From: lvc@cbnews.cb.att.com (Larry Cipriani)
Subject: The Story of a Gun by Erik Larson, part 7 of 8 or so
Organization: Ideology Busters, Inc.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 21:49:13 GMT
Keywords: atlantic magazine, anti-gun bull****


THE STORY OF A GUN (part 7)
By Erik Larson

EDUCATING THE GUN CULTURE
   When Nicholas Elliot arrived at the Atlantic Shores Christian School that
cold December morning, he came prepared for a fire fight.  The most striking
thing about his cargo, however, was not the inherent firepower, which was in-
deed prodigious, but rather the weapons savvy evident in what he had done to
the gun and its ammunition to make them even more efficient at killing.
   Nicholas loved guns.  "The only friend I had was my gun," the boy told
Detective Adams as he was led from school after the shootings, "and you al-
ready took that from me."
   He read books and magazines about guns.  He papered the interior of his
school locker with glossy photographs of big-bore revolvers and pistols, the
kind that dominate the pages of such magazines as American Handgunner and
Guns and Ammo.  His love of guns was common knowledge among the other stu-
dents at Atlantic Shores, and it served to increase his alienation from his
peers.  In conversation, according to a fellow student, Nicholas had a
passion for discussing "which bullets had more firepower."  His classmates
worried about Nicholas.  One told a Norfolk newspaper, "All the kids said he
was going to shoot someone."
   Nicholas carried his Cobray M-11/9 to school in his backpack, along with
an array of accessories and extra ammunition.  From a length of rope he had
fashioned a combat sling similar in concept to slings that anti-terrorist
commandos use with the compact Heckler and Koch submachine gun to help con-
trol the weapon during combat.  He carried a crude silencer made from a pipe
wrapped in fabric, and a "brass catcher" he had made from cloth and tape, to
be attached to his gun to catch ejected cartridge cases.  "A gun enthusiast
might use a brass catcher to catch the brass for reloading," Adams told me.
"A murderer or a person about to commit a crime might use one to collect the
 evidence."
   Nicholas also brought six 32-round magazines, each long and thin and made
of gray plastic, giving him a total of 192 bullets ready to fire.  He had
"jungle-clipped" the magazines - that is, he had taped them together in
pairs so that the instant he expended one magazine he could yank it out,
flip the assembly, and ram in the fresh end.
   Nicholas came prepared for the possibility that he might use up the 192
rounds stached in the six magazines.  He carried hundreds of extra cartridges,
including several boxes containing 32 rounds each - exactly enough to refill
an expended clip.  To speed the process of refilling, Nicholas had inserted
a thin but strong piece of white string through the base of each magazine.
When tugged, Adams told me, the string would pull down the spring-driven
feeder inside the magazine, thus easing the resistance.  "He could hold the
string down by clamping it under his foot," Adams explained.  He could then
insert each cartridge more quickly and with less strain.
   Finally, Nicholas modified even the bullets themselves.  He filed a groove
into the tip of at least one bullet, apparently in the hopes of turning it
into a "dumdum" - a bullet that breaks apart on impact, thereby in theory
becoming considerably more deadly.  Nicholas modified other bullets by drilling
from the tip downward to form "hollowpoints."  On impact, hollowpoint bullets
spread into lethal mushrooms that produce bigger holes and more potent
neural disruption than solid rounds.
   "This guy," Adams says, "was ready for war."

