By Larry Pratt

Maryland Alderman Wants Federal Law Banning Toy Guns!

When I first read the story in the Washington Times newspaper I thought it was a joke, a spoof. I double-checked the date of the paper. No, it was April 20th not April 1st. The headline read: “Buyback Of Toy, Water Pistols Sought.”

The story told how Cynthia A. Carter, a Democrat alderman in the city of Annapolis, Maryland, wants police to buy back cap guns, water pistols and other toy weapons to curb violent behavior in children. She’s quoted as saying: “Children can’t distinguish between a real gun and or a play gun, nor do they understand the difference between life and death.”

She wants people to weigh the possibilities, asking: “What good does a toy gun do and what harm does it do?”

Still not sure that this story was for real, we contacted Alderman Carter, interviewed her and here’s the way it went:

Q: So, what’s wrong with kids playing with toy guns, cap guns, water pistols?

A: Well, if you follow me, when they were making toys guns which, first of all, should never have been, to take something that could be so detrimental, something so deadly, and turn it into a toy, and capitalize on it at the cost of children and the risk of their lives, and just bodily harm.

So, they got away with it over the years. But, with time change, like with the seatbelts and the metal detectors at school and other precautionary measures taken to protect the children, I think we better look at what we have here — to do the same thing. Times have changed.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen some of those video games. There is some pretty nasty stuff on there — shooting and killing and destroying each other. Children need at this point in time, with thing being as they are, to be taught to respect, to care and to love.

And when they get older and if they decide they want to get a gun and do hunting or collect them as a hobby or whatever. But the same laws they have restricting children from tobacco, driving and alcohol need to be put on any form of a gun….

Q: You think police should buy back these violent video games, too?

A: Absolutely! Absolutely! If we could get some of those things —these kids get together in these rooms, turn on these videos and freak out. I can’t stand to look at them. Can you imagine what’s going through these young minds? But, we had better take note and check ourselves.

Q: Should it be illegal to make these toy guns?

A: Absolutely!

Q: Really?

A: Absolutely! And if I had my way it would be.

Q: Making toy guns should be a crime?

A: Yes.

Q: And what should be the punishment?

A: The same as it would be if you made a real gun.

Q: But, it is not illegal to manufacture most guns. What specific punishment would you support for those who make toy guns?

A: I’m sure the Federal Government could find a fine — I guess the same fine that there would be if a kid was sold a real gun.

Q: So, there should be a Federal law against selling toy guns?

A: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Q: You seem to think that all guns and all uses of guns are bad.

A: Understand what I am saying. What it’s doing mentally to the children. What you do with a gun when you become of age — some fathers think it is right to take these boys out and show them how to kill an animal. These children cannot distinguish a difference —their minds absorb — and, again, and my backup on the whole thing is that if you train up a child in the way he should go, when he gets older he will not stray from it.

Q: Right. That’s from the Old Testament book of Proverbs.

A: Exactly, Proverbs 22:6.

Q: So, if you train up a child to know the difference between a toy gun and a real gun then…

A: You can’t.

Q: Sure you can.

A: No, you can’t. The idea that it is a very destructive piece of equipment that was made to look like, and to be played with to kill, is the whole direction this whole thing has gone.

Q: But is all killing bad?

A: Yes. If you teach a child to kill…

Q: What about self-defense?

A: There is a difference. A child does not have the ability, to my knowledge — and I’m talking about little children — to kill somebody to defend themselves.

Q: But, I’m alluding to that Proverb you quoted. It’s true. So, if you trained up a child, with toy guns, to teach them to respect real guns, and use them for self-defense, when necessary, then —

A: No.

Q: Sure you could.

A: You know, there’s one thing about anything that happens in this world. There’s no correct way of doing it. I want to initiate something that needs to be initiated, and that right now is to let children know that guns are not toys. And we start by eliminating them as toys.

Q: But toy guns are toys.

A: We’re adults and we know. But we should know better by now that we need to stop manufacturing them and giving them to kids and stop letting it be a toy.

Q: But what’s wrong with training kids to know about and respect real guns and to know how to use them in self-defense?

A: We can teach the children about a lot of things. But to teach them about using a firearm to kill, they have to first learn to respect life before they can learn the rest of it. We as parents are supposed to protect these children. They should not have to have a firearm to protect themselves or to get a meal (?).

Q: No, I’m not talking about kids having real guns. I’m talking about training them, when they are kids, to learn to use a real gun later, possibly in self-defense — which, incidentally, shows a respect for human life!

A: No. I don’t agree with that. We have other things to teach our kids. We need to teach them to respect life.

Q: But, it’s not either/or. You can do both. You can demonstrate a respect for human life by using a gun to defend your life or somebody else’s life.

A: This is something the Lord (?) has laid on my heart. I find it necessary, just like we need to put prayer back in school. This is what I want to do for my community. The kids cannot watch TV all day long. They cannot watch certain movies and things on there. They cannot do those videos. We need to put a book in their hands, or they should learn to ride horseback, go to the arts, dancing. This is what we need to do. But there are not too many parents in the homes taking care of kids nowadays.

Q: We’re not going to disagree on that. Are you aware that hundreds of thousands of people in this country — some studies says millions — of Americans use guns in self-defense every year?

A: Should a five or six-year-old kid be put to that? I’m not talking about someone who is 19, 20 or 21. I’m talking about the youth. We gotta start somewhere.

Q: I’m sorry. I’m not getting my point across. I’m saying that one valid reason for allowing kids to have toy guns is to show them how to use real guns responsibly when they grow up for, among other things, self-defense.

A: Then take them to a whorehouse and show them how to have sex! You might as well do the whole nine yards.

Q: Really?! So, you think teaching kids how to responsibly use firearms is like teaching them to fornicate?!

A: No, baby. Self-defense didn’t mainly start in the home. That is where most children are harmed where they are molested by those who are supposed to love and care for them. We gotta teach these kids that that is not the thing to play with.

Q: I’m not talking about teaching kids to play with real guns!

A: Not every child can distinguish between a real and a toy. Their minds are not developed that way. We are the parents, the care-takers. And we must direct these children the right way.

Amazing, no? — and truly lunatic — which is why Cynthia A. Carter is our “Anti-Gun Nut-Of-The-Month.”

Larry Pratt is Executive Director of Gun Owners of America located at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151 and at http://www.gunowners.org on the web.

By Larry Pratt

Maryland Attorney General’s War on the Constitution

This month’s “Anti-Gun Nut Of The Month” is Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr.

Curran has issued a 63-page report titled A Farewell To Arms: The Solution To Gun Violence In America. But, Curran’s report is a “solution” to nothing. Instead, it is a brazen, blatant, ignorant, erroneous, brass-knuckled, knee-in-the-groin attack on the Second Amendment.

Curran has circulated his Farewell to Arms to the other 49 Attorneys General hoping to gain their support in his war against the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.

His proposals, if enacted into law (God forbid!), would have the effect of doing to the Second Amendment what the explosives did to that Federal building in Oklahoma. That is to say, Curran’s proposals would, if they became law, demolish the Second Amendment.

And — like in Oklahoma — lives would be lost because millions of law-abiding Americans would be denied the right to defend themselves with handguns.

About one thing, however, Curran is absolutely correct. His proposals are none of those “small, timid measures” or “band-aid” solutions he denounces. No, siree.

Curran says, flat out: “Our public policy goal should be to restrict the sale and possession of all handguns to those who can demonstrate a legitimate law enforcement purpose or can guarantee that the use of such guns will be limited to participation in a regulated sporting activity…. We must institute a plan that will move us to a point where people are ready to accept an end to unrestricted private handgun ownership.”

Unrestricted?! In our country today, we have more than 20,000 so-called “gun control” laws!

There is so much in Curran’s wretched report that is false, half-true, and intellectually dishonest, that one hardly knows where to begin in trying to correct the record.

