Washington Post Columnist
Misfires Over Gun Safety

In a column that appeared in last Sunday’s Washington Post, Arthur Kellermann blasts Justice Antonin Scalia’s assertion that keeping a handgun will protect the homeowner from burglars.

In the Justice’s opinion in the recent Supreme Court’s decision that the Washington, D.C., gun ban was unconstitutional, he wrote that a handgun can “… be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police.”

Kellermann, a professor of emergency medicine and public health at Emory University in Atlanta, offered the following in his column: That owning a gun is not a good deterrent to criminals, there are few cases that guns are used in self defense, that guns are used to commit suicide, and that Scalia’s scenario of holding a gun in one hand and using the other to call the police is “ludicrous.”

But let’s take these one at a time. Kellermann maintains that in a study that he conducted more than 20 years ago shows that more people actually shoot themselves or their loved ones than the actual criminal in the Seattle area. Thus, he maintains, “… that the risks of keeping a loaded gun in the home strongly outweigh the potential benefits.”

However, in the 1995 article, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun,” by Gary Kleck, Ph.D., from the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, showed that “about 1.5 to 1.9 million” cases of people defending themselves from criminals by using their handguns. That doesn’t sound like a few cases of self defense. In fact, that sounds like a lot of potential benefits.

While Kleck’s critics say that his numbers are too high compared to other studies, he maintains that some of those studies do not include people who used a gun as a deterrent and not firing it, among other things. Kleck also mentions in his article that other studies that show much fewer cases of people defending themselves with firearms are only low because of poor-questioning and fact-finding methods.

But Kleck is not the only one with criticisms in his studies. In a 1997 Reason Magazine article, it alleges that Kellermann is guilty of excluding critical information in his anti-gun studies, such as in one study, Kellermann, according to the article, left out incidents where guns actually deterred criminals. The article also claims that Kellermann is also guilty of misusing other people’s studies to support his biased views and that he refuses to give his full data to back up his studies. The magazine is not the only publication that question’s Kellermann’s objectiveness.

In an article in a 1995 issue of Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Daniel D. Polsby mirrored Reason Magazine’s allegations that Kellermann does not provide data of his studies for review. Polsby is the Dean and Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University in Arlington, Va.

And while Kellermann maintains that there are few cases of guns used in self defense, if one goes to the blogs Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog and Gun Watch, one will find nearly daily updated news stories of citizens using their guns to protect themselves and others. Obviously, these news articles and blogs are not peer-reviewed cases, but they are hard to ignore and certainly puts a sizable bullet hole in the notion that very few people use their firearms for protection.

Kellermann states that many people use guns to commit suicide. Sadly, the reality is if someone who is truly unhappy with his or her life, that person will find anyway to end it.

In Japan, where the country has a strict gun ban, many people are committing suicide by using the latest popular method of mixing common household cleaners and breathing in the fumes.

The sad truth is people will find any means to end their life. Going after the cause of a person's suicide and treating it is far more productive than demonizing one particular method used to commit suicide.

Finally, we come to Kellermann’s attack on Justice Scalia’s scenario.

“Scalia’s ludicrous vision of a little old lady clutching a handgun in one hand while dialing 911 with the other (try it sometime) doesn’t fit the facts,” Kellermann wrote.

However, that’s exactly what happened to 80-year-old Phyllis Friesen, as reported by the Ravalli Republic.

One evening, Friesen, of Sula, Mont., woke up to a man ransacking her cabin, where she lives alone. When she asked the man what he was doing, he didn’t answer and continued with his destruction. That’s when Friesen went into her bedroom and pulled out her .357 pistol and dialed 911.

“It wasn’t as frightening as it would have been if I didn’t have the gun,” she told the Ravalli Republic.

The police came and took the intruder away. But according to Kellermann, even though this case clearly illustrates Scalia’s scenario, he would call this ludicrous.

Now the reality is people will misuse guns, either intentionally or unintentionally. Accidents will happen. And another truth is that criminals break laws. If they didn’t, we would not call them lawbreakers.

Yet Kellermann maintains that owning a gun is a public health risk. But for more than 30 years, Washington, D.C., had a gun ban which resulted in very high crimes and deaths by criminals who still got their hands on guns.

However, it’s not a public health risk for an honest citizen to own a gun to defend one’s self, but it is a public health risk to create laws that benefit the criminals more than the people. To think otherwise would be ludicrous.

