NY TIMES 5-31-99 Mike Allen

Gun Owners Fear Connecticut Bill on Gun Seizures By MIKE ALLEN ALLINGFORD, Conn. -- Cathy Smittner has spent the past eight months coaching her 3-year-old grandson, Lenny Smittner, on the fine points of firing a pellet rifle at silhouettes and clay pigeons in the back yard, starting with the rule that he doesn't put his finger on the trigger unless he is ready to squeeze it. To Ms. Smittner, 49, a secretary who is a competition bulls-eye shooter, the lessons are all about safety, discipline and sportsmanship. But she said one of her neighbors finds the whole idea of giving a 3-year-old a real gun wacky and even terrifying, and she fears that he is about to get another kind of weapon to use against her, courtesy of the Connecticut Legislature. As part of a wave of gun restrictions that is surging through the nation's legislatures since the April massacre in Littleton, Colo., lawmakers in Connecticut are supporting a measure that would allow police to get warrants to enter the residence and seize the firearms of a citizen who "poses a risk of imminent personal injury to himself or herself or to other individuals." Among the factors that a judge would consider before issuing such a warrant are whether the person has made threats, brandished a firearm, engaged in "recent acts of cruelty to animals"or behaved erratically. Within two weeks after the guns are picked up, a court must hold a hearing to determine whether the firearms should be returned or "held by the state." Gun-rights activists contend that the proposal validates their worst fears: This time, they say, the state really is coming to get their guns. These gun owners say they fear that neighbors will report them to police as being erratic simply for acts that the neighbors dislike or find strange. The bill has drawn close attention by both sides in the national gun-control debate, because Connecticut already is one of the five toughest states on guns, and the warrant approach is seen as a possible new frontier for firearms restrictions when legislatures reconvene next winter just before the congressional and presidential elections. Robert Ricker, the executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, the lobbying group for firearms manufacturers, called the provision "absolutely a nightmare" that could legitimize retaliation in everything from custody disputes to spats about barking dogs. But Joseph Sudbay, the director of state legislation for Handgun Control Inc., said he sees clippings all the time about people who kill with guns after giving off warning signs. "One of the recurring themes after these incidents is that people knew there was a danger but were at a loss for what to do," he said. "Connecticut is trying to at least provide a forum to address that problem." Supporters of the warrant bill, which has passed two legislative committees and is headed for consideration by the state House and Senate in the next two weeks, say it will allow the authorities to prevent tragedies when there are warning signs like the ones some parents and classmates said were obvious before the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton. The National Rifle Association, however, has dubbed it the "Turn in Your Neighbor" plan. "It smacks of some sort of totalitarian regime, where kids are urged to report their parents to the party," said Robert Crook, the executive director of the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, the state's biggest hunting group. "If I walk out of my house with a gun, that's one of the criteria. If I have an animal-rights person next to me and I'm shooting in my yard and he thinks my dog doesn't like it, he's got me." State Sen. George Jepsen, a Democrat from Stamford who is the majority leader, replied that if people wanted to make up stories about their neighbors, they could do that now by accusing them of assault or some other crime. "This deals with very concrete situations where a guy is clearly going off the wall while legally in possession of weapons," Jepsen said. "Tragically, it's utterly predictable that sooner or later, somebody is going to kill people in Connecticut, and it will have been perfectly clear to people around the shooter that he should not have had the guns he legally possessed." That is little consolation to the beleaguered Second-Amendment-first crowd, which now may be cornered. At the snack bar of the Blue Trail Range and Gun Shop here in Wallingford during a recent lunch hour, the talk included not just the usual excuses for a poor round at the range ("the world was turning"), but bitter and somewhat resigned griping about the upper hand apparently held by gun-control supporters, who are racing to use as leverage the fears of guns that have been stirred up among suburban voters since the Littleton and other school shootings. "They can't catch the criminals, but they can find us," said Al Jacobs, 62, a retired electronics worker. "We're an easy mark." "They aren't taking mine away," Arthur Rasmussen, a 57-year-old veterinarian, said with mock menace, drawing laughs from his buddies. Out on the range later, Timothy Srenaski helped his 13-year-old son, Andrew, use a .22-caliber rifle to blast tight circles into a target pinned 100 yards away. "Littleton was a terrible tragedy, but it would be an equally large tragedy for legislators to overreact," said Srenaski, 42, a building contractor. "Those kids had bombs and propane tanks, too. Why go after the guns?" Legislators point out that they had proposed the warrant measure even before the shootings in Colorado, although they say this spring's wave of school violence -- and the political fear and opportunism that have followed -- have given the bill a much better chance of passage. Gov. John Rowland, a Republican who seems to become more moderate by the month, said he has not made a decision about which of several gun-control proposals he would sign, but said, "If there's some reasonable way to make it safer out there, I'll always support that." The warrant provision was written by state Rep. Michael Lawlor, a Democrat from East Haven and the co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who said he thought of it after a fatal shooting rampage by an employee at the state lottery headquarters last year.

