Word: handguns
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...checked my handgun at the gate," Richard Nixon quipped within earshot of a dozen armed Chinese police and soldiers standing guard around the U.S. embassy in Beijing. His sarcasm drew whoops of laughter from foreign service officers, who had lodged three complaints in as many days against "harassment" by the Chinese troops stationed outside the compound. With Sino-American relations at their lowest in years, the former President was back in Beijing last week on a "private" visit, attempting to salvage what he could of the relationship he had launched with such drama in 1972. If any outsider...
...last Thursday, John Tingle, an employee at Louisville's Standard- Gravure Co., was startled to see a former co-worker. Joseph Wesbecker, 47, was carrying a duffel bag, an AK-47 rifle and a 9-mm handgun. "I told them I'd be back," Wesbecker growled at Tingle. "Back off and get out of the way." Tingle and several other workers quickly locked themselves in a bathroom, and Wesbecker took an elevator to the third-floor offices, looking for bosses or supervisors. Finding none, he worked his way downstairs, gunning down victims...
Still, Kleck estimates that an assailant or the defender actually fired a handgun in nearly half the cases. If so, 322,000 incidents each year involved great danger, and the potential victims credited their guns with protecting them. That is about ten times the number who die from guns annually in the U.S. "It is possible that guns save more lives than they cost," Kleck says...
...numbers are based on a 1981 poll conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates. It asked 1,228 U.S. voters whether in the previous five years any member of their household had "used a handgun, even if it was not fired, for self-protection or for the protection of property." Roughly 4% (about 50 people) said they had done so. Projecting that percentage onto the number of U.S. households in the five years covered by the poll (1976-81), Kleck came up with the estimate that handguns had been used protectively 3,224,880 times, or 645,000 a year...
...divorcee was so afraid of poverty that she twice tried to kill herself with pills. Each time, her family discovered her soon enough to save her. But on Saturday morning, May 6, she found a swift and certain alternative. She went to a shopping center and bought a handgun. Since Berliner knew nothing about weapons, the salesclerk loaded the pistol for her. She took the gun home and shot herself. At that point, there was no time, and no way, for anyone to help...