Word: handgun
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...strong ideological or intellectual beliefs at all, other than a basic decency, patriotism and desire for people to be accommodating. A stark example: Bush was torn this fall when Congress debated a federal requirement that there be a seven-day waiting period before someone could purchase a handgun, a provision supported by many law-enforcement officials. "I wish the police chiefs and the gun owners could figure out a compromise," he lamented in an off moment. "I'm for both sides...
...years Syndicated Columnist Carl T. Rowan has been an advocate of strict gun control. But when roused from sleep last week by what he believed was an intruder at the bedroom window of his Washington home, Rowan forgot his own counsel. After calling the police, he loaded a handgun and went outside. Rowan says he came face to face with a "tall man who was smoking something that I was absolutely sure was marijuana." After the man ignored warnings and lunged toward him, says Rowan, he fired once, wounding the intruder in the wrist. Police identified the trespasser...
Family members and friends of such victims probably regret, as Rowan should, the fact that the handgun ever was in the closet or on the bedroom table, so easy to reach at a moment's notice. Funny thing, the NRA never mentions these cases in its brochures...
...although depressing to read and write about, such scenarios account for the vast majority of handgun-related deaths each year. Homicide figures in the District of Columbia, for example, show that the number of times a handgun has justifiably been used in self-defense during the last 15 years is no more than four. If you add the Rowan shooting, and that's a big if, it's a whopping five...
...have faced, nor to condone the delinquency, arrogance, bad judgment, and lack of respect which the teenager showed towards the Rowan family at 2 a.m. that Tuesday night. It's just to suggest that Rowan, like the rest of us, would have been far better off without his handgun...