Supreme Court Takes
Second Amendment
Out Of D.C.’s Crosshairs

Many Second Amendment supporters are cheering as the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the nation’s capital had no right to restrict honest citizens from owning hand guns.

The controversial 32-year-old ban was held by gun control advocates as the ultimate, yet delusional, weapon to preventing crime and something that the rest of the nation should be doing.

However, the advocates always became silent when people mentioned how dangerous Washington, D.C. was because of the ban. This is because the ban did not stop criminals from obtaining guns from different areas and bringing them into the nation’s capital.

But this bit of common sense was lost to leading gun control advocate Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said this about the ruling:

“I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it.”

And this is despite the fact that Washington, D.C., was once this nation’s murder capital. Apparently, Feinstein had her fingers in her ears on her way into the Senate during this time.

Many people are pleased with the ruling, because now honest citizens can start defending themselves against lawbreakers who do not follow the rules, hence their name, lawbreakers.

People like Feinstein do not have a clue as to what is really happening in places that have gun control. England has a strict gun ban and all it resulted are criminals still using guns or knifes to rob and murder their defenseless victims.

A dose of reality is needed for those who honestly believe that restricting decent Americans of their Second Amendment rights is a way to handle crime. And another dose is needed for those who believe that adding another law on top of similar ones will help matters.

Let’s enforce the laws that we have now and make sure that the criminals are punished and not honest folks.

Maybe if politicians like Feinstein did something about the crime in Washington, D.C., then law-abiding citizens would not have the need to purchase firearms to protect themselves.

Solutions Needed To
Help Troubled Youth

Many around the world were shocked when they learned that a 25-year-old Japanese man allegedly used his truck to run down a group of people, jumped out of his vehicle and stabbed 18 people, killing seven in Tokyo.

In fact, knife attacks have become too familiar in Japan, once proud of its low crime rates. This past March, there was a random stabbing outside a train station in Tokyo and in January of this year, five people were hurt in another stabbing attack, reports Reuters.

Over in the United Kingdom, The Times did a feature article on teen-agers and how they deal with gangs and knife attacks, which are becoming too common. Just looking at someone the wrong way or telling another teen what town they are from can result in a “shanking” or stabbing.

The residents of the two countries believe they share a common link to the cause of crime: No one will listen to them.

The teen-agers in the United Kingdom claim that the police are accusatory towards them, especially towards black youths, and the Japanese believe that the family structure is deteriorating.

“Recently, peoples’ relationships have become strained,” 29-year-old Taishi Ikeda, of Japan, told Reuters in an interview. “There’s no-one to talk to when you’re troubled.”

Granted, there are many factors for the decline of society, such as economics, politics, trouble in the home, or just the individuals themselves. The list certainly goes on and on.

Trying to find a solution will not be easy for this problem. Knee-jerk reactions are not going to help, such as the one from Japan’s top government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura, who suggested tighter restrictions on obtaining survival knives, like the one allegedly used by the 25-year-old man.

Some people believed that tighter or even complete gun control in the United Kingdom and Japan would drastically reduced violent crime. However, it just made criminals seek out other weapons to harm or kill innocent citizens.

Either tougher new laws or enforcement of current laws can be productive in punishing criminals. However, more is needed to reach out to youths before they find their way into a dead end alley with a person holding a sharp instrument of death in his hand.

Politicians and police should make more of an effort to helping or improving social programs to keeping kids off the streets. They should also make sure that counselors are on hand to help discuss the problems that most young people, and even young adults, are facing.

But while we feel sorry for the terrible conditions that troubled youths and young adults find themselves in, it should not excuse any crimes that they commit. Wrong is wrong and it should be punished.

But there needs to be more recognition on the solutions to prevent these people from finding themselves in a hopeless situation.

Sure, there are many youths who do great good and go unnoticed. And it’s important to recognize the good deeds done by others to show us all that there is a lot of hope left in this world.

However, showing the negative is just as important, because it shows where we as a society and as a people are failing and how we need to address and fix these problems.

Obama’s Arrogance, Bill’s Stupidity

It hasn’t been a good week for either of the two Democratic presidential juggernauts.

Just Friday it was reported that Sen. Barack Obama basically called small-town Pennsylvanians uneducated rednecks because they don’t know how to express their frustrations with the government, so they hold religion and guns close while shunning away immigrants.

And later this week, former President Bill Clinton decided to “help” his wife by reopening the old Bosnia wound. If that wasn’t enough, he even got the facts wrong and he admitted to the public that Hillary told him to shut up about it. Talk about a henpecked husband, which only further portrays the female presidential candidate as an ice queen.

But getting back to the more important issue, what is really interesting is that earlier this month Obama was trying to woo over gun owners by waving the constitutional rights flag, but not telling them his misfiring voting record. But then he tells some rich donors in San Francisco that small-town Pennsylvanians are backwoods people and how they feel that the government has failed them.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said, as reported by The Huffington Post.

Now, this is wrong on many levels. One, it’s hypocritical of him to even mention how people seek religion for guidance, considering the controversy between himself and his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And Obama is still dusting himself off from that political debacle.

But two, Obama is stereotyping these Pennsylvanians, which is supposed to be a huge no-no for liberals and Democrats, unless that’s stereotyping too.

In addition, he’s basically describing these Pennsylvanians as single-minded people who don’t understand the issues that this country is facing.

The Times Observer has always provided support for Obama when he was unjustly attacked, but in this case, the Illinois senator has not only made a hole for himself with Pennsylvania voters that he is trying to win over, but has opened himself up for attacks by Hillary and the likely Republican presidential nominee, John McCain.

Courting the gun vote should be one of the huge priorities for any Democratic presidential candidate if he or she hopes to win any political race. After all, in recent years Democrats are viewed as being against the Second Amendment.

And respecting how one embraces religion should be a cake walk for even a first year politician. But insulting one’s way of life will reasonably make that voter get down on his knees and take aim at Obama.

Northern Illinois University Shooting Only Shows One Side Of Guns

While it was certainly a tragedy that a crazed gunman silenced five lives before taking his own yesterday in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, many gun critics have said there is no more need for the Second Amendment because of the recent school shootings.

But the fact that gun critics are citing only recent school shootings, and some saying that one never hears about people using guns to protect themselves and their loved ones, paints a very false picture indeed.

While a homeowner using his or her legally-owned firearm to protect him or herself from burglars does not make national news, it does not mean it does not happen. In fact, it happens nearly every day. If one goes to the Web site Gun Watch, one will see links to news articles that show that in one month’s time guns have been used to protect people against criminals than a year’s worth of nationally reported school shootings.

Such as the case of 80-year-old Texan and W.W. II vet James Pickett. He heard a knock at his door and two men barged into his home with a knife, according to police.

“He just came through that door, stabbing and beating,” Pickett told Dallas/Fort Worth Channel 9.

Thankfully for Pickett, he already placed a gun in his pocket before he went to answer the door. During the fight, Pickett turned and shot one of the alleged robbers and the bullet missed his spine. The other man ran but was later caught, stated police. The two alleged robbers are facing assault, burglary and robbery charges.

The sad fact is that school shootings have been happening for a long time in America, including the little known 1927 Bath School incident in Michigan where a man bombed the Bath Consolidated School and shot and killed three people. By the end of the incident, a total 45 people died, mostly children.

But during the aftermath of the terrible shooting at Northern Illinois University, now is not the time for knee-jerk reactions. As it has been stated before in The Times Observer, those who are calling for the stripping of the Second Amendment fail to realize that criminals will continue to get guns or use other weapons to inflict pain and death to the law-biding citizen.

What needs to be done is to enforce the gun laws that we have now or provide better ones to help law enforcement officials to properly do their job without inconveniencing gun owners with restricting new legislation.

Do not let the justified national media coverage of school shootings cloud the protection that the Second Amendment gives to many Americans every day.

Responsibility Needed For
Disturbed Teen With Guns

Guns and teenagers seem to be a hot topic this week. On Wednesday, 14-year-old Asa Coon shot two teachers and two fellow students at Cleveland’s SuccessTech Academy before turning his gun on himself.

On Wednesday evening, police in Pennsylvania arrested a 14-year-old boy who had a 9 mm assault rifle, as well as a .22-caliber handgun, and a .22-caliber rifle, and some loving assortments of home-made hand grenades and swords.

Apparently, the home-schooled student was planning a Columbine-style attack on his former school, Plymouth Whitemarsh High School, in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., where it was alleged he was bullied for being fat.

And the Pennsylvania boy’s mother, Michele Cossey, bought him the guns, which no ammunition was found. She has been charged with six counts of buying the firearms for her son. Police found diaries the boy made of detailed violent acts, explosive black powder for the hand grenades and materials about Nazi Germany. Police have charged the boy with solicitation to commit terror and other offenses.

So, does this mean that the combination of teenagers and guns are bad? Not necessarily. The Cossey Boy isn’t exactly Johnny Chest Champion. He has huge issues, especially when he is filling diaries with deadly acts and reading bed time stories by Adolph Hitler.

On top of that he made three working hand grenades and he was making more. What type of arts and crafts projects was this home-schooled kid into? The Cossey Boy didn’t need another firearm; he needed to get some professional help!

Now, believe it or not there are many responsible teenagers who either own or use guns with the supervision and careful instructions of responsible parents and other adults. Mrs. Cossey and her son certainly don’t fit into that category.

Should all teenagers have guns? No, they shouldn’t. Then again, some of them shouldn’t even be allowed to drive, but many still get behind the wheel and cause horrific accidents. The Cossey Boy is a good example of why some teenagers shouldn’t have any type of weapon, firearm or otherwise. But there is enough blame to go around.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Cossey had to be aware on some level what their son was doing in his bedroom, if police were able to find Nazi reading material, drugs and bomb-making instructions. Once they realized their son had issues, it was time to take away the guns, swords and other goodies.

However, we can be thankful that responsible 14-year-old Lewis Bennett, who was being recruited to join the Cossey Boy’s "Human Target Club," went to his father and both of them went to the police.

It’s high time that many parents need to take a more active hand in raising their children. Now most parents aren’t like the Cosseys, thankfully. That being said, if you notice that your child’s attitude has changed or grades are taking a nosedive, then it’s time to step in.

If you don’t know how to go about it, contact your child’s school counselor and he or she should have brochures that will point you to the right direction. Or you can go to talkingwithkids.org, a Web site that provides excellent information on how to speak with your kids about sex, drugs and violence.

No one said raising children would be easy. If someone told you it would be, smack that person in the mouth. But taking the time and patience to let your child know that you care, even if they are not that receptive of it, can make all the difference in the world. Maybe the Cosseys should have thought of that before buying their disturbed teenager another gun.

Ohio School Missed Warning Signs

If what students from SuccessTech Academy said is true about Asa H. Coon, the alleged shooter at the Ohio high school yesterday, then school officials really dropped the ball.

According to police and eye witnesses, before Coon killed himself, he shot two students and two teachers.

Coon was suspended for fighting Monday and he was not supposed to be at the Cleveland high school yesterday, according to the Associated Press. During the shooting, Coon was wearing black jeans, a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt, and black-painted finger nails, according to officials. But he has been known to don a dog collar, chains and a black trench coat.

Now, here is a quote from a student of SuccessTech Academy, where one has to apply before being accepted to the high school.

“He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody,” said student Doneisha LeVert. “We didn’t think nothing of it.”

But this is where it gets interesting. According to LeVert, Coon made that threat last Friday in front of teachers and no one took him seriously.

How could no one take him seriously? In a world where two Columbine High School students who went on a shooting rampage were known for wearing trench coats and only six months ago did quiet Cho Seung-Hui, who was known for writing violent plays, murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech, how could someone not know this couldn’t be a possibility?

Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but the 14-year-old Coon was arrested last year for “a domestic violence incident and police had been to his home before for incidents that involved weapons,” CNN reported.

And last year, Coon threatened to commit suicide while in the care of a mental health facility, reported the Cleveland Plain Dealer. According to the story, Coon also refused to take his medication but it did not reveal what the medication was or why he was taking it.

Add that up along with his wardrobe selection and the threat, this should have sent up a lot of red flags. At this time, it has not been reported that school officials wanted Coon to be evaluated but it does not seem like it. And it is not known at this time if Coon was still receiving treatment prior to the attacks In any case, it’s clear that Coon was not getting the proper help he needed.

It is hard to believe that no school official thought, “Hey, these kids are nuts during the best of times but this kid has a history of emotional and criminal problems, maybe I should take some extra precaution.” Did SuccessTech Academy school officials had nap time when Seung-Hui was shooting up Virginia Tech’s campus?

And the Associated Press reported that students and parents have made allegations that the metal detectors at the front door of this school are not always turned on, while CNN reported that Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath stated the school does not have them.

And SuccessTech Academy will be catching holy hell when people are going to start asking how a troubled 14-year old boy who is suspended got into a school with two revolvers, a duffel bag of ammunition and three knives.