-- Ct Vronsky (vronsky@anna.com), June 03, 1999

Answers

THURSDAY JUNE 03 1999

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting free, ourselves alone

----------------------------------------------------------------------

) 1999 Claire Wolfe

The mail thundered down. It came in floods, waves, deluges and tides in the days after WorldNetDaily ran my column "Before they come for the guns". I'd expected it, in a way. I'd expected to take a kick or two for talking about freedom lovers "plotting" to take their freedom back.

What came wasn't what I'd anticipated. Not one of the hundreds of e- mails that cascaded over the dam of frustration (more mail than I'll ever be able to answer, to my regret) said, "No. That's crazy. That's irresponsible. That's wrong." A friend or two wrote, "Better shut your mouth, Claire." And a few writers disagreed on details. But what flooded in was one huge cry of, "YES!" from people around the world.

I had quoted nameless working-class American guys standing in a gun store, talking the kind of talk you hear every day here in the West. The words of peaceable people who -- like German Jews of the 30s -- see themselves being legislated against, exploited, blamed, deprived of their earnings and possessions, and gradually being driven to defend their very existence as full, free human beings.

E-mail after e-mail said, "Next time, Claire, portray that same conversation among businessmen at the country club. It's happening there, too." "Show doctors talking about when we might have to fight for freedom; believe me, here at the clinic, it's what we think about every day." "Scientists, Claire." "Entrepreneurs. Housewives. Students. Count us in." One cubicle dweller, whose letter was published in WorldNetDaily, wrote of corporate "Dilberts" who whisper of that desperate day in chrome-trimmed lunchrooms, and who buy weapons they never thought of owning -- until the ever-more- threatening government threatened to deprive them of the ability to do so.

Many writers remarked, "Thank God someone said it. I thought I was alone." "I thought I might be nuts, feeling that way when the media keeps telling me how good everything is."

And everywhere I go, I keep stumbling into these conversations. Readers are right; it's not only at the gun stores and gun shows. It happened again yesterday in a pretty little shop in the city, filled with flowers and antiques. There they stood behind the counter, the tidy, bookish entrepreneur couple who'd spent a career politely doing everything right. We'd been talking no more than five minutes, about nothing in particular. Someone made a remark about the government long ago dropping John Kennedy's casket into the sea. Nothing more than that -- a chance reference to an old cover-up -- when the man burst out, "Sometimes I've thought we just need a revolution to wipe away all this ... all this government. I'm sorry. I'm out of line. I shouldn't say that. But. ..."

Whatever it was with this quiet, middle-aged man -- whatever had been building inside him -- it was so close to exploding that it burst in front of strangers, triggered by nothing. It isn't just about guns, as my column was. But about tyrants threatening the core of individuality itself, the core of freedom. How much more pressure can ordinary, good people bear before the dam bursts? Before talk is no longer "just talk"?

Nobody's listening

One reader, Sonny Diehl, asked:

My only question, and I know that it is a rhetorical one, is: "Why can the powers-that-be not see this?" They overlook the fact that more Americans want their freedom today than were willing to fight for it in the eighteenth century. Why are they willing to risk the bloodbath that must come if they continue? Are they really the nitwits they seem? And haven't you wondered? As you listen to NPR or watch NBC News and hear nothing but assumptions that we need more intrusive government, haven't you wondered what's really going on in the reptilian brain stems of those devouring our freedom?

Do those who wish to control us actually believe their own propaganda? Do they imagine all is well in Happiland? Do they think all that's required to put the finishing touch on their Utopia is a few more laws, regulations, executive orders, judicial fiats, presidential decision directives and canisters of CS gas? Do they -- folly of follies -- ultimately imagine that a few million abused freedom lovers simply don't matter?

In a way, it doesn't matter what they think. Something has changed in the last few months in the way many of us, the freedom lovers, think. We've stopped believing in illusions. We've stopped chasing chimeras, stood still and taken stock. It's been coming for a long time -- years -- for some, even decades. But just recently -- in a way that millions suddenly feel, but few have yet articulated -- the freedom movement has reached a critical mass of disillusion. Maybe it was the sickening gyrations of the Senate and the NRA in the wake of Littleton. Maybe it was long before. But millions of us have irrevocably lost hope in all the institutions and methods we've looked to for years.

And it's a good thing we have.