But, let’s start with his false view of the Second Amendment. Curran says: “This notion of an individual constitutional right to own firearms is a myth. The Supreme Court and all lower Federal courts have unanimously held, since the first decision in 1886, that the Second Amendment is about the states’ right to maintain a militia, and has nothing whatever to do with an individual’s right to bear arms outside the context of a state militia.”

Wrong! In a case called United States v. Miller (1939), the U.S. Supreme Court noted that the militia reference in the Second Amendment alludes to “civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion,” that “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense” and that ordinarily when called for service “these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.”

As Stephen P. Halbrook notes in his book That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution Of A Constitutional Right (The Independent Institute, 1994): “The Supreme Court’s historical review demonstrates that the ‘well regulated militia’ referred to in the Second Amendment meant the whole people armed and not a select group, that each private individual had the right and duty to keep and bear arms, and that the people were to provide their own armed protection rather than depend upon a militarist and oppressive standing army.”

Maryland’s constitutional history shouts against Curran’s pro-civilian disarmament policies. In his book For The Defense Of Themselves And The State: “The Original Intent And Judicial Interpretation Of The Right To Keep And Bear Arms (Praeger, 1994), Clayton E. Cramer, quotes a member of the Maryland convention considering ratification of the U.S. Constitution (Alexander Contee Hanson) as referring to the militia, “which is ourselves.” And a committee of this same convention called the militia “all men, able to bear arms.”

These words from the Maryland Convention echo the Virginia Ratifying Convention in which George Mason (a long-time friend of George Washington) argued that “the militia is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”

Curran is retailing the Handgun Control, Inc. myth that the Second Amendment applies only to a state’s ability to maintain a militia and does not protect a God-given right of individuals to keep and bear arms. As recently as 1991, the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez held that throughout the Bill of Rights where the term “the people” is used, it refers to an individual right — as in the first, second, fourth, ninth and tenth amendments.

Another thing Curran denounces as a “myth,” as “hype,” as “false propaganda,” is that handguns are needed for self-defense. He says: “Study after study shows that guns are rarely used successfully in self-defense.”

Rarely used? His own report quotes a U.S. Justice Department survey estimating that there are, on average, 108,000 defensive uses of gun annually — which is 9,000 times a month, 2,077 times a week, 296 times a day. Not exactly “rare” by any definition.

And there are even higher, and more reliable, estimates. For example, Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz estimate that 2.5 million Americans use a gun in self-defense each year. Curran, however, says this figure is “wildly over-estimated.”

But, the late Marvin E. Wolfgang, a Liberal icon who called himself “as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among criminologists,” said in The Journal Of Criminal Law & Criminology (Vol. 86, No. 1) that Kleck/Gertz’s research is “an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator.” Wolfgang, who had done research on guns and violence for over 25 years, added that he had to admit “my admiration for the care and caution expressed” by Kleck/Gertz in their research.

There was a time in colonial Maryland when — depending on who was in power — Protestants passed laws to disarm Catholics, and vice-versa. And, of course, in Maryland, a slave state that remained with the Union, slaves were prohibited from carrying guns without “a license from his said master” before the War Between the States, and free blacks were completely forbidden possession of either firearms or ammunition.

Now, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. would make all the law-abiding citizens of Maryland “slaves” by seeking to deny them their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms and use handguns to defend themselves against criminals. But, this must not succeed. We hope that all the good, decent, law-abiding citizens of Maryland will rise up and say to Curran and his report what King Charles I said when Parliament demanded control of the militia: “By God, not for an hour!”

Not only the people of Maryland need to make their opposition known to Curran’s tyrannical views, but citizens of all states should let their Attorney General know that they want a quick goodbye said to Farewell to Arms.

Larry Pratt is Executive Director of Gun Owners of America located at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151 or at http://www.gunowners.org on the web.

So, What’s Next— Hand-Control Laws? Registration of Fingers?

I’ve got to admit that even though I know there’s a lot of anti-gun hysteria in our country, this one I found hard to believe when I first heard about it. But, alas, it happened. And we can, no doubt, expect more such craziness in the future.

