Anti-gunners dubbed ‘experts’ during violent March madness
April 1, 2009

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

The month of March opened with a series of berserk violence—involving guns, arson and knives—in the US and Germany. However, as might be expected, the focus was on guns and the media in the US and Europe was quick to label any anti-gun source as an “expert” on the subject.

As usual, there was an immediate call for more restrictive gun laws in the US and across Europe. First, however, let’s recap this form of March madness.

On a normally quiet, Mar. 8 Sunday morning in a Maryville, IL, church, a man assaulted a pastor as he preached with a .45-caliber autoloading pistol that ripped through the church leader’s Bible and then his chest.

The pastor, Rev. Fred Winters, 45, later died of his injuries.

Terry J. Sedlacek, 27, the man who has been charged in the shooting, was wrestled to the floor by two parishioners when his pistol jammed. The two worshippers tackled the gunman as he pulled out a knife, and all three were stabbed during the struggle. Sedlacek suffered “a pretty serious wound to the neck” while one worshipper, 39-year-old Terry Bullard, remained in serious condition the next day. The third victim, Keith Melton, was treated and immediately released.

Authorities have said they didn’t know the motive for the shooting or whether Winters, a married father of two, knew the gunman.

Early reports indicated that no one knew why Winters had been attacked. Sedlacek reportedly had marked the day of the attack as a “day of death” or “death day” in a planning book, CNN quoted one Illinois prosecutor.

Authorities have charged Sedlacek with first-degree murder in the killing of Winters. He also was charged with two counts of aggravated battery related to the stabbing of church members Bullard and Melton.

Two days later, on Mar. 10, Michael McLendon of Kinston, AL, went on a two county rampage involving guns and fire in which he is reported to have killed 11 people, including his mother and his girlfriend, whose bodies were not recovered because he also set fire to the house, before killing himself.

Others citizens and law enforcement officers were wounded as the 28-year-old McLendon drove though town firing shots at anyone in his path as he targeted people in the town of Kinston and the cities of Samson and Geneva in extreme southeast Alabama.

Most victims’ identities and, of course, a motive remained unknown as this issue of Gun Week went to press. Sources confirmed that several other victims of the murdered were related to him, including his grandparents, an aunt and an uncle. Investigators told WSFA 12 News the victims ranged in age from 18 months to 74-years-old.

The FBI, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency and many other agencies were continuing to work multiple crime scenes.

Investigators said McLendon drove down Highway 52 where he fired at least seven times on a state trooper vehicle. The trooper was wounded by broken glass.

He then drove to the Samson Pipe and Supply Company on Highway 52 where he gunned down another victim. Afterwards, he took aim at an innocent civilian at a local service station in the same area. That victim also died of the wounds.

Geneva police then began a pursuit of the suspect’s vehicle, chasing McLendon to the Reliable Metal Products Company in Geneva. Officials later confirmed he had been a former employee of the company, but the reasons for his leaving the company were not immediately known. He was also reported on medication but no specifics were provided.

Once there, officials said McLendon fired at least a 30 round burst of ammunition at the city police chief before running inside the business. The police chief was grazed by gunfire but was wearing a body armor vest.

The next day, on Mar. 11, over 3,000 miles away in Germany, a school shooting near Stuttgart left at least 16 people dead—with the 17-year-old gunman dying in an exchange of fire with the police.

He was shot in the parking lot of the Wendlinger shopping center, where he had reportedly killed two more people, besides those killed in and around the school.

The killer—reported to be Tim Kretschmer—was described as wearing black combat gear when he stormed the Albertville School at 10 a.m.

In all three mass murders, authorities were unable to explain the reasons for the crimes. Such explanations aren’t really possible without a thorough analysis of the perpetrators’ mental histories and records of prescriptions the shooters might have been taking.

However, the calls for more restrictive gun laws blossomed on schedule in the US and almost all of Europe, and, of course, the “experts” were liberally quoted.

The Associated Press (AP) report from Lisbon, Portugal, on Mar. 12 was headlined “Experts: Europe tightens gun laws but more needed.”

School shootings and other gun crimes have spurred European governments to tighten their gun laws but the measures have been uneven across the continent, “experts” said.

Finland announced plans to impose stricter restrictions on firearms, including raising the minimum age for handgun ownership from 15 to 20, following two school massacres within a year.

In Switzerland, a reported spate of suicides and homicides has brought demands for a referendum aimed at confining army weapons to military compounds—instead of allowing members of the militia to store them at home—and banning private purchases of pump-action rifles and automatic weapons.

Denmark’s government said previously that it will raise the penalty for illegal gun possession as part of a crackdown on gang violence that has killed three people in recent months, and Belgium responded to the racially motivated shooting deaths of a toddler and her black baby sitter by passing strict new gun control laws in 2006.

Portugal’s Parliament, meanwhile, is considering the government’s proposal for a crackdown, including denying bail to anyone suspected of a gun crime after a surge last year in armed holdups. Authorities say an average of four firearms are stolen or go missing each day, and in 2008 police confiscated almost 3,000 illegal guns.

“The general trend is clearly towards stronger gun laws,” said Alun Howard, a policy director at the London-based International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). Howard was the “expert” sought by the news service. IANSA is the non-government agency which is the driving force behind the global gun control agenda at the United Nations.

Howard said that officials still need to “dam up the weak spots that are feeding crime,” especially by restricting access to guns.

European Union governments pledged last year to adopt new rules devised to make buying and possessing firearms more difficult across the 27-nation EU bloc. EU officials estimated there were “millions” of illegally-owned weapons on the continent where 24 countries have scrapped their border controls.

The directive is due to come into force only by July 2010, however. Meanwhile, national governments have expedited their own measures.

Germany raised the legal age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21 following a 2002 shooting in Erfurt that killed 16 people, including 12 teachers. But exemptions meant that some people could keep guns at home.

Gisela Kallenbach, a German Green Party deputy who steered the bloc’s upcoming legislation through the European Parliament, said some EU member states have been “very progressive” in restricting the availability of guns while others “still have something to do.”

She said that in drawing up the new European law she encountered resistance from lobby groups, including arms manufacturers, hunters, security companies and sports groups, who insisted on exemptions. But Kellenbach was at least candid by saying she didn’t expect it to prevent tragic events such as school shootings.

“You can never prevent 100% any misuse (of weapons) because you can also never prevent 100% of any criminal activity,” she said.

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