The only saving grace for SuccessTech Academy is that Principal Johnnie Durant issued a “Code Blue” over the public address system to alert students and staff that there was danger. That probably saved many lives.

And this certainly aims a critical spotlight on SuccessTech Academy’s enrollment program. The school has some strict guidelines on how to apply. Hopeful students must write an essay, get two teacher recommendations and have interviews with school officials. Yet somehow Coon was still accepted to attend, despite his problems.

Sadly, we live in a time where students who make remarks about blowing up their school or threatening harm to others needs to be taken more seriously.

Coon clearly had emotional problems that SuccessTech Academy, it would seem, could not properly handle. Even though the public school should have done more to prevent this tragedy from happening, there is enough finger pointing to go around.

We must stay vigilant in these times and hope that after a proper investigation into this matter, something like this can be prevented.

What Can Be Drawn From The Virginia Tech Shooting

It was a horrific tragedy that happened on the beautiful campus of Virginia Tech just a few short days ago, where 32 innocent lives were violently taken away, with the disturbed gunman taking his own.

As with many devastating events such as this, there is always talk about this country’s gun laws and gun culture. A day after the April 16 shooting, many politicians, gun opponents and Europeans voiced their concerns about the killings, laying blame on the availability of guns in America.

They will have knee-jerk reactions to this and damning the right to bear arms while at the same time, Europe will pat themselves on the back for their strict gun laws. However, one really needs to sit back and look at the other side of the issue and realize that strict gun control laws may not be the cure-all for violent crime in this country or any other.

A few years ago, in 2004, right before the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was about to expire during the last presidential elections, a very quiet U.S. Department of Justice report was released that showed that the ban did not do anything to stop crime. Called “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2004,” it was the third such report by the department; the other two were under the Clinton Administration.

“Because the ban has not yet reduced the use of large capacity magazines in crime, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” the report stated.

This report did not get much coverage in the media, even though the ban was a hot topic among the gun community, either for opponents or supporters. (Although, a certain editor for a great news blog happened upon the report by accident while writing about the ban when working for a weekly newspaper.)

A popular myth about gun control is that less guns means less crime or that most gun owners do not actually defend themselves against criminals. Well, researchers such as Gary Kleck, Ph.D., and others show that citizens who legally own guns live in low-crime areas and they actually protect themselves.

It’s interesting how it does not get reported how honest citizens with guns actually help stop crimes, such as the Pearl, Mississippi school shooting, where an assistant principal used his own gun to subdue a teen gunman. Or how two armed Appalachian School of Law students subdued a killer with a gun. But alleged media bias is a different topic for a different day.

Getting back on topic, our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., has strict gun control laws but the crime rate is extremely high. While according to a mother of a Virginia Tech student, many students on campus are hunters and belong to gun clubs but do not bring their weapons to school.

In fact, many down South own guns yet they do not have the violent crime rate that cities like Washington, D.C. or New York have, where gun laws are strict. It’s safe to say that the South have more of an understanding and respect for guns than the North.

Many gun opponents look at Europe as a utopia because of their hard stance on bearing arms. However, the reality is criminals can still get their hands on guns from the black market or use other weapons, such as knifes. In 2003, England saw a 12-percent jump of violent crime between April and June of that year. And gun crimes also increased as well. In fact, a British burglar was interviewed about England’s gun laws and he said it made him feel safer to break into other people’s homes since they can't defend themselves. But this is something that Europe and gun opponents like to keep a silencer on, if you pardon the pun.

What is interesting is that many liberals who say that the Patriot Act takes away too many civil liberties are more than happy to take away the Second Amendment from honest citizens who either want to protect themselves and their families or they want to enjoy hunting or target shooting. You simply cannot have it both ways.

The sad reality is that bad people do bad things. Cho Seung-Hui is a good example of this. But let’s look at a man who walked into a Japanese language school with a knife and a baseball bat and beat a student. And speaking about Japan and gun laws, Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh died of gun wounds from a known criminal and this is a country known for its gun control laws.

There are two sides to every issue but extreme solutions and knee-jerk reactions (and non-objective reporting) will do more harm than good. Let this tragedy be a reminder to all of us that no one is truly safe no matter where we happen to live or the safe guards that are meant to protect us. And it is foolish to restrict our Constitutional Right to bear arms and protect ourselves and our loved ones the way we see fit.