Because that means we can quit wasting our time on what doesn't work -- on being polite and begging our would-be rulers please, please, please don't take our freedom away quite so quickly. Go a little more slowly. Tread a little less roughly on our hearts.

Yes, I know there are millions still doing it. Begging, writing, pleading. I receive their URGENT! LEGISLATIVE! ALERTS! everyday. They urge me to urge my readers to join NOW! in the latest, newest, desperate, most-important-ever-ever-ever SAVE! OUR! RIGHTS! Beg-A- Thon to Congress. And while they blow their priceless energy on these touching Civics Class exercises, control freaks snicker and freedom erodes.

But enough have now stopped doing the useless. We can get on with what actually works. Ultimately the only thing that can work is for millions of good people to become ungovernable. To live our freedom for ourselves. And to do that, we don't need a majority. Mainly, we need our hearts -- plus a lot of courage and just enough numbers that tyrants can't arrest or kill us all.

Easy? No. But necessary. Time for each of us to start finding our own path.

In the end our determination to be free may mean having to fight tyrants with weapons, as well as wits. I hope not. I don't want it. I don't call for it. I'd a thousand times rather use wits alone -- wits and truly free spirits and creative disregard for unjust laws. The monkeywrench can be a more powerful weapon than the M-16, in the right circumstances. So can the pure, ungovernable, hellraising soul. But like a lot of others who'd rather just be left alone to live free, I'm becoming convinced that freedom lovers who don't simply leave for freer pastures will have to stand and fight someday.

No threat. Just a realistic assessment.

Leave if you can. If your heart allows. Find a place with a less imperial government and a means of making a living there. But if you stay here, prepare to live your freedom, regardless of what the government does. No one is going to hand you liberty, no matter how much you beg or threaten. No matter how many letters you write, marches you march, rallies you raise, e-mails you fling or articles you read or write. No matter how many times you replace Reptile A in Congress with Reptile B, freedom ain't gonna happen like that.

It's too late -- if it ever could have worked at all.

One way or another, if you want it -- if you really, sincerely want freedom and don't just prefer to whine about its loss -- you're going to have to take it back yourself. In your own life. In your own attitude. In your own actions. Pray you can do it with your wits, in your own uniquely, peacefully intransigent way. But know that you are the only one who can do it.

And let's get on with it, making freedom, ourselves alone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Lee (lplapin@hotmail.com), June 03, 1999.

I think the WND article is right on the money. You can feel the frustration and anger growing in this country day by day. For a good - no, great book about the subject, check out Unintended Consequences, by John Ross. It's a work of fiction, but is IMHO, a plausible result of the steady erosion of our rights. One of the best books I have ever read.

-- Henry Bowman (sickof@batf..gov), June 03, 1999.

Count, Lee, thanks!

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), June 03, 1999.

Government not only does not really protect you; it actively attempts to keep you from protecting yourself. This is in many areas, from gun controls to zoning laws preventing the raising of chickens in your back yard.

(Newspaper article a few days ago, where someone [Bakersfield, Calif., as I recall], tried to get zoning laws changed so he could set up for raising chickens in case of Y2K problems. No way, naturally, said the city council.)

To all you busybodies who have been supporters of big government, empowering big government -- from gun control to zoning laws -- I wish you ILL.

-- A (A@AisA.com), June 03, 1999.

"Government" is the catch-all phrase. But it's really busybody people who are your enemies. The politician, the bureaucrat, the judge, the legislative analyst, the lobbyist, the Christian "pro-life" wacko, the left wing animal rights activist, the anti-drug warrior, your neighbor who gets the town council to outlaw painting your house chartreuse -- busbodies, meddlers, moralists -- they are all your enemies.

"Unintended Consequences" is not only a great read, but a virtual textbook.

-- A (A@AisA.com), June 03, 1999.

California has passed a law mandating owners of SKS sporter rifles to turn their weapons in by Jan 1, 2000. Intresting date . . enforcement may be a bit of a bitch though . . .

From the state AG's website at: http://www.sksbuyback.org/5.html "SKS Sporters are now illegal in California. You are required by law to turn in you SKS Sporter to the nearest Local Law Enforcement Agency if it meets the guidelines set forth in AB 48 (Statutes of 1998). You will receive a voucher for $230 when you turn in your gun."

-- Lexington & Concord (*@*.com), June 03, 1999.

Glad I left California in 1997. I WILL NOT SURRENDER MY GUNS. I am ( at least have been ) a law abiding citizen. Served 10 years in the Air force, 6 on active duty. I WILL defend my Constitutional rights!

-- kozak (kozak@formerusaf.guv), June 04, 1999.