From: kaldis@romulus.rutgers.edu (Theodore A. Kaldis)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Recent Richard Reeves Column
Keywords: gun grabber
Date: 2 Sep 92 02:56:28 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


The following is a recent Richard Reeves newspaper column.  Please
note that I am very pro-RKBA, and that I am in complete disagreement
with the opinions expressed in this column.  (Reprinted without
permission.)

-----

                Drastic Steps to End the War at Home

     LOS ANGELES -- "The toll this weekend in Los Angeles was 22
killed; that's one higher than in Bosnia," said the voice on the radio
as Los Angeles went to work last Monday morning.  It was Michael
Jackson, a popular call-in show host here--and he was wrong about the
number.

     By the end of the day, police concluded there were actually 28
men, women, and children murdered in Los Angeles County between 6 p.m.
Friday, Aug. 21, and 6 a.m. Monday, Aug. 24 ... Arroyo, Valdez, Sac,
Martinez, Morgan, Elguezabal, Rodriguez, Guzman, Perkins, Alvarado,
Kislo, Macias, Lamb, Millner, Gasca, Thompson, Gutierrez, Proxmire,
Arzouman, Sanchez, Sotelo, Hernandez.  Six bodies could not be
immediately identified.

     Twenty-five were shot to death, at least five of them by drive-by
shootings, and three were stabbed to death.  Eight of the murders were
classified as "gang-related."

     They were a Little League coach and a burglar, a Los Angeles
Police Department detective and a disc jockey, an ice cream stand
owner and the 14-year-old girlfriend of a gang member.  A 19-year-old
named Veronica Nunez, in a wheelchair, was shot from a car that
stopped as she waited for a light to change.  Someone inside asked
directions and she didn't reply--then there was a shot.  She is still
alive.

     "Numbed L.A." was the headline in the Los Angeles Times.  I guess
that is about right.  I had personally been numbed by reports on that
Sunday, Aug. 23, of the earlier killings of two young women, both shot
by people they did not know.  This was the report on those two:

     Kimberly Horton, 21, UCLA student: "Shot shortly before midnight
... in Inglewood as she waited in her car at a stoplight.  The gunman,
who wanted her 1991 Honda Accord, pulled Horton out and drove off,
leaving her on the street.  She died four days later at a hospital."

     Anita Robertson, 30: "Murdered in front of her children at a
Jack-in-the-Box restaurant in Watts.  At the drive-through counter, a
man leaned in the window of her van, demanded her purse and shot her
in the chest when she refused to surrender it.  She staggered out,
collapsed and died in the parking lot."

     There was nothing unusual about last weekend or these cases,
police said, except that it is possible that a highly publicized
"truce" between the city's principal gang groupings, the Bloods and
the Crips, may mean that gang members are doing less killing of each
other and more random shootings.  Either way, the numbers are holding
up: There are six or seven murders a day, every day in Los Angeles
County.

     Michael Jackson called me (and a number of other people) that
day, last Monday, and asked what we would do about all this.  I
answered:

     * Repeal the Second Amendment to the Constitution because it is
now insanity to give all Americans the right to bear arms.

     * Establish a federal agency to regulate handguns as the Food and
Drug Administration regulates pharmaceuticals--to register and trace
domestically manufactured and imported weapons and ammunition.

     * Review all handgun licenses and licensees, with the idea of
revoking most of them.

     * Declare an amnesty period in which handguns could be turned in
to recycling stations without penalties or questions.

     * Use emergency police powers (and military powers, if necessary)
to sweep neighborhoods for illegal weapons.

     * Establish an automatic 10-year sentence without parole for
illegal weapon possession convictions.

     Draconian?  Really?  And what do you call it when Americans have
to risk their lives to pull up to a stop sign or take the kids out for
hamburgers?
-- 
The views expressed herein are my   ||  Theodore A. Kaldis
my own only.  Do you seriously      ||  kaldis@remus.rutgers.edu
believe that a major university as  ||  {...}!rutgers!remus.rutgers.edu!kaldis
this would hold such views???       ||
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,talk.abortion