the restaurant.
Aside from Randy Shields's minor leg wound, and the busboy's bruises,
none of the restaurant's employees or customers were hurt. The
robbers called an ambulance to treat their gunshot wounds, claiming
to be victims of a drive-by shooting. But the bullets Randy Shields
put into their getaway car - and a bullet hole Shields
had put in a wad of money from two previous robberies they'd committed
that night - were enough for police to make an arrest.
Even an advocate of restricting civilian carry
of handguns would find it hard to argue against
the effects of Randy Shields being armed that night.
But that advocate of handgun restriction will undoubtedly
argue that this incident is mere anecdotal evidence, useless in
deriving any public-policy conclusions regarding the value of
issuing civilians concealed-carry weapons permits to deter crime.
Surely, carrying a gun is no guarantee that others will be as
brave and clear-headed as Randy Shields when faced
with armed criminals. Further, since no criminal justice agency
in the United States compiles statistics on anti-crime gun use
by civilians, the gun-restrictionist's objection is difficult
to answer.
Difficult but not impossible. Criminologist Gary Kleck,
professor at Florida State University, has compiled
survey data that American civilians successfully use handguns
for defense about 645,000 times each year,
without wounding anyone 99% of the time. A 1986 National Institute
of Justice survey of 2,000 felons in ten state prisons documents
that 34% of felons have been "scared off, shot at, wounded
or captured by an armed victim," and 57% agreed that "Most
criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than
they are about running into the police." Professor Hans Toch
of the State University of New York School of Criminology at Albany
concludes, "[F]indings suggest that high saturations of guns
... inhibit illegal aggression."
But even granting possible deterrence against crime, doesn't the
danger of even licensed, concealed firearms
in the hands of civilians outweigh the benefits?
No. To begin with, criminologist Don Kates of the
Pacific Research Institute said, "Instances of citizens
using guns with excessive force or against innocent persons they
have misidentified as criminals are negligible."
And while the California Department of Justice doesn't compile
records on firearms licenses revocations, a
few states do. After rigorous tracking, the Florida
Department of State reports that of 129,049 licenses
issued since October 1, 1987, under that state's mandatory license
issuance to all qualified applicants, it has revoked 222
licenses (1 in 581)) but only 115 for a crime (1
in 1122) and only 17 licenses have had to be revoked
for a crime utilizing a firearm: 1 in 7591. Meanwhile, according
to FBI crime reports, the homicide rate in Florida
dropped 20% between 1986 and 1991, while the U.S. homicide rate
increased 14% during that same period.
Indiana, which has 220,623 licenses outstanding,
doesn't break down its reasons for revoking licenses,
and reports 349 licenses revoked between 1989 and
1991 (1 in 632), with most revocations being one year for unnecessarily
brandishing a firearm.
By comparison, California Department of Motor Vehicles reports
a rate of 1 in 368 drivers' licenses revoked for
all causes in 1991 alone - a higher rate of revocation than Florida
or Indiana has for firearms licenses.
Any sensible public policy demands that hysteria and demagoguery
not bury the facts. Firearms carried by responsible, competent
civilians present no danger to the public, and both survey data
and dramatic examples such as Randy Shields provide
us good reason to believe that they save lives.
If anyone wants more proof than that, then they will have to demand
that the criminal justice agencies that track the evil that people
do with firearms also track the good that they do as well.
The following article appeared in the Los
Angeles Times of September, 20, 1993.
If Gun Laws Work, Why Are We Afraid?
It's almost funny that under existing laws a successful merchant
can't be sure of selling anything legally. If you sell a product
for less than your competitors, that's "cutthroat competition"
or "dumping." If you sell at the same price, it's "price-fixing."
And if you sell for more, that's evidence of "monopolistic
advantage."
In olden days, this was called a Mug's Game.
The pundits who promote gun control, though, have stacked the
cards even colder.
If you buy a handgun which is inexpensive, small,
and low-caliber, it's a Saturday Night Special. If you want a
handgun which is more expensive, larger, and higher
caliber, it's "the weapon-of-choice of drug dealers."
Whatever qualities a particular handgun has, gun-controllers
don't want it allowed. Heads they win, tails you lose.
If a rifle is magazine-fed and semi-automatic,
it's a deadly "assault weapon."
If a rifle is bolt-action, it's a "sniper rifle."
Again, all possibilities are covered.
A favorite media practice is to focus only on the bad things firearms
are used for. If a handgun is used for murder or
mayhem, it's headline news. If that same handgun
is used by a restaurant patron to stop a takeover robbery, the
story is buried.
Another gun-controller's game is to tell us how successful the
last gun-control law they got passed is, while simultaneously
telling us how "gun violence" is unchecked by current
laws.
Examples are California's 15-day waiting period on firearms,
and the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Act.
If these laws had reduced violent crime, why would we need new
gun-control laws? Since crime continues upward, why should we
believe gun-controllers when they say we need more of the same?
Here's another. New York City has strict gun-control laws and
a high rate of violent crime; Virginia less-strict gun laws and
a lot less violent crime. Supposedly, criminals were buying guns
in Virginia (using fake Virginia ID's) and smuggling them into
New York for black-market sales. Political pressure was placed
on Virginia to limit gun purchases to one a month; the law passed
over National Rifle Assn. protests that it impacted only
honest gun owners, because criminals could obtain black-market
ID's anyway.
So if New York's laws are so unsuccessful that guns can be smuggled
in anyway, what good is New York's gun control? And if Virginia,
with easily-obtainable firearms, has less crime than does
New York, why didn't New York take a lesson from Virginia and
loosen its gun laws instead? Do criminals know something about
attacking armed people that New York politicians don't?
But my favorite trick is the one which says that the reason gun
owners keep guns around is that they're paranoid and fearful.
We're shown videotape of Rodney King being excessively
beaten by Los Angeles police. We read Ventura County Prosecutor
Michael Bradbury's report about how even rich, white Donald Scott
was killed by a Los Angeles County Sheriff during a drug raid
trumped up in an attempt to steal Scott's Malibu estate using
the asset forfeiture laws. We see an acquittal of Randy Weaver
for defending himself from the U.S. marshals who killed his wife
and son, and see videotape of ATF agents opening fire
on David Koresh's followers in Waco, Texas, with no
return fire from the Branch Davidians visible. Then we're
told gun owners are paranoid for not wanting to rely on tainted
police authorities for protection against criminals.
Day after day, the news media tell us every time a gun is used
in a murder, a carjacking, an ATM robbery, or a drive-by shooting,
and we're told it's unreasonably fearful to think we're in enough
danger that we need to arm ourselves.
LA Assistant City Attorney Byron Boeckman, in discussing LAPD's
new policy of issuing concealed-carry-weapons licenses
for the first time since 1974, tells us that the danger of
violence to Los Angeles residents is exaggerated.
Well, which is it? Either America today is so peaceful, well-ordered,
and efficiently protected by its police that there is no
"gun violence" in the first place, and the rationale
for gun control is based on a non-existent problem, or we are
surrounded by heavily-armed psychopaths terrorizing our society,
in which case being better armed than the criminals is the rational
response of decent citizens who wish to preserve their civilization;
and our laws should encourage, rather than discourage, civilians
to train in, keep, and carry firearms.
Gun-control advocates constantly contradict themselves because
gun control has never been shown as an effective solution for
reducing violence. And in the absence of a provable case, all
they have left in their stage magician's trunk is old, worn-out
tricks.
Which gun owners know better than to fall for.