As reported in Time magazine (12/6/99), MeShelle Locke, 16, of Lacey, Washington— a National Honor Society student— was kidding around with a boy in her English class at North Thurston High School in early November. When he made some wisecrack to the teacher, Locke looked at him, made a gun with her thumb and index finger, and said, “Bang.” The boy, with whom she often joked, wondered if what she said was a threat? “No,” said MeShelle lightly, “it’s a promise.”

Following this incident— which was, obviously, a joke— two girls in MeShelle’s gym class confronted her about her “threatening to kill” (!) the boy, according to a story in “The News Tribune” newspaper (11/13/99). Exasperated by this absurd accusation, MeShelle made the same thumb/finger “gun” gesture to them.
Well, the next school day MeShelle was confronted by a police officer who read Miranda rights to her (but didn’t arrest her). Then she was expelled from school for four days.

The News Tribune quotes North Thurston High Principal Karen Eitreim as saying, presumably with a straight face: “I think schools are taking every precaution. And that includes looking at students’ threats and really taking them seriously and analyzing whether there is a threat to safety or not.”

But, this is idiotic beyond belief!

What possible “threat” is there from one student pointing his or her finger at other students and saying, “Bang”? Even the most cursory “analysis” of this incident would reveal that this is nothing more than-well, one student pointing her finger at other students and saying, “Bang.” Period. That’s it. By no stretch of the imagination, and by no definition, is this a “threat.” No way.

Incredibly, Bob Locke, MeShelle’s father, says that school district officials told him that his daughter fit the profile of a student who might hurt the school. And what, exactly, made them think this? Well, for one thing, she often ate lunch alone or in a small group!

Wow. A real profile of a potential terrorist, yes? No.

In an interview with Gun Owners of America (GOA), when it was facetiously suggested that maybe what we need now is a hand-control law, and for all the fingers and thumbs of students to be registered, Bob Locke replied, with a laugh: “Right. Lethal fingers. We gotta have ‘em banned from the schools.”

Locke— who says he’s against gun control because it’s unconstitutional— tells GOA that to get back into school his daughter had to sign a “behavioral contract” in which she promised “not to threaten any other students or to hold grudges against any other students.” But, of course, he adds that MeShelle never really “threatened” any students in the first place. This is why he says that if his daughter had the whole thing to do over again, she would do nothing different.

Locke says their friends and acquaintances have been “shocked” by this entire affair. He says they originally found the school’s actions to be “annoying, painful and embarrassing” to MeShelle. But, as it was resolved, it was “more of a joke.”

Well, maybe, maybe not— a sick joke at best, to be sure.

All the sicker when we consider that the school would have never noticed MeShelle if she had chosen to extend her middle finger rather than her index finger.

But, this kind of thing is not funny, not at all. And— sad to say—this sort of so-called “zero tolerance” lunacy appears to be happening more often across the country in our government-run schools. This same issue of “Time” magazine reports that a seven-year-old boy in Cahokia, Illinois, was suspended for having a nail-clipper in class.
And a high school in Nevis, Minnesota, turned thumbs down on a yearbook photo which showed an Army enlistee in the senior class posing atop a 155-mm howitzer at a Veterans Of Foreign Wars post. The photo was approved when a U.S. flag was draped over this cannon.

Obviously, in many cases, this “zero tolerance” policy is being implemented by people with zero brains.

SAR received this “Short” from Larry Pratt, and I thought it should be passed on to the readers. GOA is at the front of the battle for the Second Amendment in the US. GOA doesn’t cut “Them” any slack, and Larry calls it like he sees it.

Larry Pratt is Executive Director of Gun Owners of America. Their website is http://www.gunowners.org. Gun Owners of America is a national grassroots lobbying organization of over 200,000 members located at 8001 Forbes Place in Springfield, Virginia 22151. Its web address is http://www.gunowners.org. GOA’s phone number is 703-321-8585; John Velleco is the contact person.

We should all be in contact with GOA.

– Dan

Gun owners have rightly rejoiced that the Sheriffs’ case was affirmed by the Supreme Court, and that part of the Brady Law being contested was overturned.

Twice in as many years the Court has ruled that Congress does not have the authority to enact gun control. In particular, the Congressional claim of authority has been based on the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8. The Court has said that there was no commerce involved in gun control, thus the Tenth Amendment requires declaring Congress’ efforts at gun control unconstitutional.

The Sheriffs took that part of the Brady Law to court where they had standing — where the Court would have to agree that they were directly involved. Thus, the Sheriffs complained that the Constitution forbids Congress from making them involuntary agents of the government of the United States.

Many people, including many gun owners, are rushing to conclude from all this that states should authorize background checks so that all gun buyers will have their names checked against a computerized criminal data base in Washington (and eventually in each of the 50 states). Nothing could be more unproductive, unconstitutional or ill-advised.

The Brady Law resulted nationally in seven prosecutions and three incarcerations in its first year of operation. These cases could have been prosecuted without the Brady Law. Others who were stopped could easily have obtained a gun the same day from some place other than a store. According to Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery, the state spent nearly $1,000,000 stopping 327 would-be purchasers who could have gotten their gun elsewhere. Since the murder rate in the U.S. began its present decline starting in 1991, it can hardly be said that the Brady Law has contributed to the decline, even less by taking three criminals off the streets.

The instant check is nothing but a request for government permission to exercise a constitutionally protected liberty that, according to the Second Amendment, “shall not be infringed.” Thankfully we have not come to the point of asking permission to give a speech, write an editorial or deliver a sermon, but that is the equivalent of the Brady Law’s permitting system regarding the Second Amendment.

Some argue that, regarding the First Amendment, we cannot shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. True, but we don’t issue muzzles on entering the theater. We only punish those who abuse the liberty. So it should be in the case of the Second Amendment as well.

Legislators in Ohio have learned that the national Brady check is actually an Instant Registration Check. When names are checked against the federal data base, all names (with their social security numbers) are coded to indicate that they are gun owners. Quite simply, in spite of the toothless prohibition in Brady, a national gun owner registration list is being compiled. Virtually none of these folks are criminals. Why then are their names being stored as gun owners?

One answer is suggested by the experience of New York City. Some thirty years ago, all rifles and shotguns had to be registered. About five years ago, many semi-automatics were banned. The gun owners were trapped. The Constitution guarantees their right to have those firearms, but the city is in a position to jail anyone exercising his or her constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Arrests have been made of grandfathered people who owned guns that were legal (and registered) before the law was changed.
Gun owners are the last ones who should be urging the imposition of the Brady Law in all the states. The Brady Instant Registration Check is the Trojan Horse that the gun banners will use later on to grab the people’s firearms. Brady needs to be repealed at the state and national levels, not imposed in those states still lacking such a terrible law.

Protecting the Second Amendment will be much easier when advocates of constitutionally protected liberties consistently defend the right to keep and bear arms. The most consistent position for defending firearms for personal defense is right-to-carry legislation modeled after the Vermont law. In Vermont, there are no licenses, permits or other government intrusions infringing on the right to carry a concealed firearm. The law essentially says that it is illegal to carry a firearm, concealed or openly, for the purpose of criminally injuring another person.

Vermont’s law highlights the radical anti-gun nature of the Instant Registration Check in the Brady Law. Just to buy a gun, one must seek government permission. In Vermont, one can both buy and carry a gun with no state government involvement whatsoever. Of course, since the federal government decided to embark on a series of unconstitutional, and therefore, illegitimate adventures in civilian disarmament, Vermonters have been hampered to the extent that they could not escape the reach of Washington.

Vermont’s murder rate is, almost every year, the lowest in the country. Those pushing for civilian disarmament say that Vermont has such a low rate because it is a rural population. But since last year, the anti-gunners have been countered by the overwhelming weight of the evidence amassed by Dr. John Lott at the University of Chicago. Lott took the crime data of every city and county in the U.S. for the previous sixteen years and analyzed the data in terms of poverty, density of population, arrest rates, sentencing rates and lengths among other variables. The one factor that consistently correlated in a positive fashion with crime rates was whether a state recognized or not the right of a citizen to carry a concealed firearm.

Lott’s study showed that states which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%. If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1570 murders, 4177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.

Before the imposition of the Brady Law on the whole country, about half of the states had a waiting period, the rest did not violate their citizens’ constitutional rights in that way. The violent crime rates were higher in the states with waiting periods. In fact, California, with its 15 day waiting period, had a murder rate 25% over that of the rest of the country.

Two states can illustrate this clearly. In 1976, both Georgia and Wisconsin tried two different approaches to fighting crime. Georgia enacted legislation making it easier for citizens to carry guns for self-defense, while Wisconsin passed a law requiring a 48 hour waiting period before the purchase of a handgun. What resulted during the ensuing years? Georgia’s law served as a deterrent to criminals and helped drop its homicide rate by 21 percent. Wisconsin’s murder rate, however, rose 33 percent during the same period.

There is no doubt that waiting periods kill. For example, Bonnie Elmasri inquired about getting a gun to protect herself from a husband who had repeatedly threatened to kill her. She was told there was a 48 hour waiting period to buy a handgun. But unfortunately, Bonnie was never able to pick up a gun. She and her two sons were killed the next day by an abusive husband of whom the police were well aware.

Conversely, Marine Cpl. Rayna Ross bought a gun (in a non-waiting period state before the imposition of Brady) and used it to kill an attacker in self-defense two days later. Had a 5-day waiting period been in effect, Ms. Ross would have been defenseless against the man who was stalking and seeking to kill her.

Waiting periods are unconstitutional. They are a prior restraint on the exercise of a constitutionally protected (not granted) right. The Supreme Court has ruled (Near v. Minnesota) that government officials should punish the abuse of a right and not place prior restraints on the exercise of the right. That is why it is illegal to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but we do not issue muzzles to theatergoers as they enter. Obviously, the same principle applies to firearms. It is illegal to criminally injure another person, but prior restraint should be as prohibited under the Second Amendment as it is under the First.

Having said that, the danger of the waiting period is far less than that of the Instant Registration Check. The Brady Instant Registration Check is building (right now) a national, centralized, computerized registration list of gun owners. As Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership have shown from their definitive study of genocide in this century (Lethal Laws: “Gun Control” Is the Key to Genocide), genocide invariably is preceded by gun control. Once the identification of gun owners is in place, the thugs in power (a.k.a. the government) confiscate firearms. (In Ruwanda, they also confiscated machetes.) Then the slaughter of the target population can begin — Jews in Nazi Germany, Ukrainians and others in Soviet Russia, Christians in Uganda, Indians in Guatemala, the educated in Cambodia and so forth.

The figures are in. Before this century has ended, governments have slaughtered their tens of millions, the Al Capones their scores and hundreds. Yet Sarah Brady, Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and the other advocates of civilian disarmament breeze right on past the killing fields of our recent past. They also overlook the massive threat to personal security posed by center-city street gangs. Instead, their desire is to convince us all that it is the guns of the erstwhile victims that are at fault — decent people wishing to protect themselves from the criminals set loose on our streets by our government. We are watching a monumental shifting of the blame from those who have brought us a failed system of criminal justice. They want us to look not at murderers put out on the street. Rather than blame murderers, blame guns we are told.

Our answer to the civilian disarmament crowd has to be that crime is their fault, not gun owners. Gun control laws kill. When stating our position we must not fall into the trap of agreeing to policies, such as the Instant Registration Check, that make disarmament possible. We should press on for what we want — the free exercise of a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. After all, we will never get more than we ask for.
Gun controllers are the friends of criminals and the enemies of freedom. They arrogantly assume that only they (and their buddies in the government) are responsible enough to be trusted with guns. The watchword should be that guns save lives, gun control kills. And the Instant Registration Check is gun control — a threat to every gun owner.

To get information on how to fight the Instant Registration Check, call Gun Owners of America’s toll free phone: 1-888-886-GUNS (4867).