   Homicide, or rather the homicide fantasy, is one of the engines that drives
America's fascination with guns.  Target shooters spend hour after hour firing
into human silhouettes.  Practical shooting competitions held nationwide test
civilian competitors' ability to hit silhouettes after leaping from a car.  In
this context, models of guns used in grisly crimes actually gain popularity.
After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, sales of the otherwise
undistinguished Mannlicher-Carcano rifle used by Lee Harvey Oswald soared.
Even the murder of schoolchildren can increase sales.  After Patrick Edward
Purdy opened fire on a school yard in Stockton, California, with an AK-47,
sales of the gun and its knock-offs boomed.  Prices quadrupled, to $1,500.
Guns Unlimited felt the surge in demand.  "I didn't sell and AK until Stockton
in California; then everybody wanted one," James Dick said in a deposition.
   This passion for lethality suffuses the gun and ammunition design process.
Manufacturers routinely test their prototypes by blasting away at blocks of
goo - "ordnance gelatin" - intended specifically to simulate human tissue.
Their enthusiasm for gore can lead to some vivid advertising.  In the March/
April, 1992, issue of American Handgunner, the Eldorado Cartridge Corporation
ran a full-page ad for its Starfire cartridge under the bold headline "IF
LOOKS COULD KILL."  The ad called the Starfire the "deadliest handgun cartridge
ever developed for home or personal defense, and hunting," and went on to
describe how the bullet expands on impact, "resulting in a massive wound
channel."  Its deep penetration, the ad crowed, "helps assure fast knockdown."
   On a recent visit to a gun show at the county fairground in Frederick,
Maryland, I stood beside a man and his young son who, like me, were intently
watching a promotional video produced by Power-Plus, a maker of exotic
ammunition.  The narrator, dressed in a dark T-shirt and speaking in that
laconic back-country drawl that characterizes today's notion of toughness,
demonstrated his company's rounds by firing a sample of each into a fresh
block of yellowish gelatin, with the camera then moving close to offer a side
view of the depth of penetration and the jagged wound channel coursing through
the translucent plasma.  Each round did more damage than the last, until the
narrator fired a sample of the company's Annihilator high-explosive cartridge,
which slammed into the gelatin, exploded, and knocked the quivering block
from its stand.
   He did not stop here, however.  Next he demonstrated the effects of the
company's bullets on a pail packed with clay.  This time those of us
watching were treated to the additional audio enticement of the wet slapping
sound of the clay as the bullets entered, fragmented, and ruptured the
surrounding muck, gouging caverns the size of pumpkins.
   "Still watching, son?" the father asked softly, his hands resting on his
son's shoulders.
   His son, clearly entranced, nodded slowly.
   A few men walked the aisles wearing little signs on their backs listing
the guns they owned and wanted to sell.  Another man had stuch a "For Sale"
sign in the barrel of the rifle slung over his shoulder.  Seated behind
battered folding tables, dealers sold guns, books, accessories, and ammunition.
Several dealers sold books on how to kill and, for those who knew already,
how to do it more effectively - including books on how to make silencers,
military manuals on how to make booby traps, Army manuals on how to make
"improvised munitions," and a nifty little tome, courtesy of the Pentagon,
on how to polish up your sniper skills.
   Gun writers, too, help orchestrate the mood that so infuses the gun
culture.  They know what their readers want.  The newsletter Gun Tests
routinely rates the penetration power of handguns and ammunition the way
Consumer Reports rates new cars.  American Handgunner's 1992 "Combat Annual"
reviews six high-caliber revolvers, calling them "The Ultimate Manstoppers!"
Regular issues of the magazine are full of tales of combat tactics and police
shoot-outs, part of a running series by Massad Ayoob, the magazine's star
reporter.  "Gory True Story," the cover of the October, 1991, issue announced.
"REAL-LIFE TERMINATOR!  Soaking up bullet after bullet, a cop-killing PCP
freak just won't die!  Massad Ayoob's chilling account on page 70."
   Gun writers often skirt the gory reality of gunplay ny deftly avoiding
such words as "kill," "murder," and "death," using instead "knockdown,"
"stopping power," and - my favorite - "double-tap," meaning to shoot a man
twice.  (Double Tap also happens to be the name of a Virginia Beach gun store,
whose sign features a black silhouette with two red holes over the heart.)
   To the gun writers, no firearm is unworthy of praise, not even the
Saturday-night Specials made by the now defunct RG Industries, one of which
was used by John Hinckley to shoot President Ronald Reagan and permanently
disable James Brady, his press secretary.  In its most recent Combat Annual,
American Handgunner includes a defense of RG's guns written my Mark Moritz,
the special projects editor.  Moritz tested a .22 caliber RG revolver against
an expensive Smith & Wesson .22, comparing their performance on both head
and body shots.  The RG was a little slower.
   However, Moritz writes, "even out of the box we are only talking about
two tenths of a second for multiple head shots at the relatively long range
of seven yards."
   Moritz won't win any awards for sensitivity in journalism.  Early on in
the article he denounces the "slimebucket" lawyers who sued RG Industries and
put them out of business after the Reagan-Brady shootings.  He continues:

   When John Hinckley shot James Brady, with an RG .22 revolver, his
   wife Sarah, head spokesnut at Handgun Control, Inc., sued RG.  She
   was offended that her husband was shot with a cheap, low-powered
   gun.  I guess she wanted him to be shot with an expensive, high-
   powered gun.

   The Cobray M-11/9, Nicholas Elliot's gun, gets its share of praise.  The
Gun Digest Book of Assault Weapons includes a chapter on the pistol and its
heritage.  The author describes it as "a plinker's delight and the bane of
all tin cans, milk jugs, clay pigeons, and other inanimate objects."  He sees
its primary practical value as being home defense.  "Appearance alone should
cause most burglars and intruders to consider instant surrender if brought
before its muzzle."
   America's entertainment media provide the last ingredients in the perverse
and lethal roux that keeps the body count climbing even as the domestic arms
industry shrinks.  Just as McQ promoted the Ingram, Dirty Harry promoted the
Smith & Wesson Model 29 and Miami Vice such assault weapons as the Uzi, Bren
10, and members of the Ingram family.  Park Dietz, a California forensic
psychiatrist, studied the effect of Miami Vice on gun prices and demand, and
found that the appearance of the Bren 10 in the hands of Sonny Crockett (Don
Johnson) in early episodes of the show immediately boosted demand for the
weapon.  Dietz told the Cox Newspapers that Miami vice "was the major deter-
minant of assault-gun fashion for the 1980s."
   Our movies and TV shows do far more damage than simply enhancing the
appeal of exotic weapons, however.  They teach a uniquely American lesson:
When a real man has a problem, he gets his gun.  He slaps in a clip, he
squints grimly into the hot noon sun, and then he does what he's gotta do.
   This is the lesson that Nicholas Elliot absorbed: When all else fails,
maybe a gun can solve your problem.  And Nicholas had a problem - or thought
he did.  He believed that some of the teachers at Atlantic Shores didn't
like him.  His fellow students, one in particular, picked on him, occasionally
shoving and hitting him and taunting him with racial slurs.  One week before
the shooting his main tormentor, a boy I'll call Billy Cutter, had called him
a "nigger."
   "It's just people picking on me," Nicholas told Donald Adams, when Adams
questioned him just after the shootings.  "That's all it is.  If God would
have just stopped them - if I was nice enough and He would have made it so
they were nice to me and didn't hit me, everything would be fine.  That's as
simple as it is, or He could have just made them keep their hands to their-
selves.  That's very simple."
   Nicholas claimed that his classmates teased him about his love of guns.
"They always were making fun of me.  They always said stuff, 'You know so
much about guns.  You never even shot a gun in your life."
   That Friday morning he set out to prove a few things to Billy and the
other kids.  "I wasn't angry," he told Adams.  "I was just trying to find
[Billy] - I wanted to scare him, to make him see how much of a wimp he was
in front of everyone."

-- 
Larry Cipriani, att!cbvox1!lvc or lvc@cbvox1.att.com
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns