From: AdmrlLocke@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 11:01 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: GrammNet: Victims Against Gun-Control Which Causes Crime GrammNet Issue 9/22/99.2 Dear Friend, Recently we've seen that George Bush Junior has lurched to the left in support of gun-control in order to pull the liberal media back from the brink of abandoning him over his failure to say whether he's ever committed the felony of using cocaine. Even the usually spineless congressional Republicans have fought the Clinton-Gore-Bush gun-control infringements of your right to self-defense--infringements which they justify with the shooting at Columbine school in Littleton, Colorado, but which would not have stopped the shooters from getting guns. Well, nobody said that Bush Junior applies rational thought to policy any better than Bill Clinton or Al Gore do. However, a boy who was a Columbine shooting victim and his father have managed to get beyond the hysterical emotionalism of Clinton-Gore-Bush and despite the terrible tragedy engage in rational thought. The Enlightenment thinkers who bequeathed us the basis of American society--an ideology dedicated to a defense of our rights to life, liberty and property--would be proud of the father and son. Congratulations to both of them for having the courage to think rationally. Not since Ronald Reagan has any victim of illegal gun violence been willing to challenge the irrationality of the dominant statist-liberal gun-control paradigm--at least, not any victim about whom the liberal media has informed us. You may note, however, that even in the following Denver Post article, which purports to cover the opposition to gun-control by the shooting victim and his father, the author can't bear to give the two opponents of gun-control the final word. Rather the author gives the final word to a separate story entirely--the story of how the Denver police have used the shooting as an excuse for more government, and frighteningly, government modeled after the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which as you'll see in the second item below, has long been a rogue organization, answerable to nobody. I suppose a liberal reporter just can't imagine that a better solution than creating more government is to do what the Israelis did to stop Arab terrorist shootings in Israelis schools: arm the adults at the school. If armed adults can stop professional terrorists at Israeli schools, they can certainly stop a few wackos at American schools. As a contrast to the distorted ending of the Post story, I'd offer as the final item below a clear if at times sarcastic column by Vin Suprynowicz. The column demonstrates that gun-control CAUSES crime by taking the means of defense out of the hands of law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to prevent criminals from getting guns. Remember: if someone won't be stopped by the law against MURDER, he certainly won't be stopped by any law against merely possessing a gun. Sincerely, David B. Levenstam, CPA, MT, MA Forbes in 2000! GrammNet is an independent newsletter, not affiliated with Senator Gramm. To subscribe to GrammNet, email me at AdmrlLocke@aol.com, with a message to the effect that you'd like to subscribe. GrammNet back issues available at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3390/ Steve Forbes web page (Forbes 2000) at http://www.forbes2000.com ----------------------------------- conservativeinfo - Subscribe to the Conservative Information email list at http://conservativeinfo.listbot.com Victim opposes new gun limits By Bill McAllister Denver Post Washington Bureau Sept. 16 - WASHINGTON - Opponents of post-Columbine gun-control measures rolled out a new star Wednesday in their fight against proposed legislation. Rick Castaldo and son Richard - a wounded Columbine High student - appeared at a Capitol Hill news conference where Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch denounced the Clinton administration for failing to enforce existing gun laws. "Passing any law will not stop any criminal from getting a gun if he knows the violation won't be prosecuted,'' Rick Castaldo told reporters. His teenage son was shot several times during the April 20 rampage and remains paralyzed from the chest down. Hatch, seeking the GOP presidential nomination, released a committee staff report that said federal gun prosecutions dropped from 7,048 in 1992 under then President George Bush to 3,807 last year. In Colorado, however, U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland, a recent Clinton appointee, has launched a new crackdown on gun violations. He said federal agents have identified 26 Coloradans who falsified gun-buying applications this year and turned the cases over to Strickland's office for prosecution. That compares with just two cases in the past two years. After Wednesday's press conference, Richard Castaldo relaxed at his father's Virginia home - Rick also owns a house in Denver - and stated his own opposition to further gun control. "I don't think they should pass any more (gun laws),'' Richard said. "At least, not as much as they're talking about.'' The Castaldos may visit Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., today before heading home Friday. Rick Castaldo said he appeared at the press conference after writing to Hatch to say Columbine's legacy should not be new gun laws. "I'm not an NRA member, and I'm not a gun owner,'' he said. "I don't have an ax to grind.'' His position differs from that of other Columbine victims' families. Tom Mauser, father of slain student Daniel Mauser, for instance, has lobbied both state and federal officials for tighter gun laws. At Wednesday's press conference, Hatch said the Justice Department should crack down on gun crimes and designate one prosecutor in each U.S. attorney's office to focus exclusively on firearms offenses. Hatch and Sen. Jeff Sessions, RAla., also criticized the Clinton administration for not prosecuting more felons who illegally try to buy guns. While computerized background checks stopped 100,000 people from buying guns illegally during the system's first seven months, only 200 of those cases were referred to prosecutors, they said. But Strickland said his office is "extremely focused on putting the word out that people who try to lie and buy (weapons) are going to be subject to going to prison.'' He also said Denver police recently formed a "gun unit'' to work with federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, and Strickland has reassigned several prosecutors to focus on gun cases. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [The following column of mine appeared in Campus Review during the summer of 1995; roughly the first third of it appeared around the same time in The Cedar Rapids Gazette.] ATF: Jack-Booted Thugs? By David B. Levenstam, CPA, MT, MA The liberal media have harshly condemned the NRA for characterizing agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) as "jack-booted government thugs." Encouraged by the media, gun-control-freaks have piled on. The control-freaks range from liberal statist Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) to moderate statist George Bush who, with his ban on certain imported weapons, enshrined in law the nonsense that semi-automatic rifles which merely look like fully-automatic weapons are also "assault-weapons". These liberals and moderates have in turn characterized the NRA as a voice of right-wing extremism. Yet speaking on the floor of the House back in 1980, Representative John Dingell of Michigan, a Democrat with impeccable liberal credentials, called ATF agents "jack-booted fascists"--although the liberal media neglected to condemn him. So it's not merely conservatives who allege that ATF agents are lawless oppressors, even if it's only conservatives who are being attacked for the allegations. It's true that ATF is a Prohibition-era relic with nothing better to do than to harass law-abiding distilleries and gun-owners. But are its agents jack-booted thugs? If you're like most Americans, you'd never even heard of ATF before its devastating raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco County, Texas, which ended in the deaths of 82 people, including 25 children. So you may have been lead to believe that ATF's Waco raid was the sole provocation behind the NRA's characterization of ATF agents. Dingell, however, made his comment 13 years before Waco, in response to a pattern of abuse and injury by ATF. Space allows only a brief sample of ATF outrages. In June 1971, for example, ATF agents wearing plainclothes and ski masks raided the home of Ken Ballew in Silver Spring, Maryland. Ballew, unaware they were government agents, grabbed a gun to defend himself. ATF agents shot him in the head, paralyzing him. They found nothing illegal and refused to pay any damages for crippling the innocent man. In June of 1978, ATF agents detained hundreds of lawful gun owners and dealers at a San Jose gun show. The agents photographed them and forced them to sign a "warning" for no authorized law-enforcement purpose. Such arbitrary, Gestapo tactics led a Senate subcommittee, in February 1982, to issue a report of ATF abuses, criticizing the agency for "secret law-making." The report dismissed "ATF's claims, both of focus upon gun-using criminals, and of recent reforms, [as] empty words." Despite the Senate report criticizing ATF infringements of the liberty of law-abiding citizens, ATF continues its flagrant pattern of abuse and assault. For instance, in April 1991, 23 ATF agents raided the home of Del Knudson near Coville, Washington. They confined his wife in one room while her hysterical 6-year-old daughter screamed for her and her 1-year-old daughter sat abandoned in the bath tub. ATF agents also handcuffed an elderly neighbor who offered to watch the children. Agents confiscated legal gun parts--and never filed any charges. Similarly, in December of 1991, ATF agents--followed by two TV crews--burst into the home of John Lawmaster in Tulsa. ATF agents smashed the front and back doors, furniture, drawers, closets, filing cabinets, and even pulled down a ceiling. They left guns and ammunition scattered around the house, which they then left open and unattended for any criminal to burgle. ATF found nothing illegal, but still refuses to pay damages. These sorts of unreasonable searches and seizures--to say nothing of injuries and shootings--by King George's heavily-booted thugs are just the sort of outrage that prompted the Founding Fathers to adopt the Fourth Amendment. The First Amendment is also under regular assault by ATF--especially if you happen to be a producer of alcohol. That's been the experience of numerous producers, large and small, including Coors, G. Heileman, Bert and Sherry Grant, Federico Cabo, and Kermit Lynch. Despite the lack of any legislative authority, ATF decided in 1993 that the Grants, who make Grant's Scottish Ale, can't include the Ale's vitamin content on the label. The ATF's policy, created without legal authority, finds "all therapeutic claims, regardless of their truthfulness, inherently misleading." When the Grants issued a press release on ATF's arbitrary policy, ATF began an investigation of their company, tying up the plant for three weeks and forcing the Grants to replace the label on another of their products. Worse yet, ATF suddenly decided that Grant's Cider, in production for a decade, wasn't cider after all, but wine. While cider is exempt from federal excise taxes, wine is taxed at a rate of $1.07 per gallon. ATF claims the Grants owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in back-taxes, plus the annual occupational tax for wineries, plus interest, plus penalties. That's in addition to the $100,000 in legal fees and lost sales they've suffered already. The Grants paid a high price for exercising their First Amendment rights to print the healthful content of their product, and to tell the world how the ATF ordered them not to. On the other hand, ATF persecuted Federico Cabo because, it claimed, the label and packaging of his Black Death vodka would create the impression "that the product is inherently unsafe for human consumption at any level." (The label shows a skull, and the vodka is distributed in coffin-shaped boxes.) In other words, ATF won't let you say that alcohol is healthy or that it is unhealthy. The kindly censors at ATF likewise dictated that Kermit Lynch couldn't quote either Thomas Jefferson or Louis Pasteur on the labels of his wine. The ATF's speech guardians similarly ordered Coors to remove the alcohol content of its beers from the beers' labels. And G. Heileman, ruled the ATF, couldn't even use the name "PowerMaster" for a new malt liquor--because the name might suggest a high alcohol content. (Huh? It sounds like ATF agents have been sampling what they regulate.) Federal courts have ruled--in 1981, 1992, 1994, and 1995--that ATF is violating the First Amendment by censoring the form and content of labels. Yet none of the rulings has stopped ATF from continuing to censor and harass other alcohol makers. Recently, the Supreme Court itself held that ATF violates the Constitution with its kindly censorship. Yet it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will be able to control ATF any better than the lower courts have. Congress also has been unable control ATF. Congress included a provision in the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 to prohibit any federal agency from compiling a registry of gun owners. ATF nonetheless claimed authorization under the law to seize the records of out-of-business gun dealers to start compiling a registry. So in 1978, Congress passed another law forbidding ATF from compiling a national registry, and cut ATF's budget as well. That stopped ATF--briefly. However, ATF soon returned to compiling its illegal list. ATF continues compiling a national gun registry despite passage in 1986 of the Volkmer-McClure Act, which forbids any government in the U.S. from compiling a registry of gun owners. In May 1994, ATF agent Pay Hynes even bragged to Forrest Sawyer of ABC's Day 1 that ATF had already computerized 60 million records of gun owners. So ATF regularly violates the express will of Congress, as well the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, and the portion of your liberty the amendments are supposed to guarantee. ATF violations show it to be a rogue agency, a lawless band--armed and dangerous--even if we ignore Waco. Then there's the ATF raid on Waco itself. The initial excuse for the raid--that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh illegally converted semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic function--was false. ATF's own investigators admitted before the raid that they had insufficient evidence that Branch Davidians had converted any weapons. During the current congressional hearings on Waco, ATF agents even testified that they refused an invitation by Koresh to come and examine his firearms long before the deadly raid. In any case, it's legal under federal law for you to own a fully-automatic weapon made before 1986, as long as you pay the $200 federal tax. Even if the Koresh had made an illegal conversion, essentially he would have been guilty only of minor tax evasion. Killing people based on insufficient evidence of evading a $200 tax sounds like an act of heavily-booted KGB agents, not of legitimate law-enforcement officials in America, land of liberty. Since the ATF had insufficient evidence to warrant an arrest, it's not surprising that in the congressional hearings we've just learned from legal experts that the ATF search warrant was "inflammatory," "sloppy," and filled with "factual inaccuracies." Nor is it surprising that ATF agent Robert Rodriguez testified that he warned ATF officials that Koresh knew about the planned ATF raid, guaranteeing that an invasion of the compound would result in deaths of Branch Davidians and ATF agents alike. The hearings have revealed that the Treasury Department's own report contains the testimony of 61 ATF agents in agreement with Rodriguez's claim that Koresh has been forewarned. And in perhaps the most stunning revelation of all--so far--ATF agents testified that ATF officials lied to the Defense Department about the presence of a "drug lab" in the Davidian's compound in order get military firepower for the raid. Their total lack of evidence, illegal search warrant, lack of surprise, and lying to another federal agency aside, ATF officials ordered agents to invade the compound, guns blazing, as admitted by ATF agent Rolland Ballesteros, one of the agents who led the assault. Yet they quietly and safely could have arrested Koresh on any of the three days each week on which he regularly left the compound to shop for groceries, or, for that matter, during any of the frequent times at which he went for a run. In fact, Koresh once had been arrested without incident by the local sheriff on charges for which he was tried and found not guilty. Thus there was no excuse for ATF agents to invade the compound, guns blazing. Later allegations that ATF had to act to protect children against abuse also are false. An anti-gun social worker, Joyce Sparks, tried to bring charges of child abuse against Koresh because he was teaching his children that gun ownership is desirable. The Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services dismissed her allegations as the patent nonsense they were. In any case, ATF doesn't enforce state child abuse laws. The federal government's own psychologist admitted after the siege that he found absolutely no evidence of child abuse. Used in retrospect to justify ATF's murderous assault, the charges of child abuse are eerily reminiscent of false charges often made to justify murdering other people symbolized by the Star of David: Jews in Europe often were alleged to drink the blood of children. For centuries, the strategy of making such hysterical claims, playing on people's ignorant paranoia, successfully justified the tyranny of government thugs. So far the strategy seems to have worked for ATF as well. The murderous raid at Waco served merely to publicize widely the sort of tyrannical abuse of which ATF has long been guilty. Indeed, no less a liberal icon than the ACLU is joining the NRA in demanding an investigation into not just Waco, but twenty-five separate instances of ATF abuse. With such an egregious pattern of harassment, injury and killing of innocent, law-abiding citizens--violating the laws of Congress, the rulings of federal courts, and the First and Fourth Amendments--ATF agents are jack-booted government thugs indeed. As a final note, there are the allegations of a persuasive pattern of sexual harassment of women in ATF by male agents. In fact, 60 Minutes was set to air an expose of ATF sexual harassment when ATF agents invaded Waco, stealing the headlines from the show. And the current congressional hearings on Waco have revealed that for the past 15 years, ATF agents have attended the "Good Ol' Boys' Roundup," where they engage in racist and anti-Semitic "games." But surely none of the NRA's pious detractors consider pervasive sexual harassment, racism, or anti-Semitism to be the act of government thugs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz Unintended consequences of gun control Can gun control reduce crime? One year ago, Australian gun owners were forced to surrender for destruction 640,381 personal firearms (including semi-automatic .22 rifles and shotguns). This program cost the Aussie government more than $500 million and produced heart-stopping photos as veritable boneyards full of Browning A-5 shotguns and other beloved collector's items were surrendered up to be crushed by steamshovels in a kind of steel-and-walnut charnel field. Now, Keith Tidswell of Australia's Sporting Shooters Association reports the results are in. Drum roll, please. Mr. Tidswell reports, based on a full 12 months of data: Australia-wide, homicides up 3.2 percent. Australia-wide, assaults up 8.6 percent. Australia-wide, armed-robberies up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent.) In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300 percent. (Up until the government gun grab, figures for the previous 25 years had shown a steady decrease in homicides with firearms, as well as armed robberies, Mr. Tidswell notes.) Although at the time of the victim disarmament order, the Aussie prime minister decreed "self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm," there has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, now left with no means to protect themselves. (One wonders whether the prime minister's personal bodyguards gave up their military-style weapons.) Mr. Tidswell reports: "Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in 'safety' has been observed after such monumental effort and expense to successfully 'rid society of guns.' " -- Meantime, efforts to systematically remove such weapons from the hands of the unruly, untrustworthy commoners of England have been underway at least as far back as the end of World War II. (By 1946, most of the valuable private rifles donated by American NRA members in response to an emergency call after the 1940 military disaster at Dunkirk had been rounded up from the British "home defense" auxiliaries and either dumped at sea or else poured into new concrete foundations, where -- Londoners confided to me on my last visit, in 1998 -- their steel outlines still occasionally surface out of well-traveled concrete walkways.) Thus, the recent effective outlawing of handguns for civilian Britons after some nut killed schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland (the government teacher charged with their safety was, needless to say, unarmed and thus useless), was only the last straw. Given that the English peasant populace has thus been unarmed somewhat longer, are there any trends developing there, to which the Australians can themselves now look forward? In an article by Helen Searls, titled "Trial by Fury" and scheduled for release in the October issue of Reason magazine, we learn: "In recent months the British government has unveiled an array of measures that promise to change the legal system profoundly. This spring, British citizens learned that Tack Straw, the home secretary (the rough equivalent of the American attorney general, though with more political power), plans to abolish trial by jury for all but the most serious crimes. He is also considering lifting the rule against double jeopardy, which prevents a defendant from being tried more than once for the same crime, and is thinking of criminalizing offensive language even when it is spoken in the privacy of one's home. ... "These days, defendants' rights are under attack. The right to silence is now severely qualified, trial by jury is under review, legal aid is being wiped out, defendants now have to disclose their defense strategy to the prosecution well in advance of trial, and in rape cases the cross-examination rights of defendants have been drastically restricted. "All of these measures have been introduced in the name of victims' rights. It seems that when we worry too much about ourselves as victims, the price we pay is our right to a fair trial. ..." But here in America, we're assured that those who would cling to the right to bear arms are nothing but psychiatrically disturbed Neanderthal throwbacks, clutching at the last talisman of 19th century male privilege and power, a kind of combination surrogate penis and security blanket which they hope will magically protect them from the stresses of a changing world. Yeah, that must be it. There's no practical reason to cling to such an outmoded, violent and dangerous technology. It's not as though, were we to give up our guns, armed criminals would take advantage of the situation to commit more violent crimes against us, or the ever-beneficent government that brought us Ruby Ridge and Waco would take the opportunity to start eroding any of our other rights. Unless you're some kind of paranoid, black helicopter conspiracy nut, where on earth would you get ideas like those? Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, is author of the book "Send in the Waco Killers."