NYDailyNews

LIBERALS' LOONY LOGIC FIZZLES UNDER THE GUN

By STEVE DUNLEAVY

October 2, 2001 -- IT IS amazing how liberals, whom I regard as traitors in this time of crisis, like to quote the Constitution.

I was talking to Donna Lieberman, the interim executive of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and I wanted to call for a psychiatrist.

The First Amendment, freedom of speech, she goes to bed with. It is her Bible, her Koran, her Ten Commandments.

She might dislike what the Aryan Nation or the Nazis say about African-Americans, Jews or Catholics, but they have a perfect right to say it, according to her.

So I asked her about the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as she rudely chomped on something and talked on the telephone.

"I will have to get back to you on that, I have spoken to you in the past," she said. In the past, she wasn't so sure about the right to bear arms.

"We would be better without that," she said in the past.

In other words, she wanted it like a menu: choose one amendment from column A, one from column B.

See, what I was asking about was the words of people I have talked to across the country and the explosion of gun sales in defense of other peoples' cowardice.

In Manchester, N.H., the state where license plates proclaim, "Live Free or Die," Jim McLoud, owner of the Firing Line Gun store was saying:

"Our gun sales since the terrible thing happened have gone up 500 percent.

"On the day it [the terror attack] happened, I put out a 'closed' sign on the door, but there were too many people banging on the door.

"I don't like to make money this way, and the people who were asking for guns, many of them were real liberals, who said something like maybe we are the sheep who got bitten on the a- - by a wolf."

But in New York, things were different.

Darren Leung, co-owner of the West Side Pistol and Rifle Range told me: "We are getting 300 to 400 calls a day asking how they can buy a gun and get licensed.

"We have to tell them that it takes from six to eight months in New York to get licensed. They get a little angry about it, but it is the law in New York. It is sort of forgotten about.

"Target practice is up enormously here. Maybe it is psychological. But people are feeling vulnerable. Yes, maybe it is psychological."

Wayne La Pierre, the main spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said:

"Psychological? No, it is normal when people are confronted with a threat."

But a handgun won't do anything against a flying bomb or a biochemical attack.

"Quite right. But if there is a breakdown in communication in the face of a disaster, whatever an attack is and where, which we hope doesn't happen, remember the L.A. riots or the L.A. earthquake, there were clear signals," he said.

"One could be two to three days without contact with any kind of law enforcement. In that case, I would rather be with a firearm than without one."

I was in the looting drama of 1977 after the big blackout caused by overloading and Con Edison incompetence.

I lived through it, but I would have felt better with a gun.

And according to national statistics, from state to state with varying numbers, gun sales are up by 30 percent.

That is, with the exception of New York.

A person who answered the telephone at the office of John Jovino, owner of a very legitimate firing range not too far from the World Trade Center, told me: "What is the use? We really can't sell guns under the present law."

Back to that nincompoop, Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union: "I will have to give this some thought. But I will get back to you."

The telephone was as silent as the restless souls under the rubble.

Love those liberals, pal.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2001