The Faint-Hearted Refuse To Confront Criminal Threats
April 1, 2003
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
I was not surprised by The Washington Post report about a March 3 University of Maryland speech opposing war with Iraq in which the speaker, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), stated his main reason for such opposition.
Van Hollen is a veteran anti-gunner as well as a former US Senate staffer who beat incumbent Republican Rep. Connie Morella in the 2002 elections. Morella was anti-gun, too, and maybe she would subscribe to Van Hollen’s reason regarding the confrontation with Iraq. His reasoning is the same as the common anti-gun argument in opposition to private ownership of arms for self-defense.
The Post reported that Van Hollen said his opposition to war in Iraq was based on his belief that an armed conflict there “will expose Americans to new terror threats at home and abroad.”
After comparing the Bush Administration’s policy toward Iraq to that of the former Soviet Union with regard to its client-state members in the Warsaw Pact, Van Hollen predicted that “a US military occupation of Iraq would be a recruiting bonanza for Osama bin Laden.”
If that doesn’t sound like the old anti-gun argument against arming oneself to resist robbers, rapists and murderers, I don’t know what does. Whether it’s confrontations with domestic rogues or rogue foreign states, the old “don’t resist and maybe they won’t hurt you” appeasement approach is the same.
By the way, Van Hollen told students at the Center for International Security Studies that he was in a unique position to evaluate the Administration’s policy. As a member of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee staff in 1988, he told the students, he and a colleague traveled to Iraq and helped document Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. Their findings were alleged to be the basis for the first sanction proposal against Iraq. Of course, the sanctions haven’t solved the problems in Iraq.
Whether anyone asked Van Hollen if he had learned anything about the effectiveness of “slapped wrist” policies when dealing with aggressive, predatory personalities after 15 years of their failure to respond, was not reported by The Post.
Brooklyn, NY, prosecutors have their own way to prove the anti-self-defense argument against resistance with a lesson of their own.
The object of that lesson will be Ronald Dixon, a 27-year-old Navy veteran, Jamaican-immigrant, computer engineer who defended his family by shooting a career burglar caught prowling in Dixon’s toddler’s bedroom.
Dixon is not facing felony charges related to the Dec. 14 shooting that wounded intruder Ivan Thompson, according to The Daily News of New York City. But in an 18-page memo filed in Brooklyn Criminal Court, District Attorney Charles Hynes said he would not drop the misdemeanor gun charge against Dixon because laws against illegal possession must be imposed “equally and consistently” in a borough plagued by hundreds of shootings a year.
Dixon admitted that he bought his Ruger 9mm semi-auto pistol in Florida, and claimed he later tried to register it in New York City. According to The New York Times, when the incident occurred last December, Dixon was asleep upstairs in his home when he was awakened by a noise in the hallway. Half asleep, Dixon opened his eyes and saw a man on top of the stairs, heading toward the bedroom of Dixon’s 2-year-old son, Kyle.
The father grabbed the pistol he kept in a closet, walked toward the man and asked what he was doing there. According to Dixon, the man ran at him, screaming. That’s when he pulled the trigger twice, wounding the intruder twice, injuring him seriously but not mortally.
However, Hynes claims there is no evidence that Dixon legally purchased the gun, suggesting that he may have violated federal as well as state laws, since the man failed to supply any documents to back up his claims.
National Symapathy
Dixon’s case garnered national sympathy when he tearfully told The Daily News he could not accept Hynes original proposal that he plead guilty and serve four weekends in jail because he works seven days a week and has a family to support and mortgage to pay.
Well, we have DA Hynes in an anti-gun city that tries to discourage anyone except the elite from possessing concealable firearms for defense of themselves and family, trying to dispose of Dixon’s case with a plea bargain. When Dixon declined, Hynes decided to take the case to trial, saying that if convicted, Dixon could face a year behind bars for the misdemeanor.
If Dixon pleads guilty, regardless of the length of the sentence, it will send a message to other citizens concerned about defending themselves and their families in New York. But it will also mean that Dixon won’t ever be able to legally buy even a shotgun or rifle anywhere in the US, and his record will most likely prevent him from ever working again in his field.
Dixon may be lucky, however, it sounds like he can still knuckle under to Hynes and spend four weekends at the city’s jail on Rykers Island. The alternative, if he is not acquitted, is a year.
Remember Bernhard Goetz? He was acquitted of attempt murder charges for shooting the four toughs who tried to mug him on a New York City subway. But he served time on the illegal possession charge, because he admitted he had the gun.
But New York City is not the only metropolitan area with a high level of violent crime and a focus on the politically correct.
Baltimore, MD, Mayor Martin O’Malley in early March signed City Council Bill 02-854 into law. The new ordinance regulates the sale of firearms and ammunition, by prohibiting the sale of ammunition by retailers unless they are licensed to sell firearms, and prohibiting the sale of both ammunition and firearms within 100 yards of a park, religious institution, school, public building or place of public assembly.
The bill was originally introduced by the Baltimore Police and Health Departments in August 2002 after the city had conducted a series of “stings” of local hardware and corner stores. The purpose of the local law was allegedly to curb ammunition sales to minors and reduce the availability of guns and ammunition within city limits.
The ordinance provides time frames for termination of sales or relocation of existing stores that would be affected by the new prohibited zones. Businesses not licensed to sell firearms will be required to terminate the sale of ammunition by the beginning of May.
Apparently the people who engage in violence in the city, particularly those in the 15- to 24-year age group, do most of their gun and ammunition shopping near parks, religious institutions, schools, public buildings and places of public assembly. Criminal types who will be forced to take their firearms custom elsewhere apparently will not be affected by the new ordinance, but the citizens who live and work in the prohibited zones will be able to heave a sign of politically correct relief.
Meanwhile, all those young hoodlums under 21 years of age who are acquiring guns and ammunition in contravention of existing laws will be able to conduct their criminal business uninterrupted.
No wonder so many people have been demonstrating against the Bush Administration’s policy on Iraq. Like Van Hollen, the Brooklyn DA, and the burghers of Baltimore, they don’t like to confront reality. Like the current UN, which has proved to be as ineffective and irrelevant as the old League of Nations, they’d rather don the striped pants of diplomacy and political correctness than dark blue pants of the street cop and the camo fatigues of the armed forces that must clean up the messes left by others.
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