Word: triggers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...clandestine cottage industry has grown up to convert these guns into full ! automatics, which can fire long bursts with a single pull of the trigger (a semi-automatic, despite its rapid-fire capability, requires a separate squeeze of the trigger for each round). A skilled gunsmith can accomplish the conversion for almost all semiautomatics, and there is a considerable demand for that service. Since 1934 federal law has made full automatics, such as machine guns, difficult to buy for anyone except police, the military and licensed collectors. A private purchaser has to obtain both federal and state licenses and undergo...
...trigger-happy crack gangs have pointed the way for other criminals who once carried relatively crude firearms or none. "The old adage about burglars and car thieves never being armed is completely changed," says Dee Anderson, an Arlington, Texas, patrolman. He reports that an Uzi and a shotgun were recently used in stickups of a convenience store and a fast-food outlet in that north Texas city. Police also note apprehensively a tendency among all types of criminals not just to carry guns but to use them rather than submit to arrest. Says Houston Police Officer Al Baker: "Just about...
...killer sprays a schoolyard with gunfire, police wage an arms race with trigger-happy criminals, and frightened citizens flock to buy firearms...
...During the Tet offensive in Saigon, the police chief's arm in profile that draws a straight line through his trigger finger and by the leap of the bullet into the fear-rigid Viet Cong's brain: a crisp extinction. The weird surprise of death, the pop into non-being. In the TV version, the man falls like a short tree and his head pours neat but urgent blood upon the street, as from a vial...
...past ten Vice Presidents have eventually moved into the Oval Office, and two more have been nominated by their parties for the White House. So the whole nation has a stake in whether the Vice President can gradually make the phrase President Quayle something other than a trigger for laughter -- or dismay...