In the quiet neighborhood of that I share with Wilmington's Mayor I hear from time to time the distinctive sounds of automatic weapon fire to my southwest. The ACK-ACK-ACK is loud and nearby.
I fear this because one evening, standing in the backyard, at a reception
for a friend's wedding, the same sort of noise sent bullets thru the trees
just over my head. As the branches fell so did many of the guests as they
scampered for cover. We were all briefly panicked. The noise came from
a good half mile away and yet the bullets found their way through the
neighborhood and into the pines and oaks overhead. You could hear the
bullets whistle by, it was a sound I have heard before. Bullets do whistle
as they pass, it's not just in the movies.
John Peck used an assault rifle to shoot Christen Naujoks, a fellow UNCW
student he had been stalking. Capt. Larry Hines identified the gun as
a Chinese made SKS, modeled after the Russian bear of a weapon the AK-47.
Although Hines did not say how many rounds were fired at Naujoks, we do
know 11 hit her in rapid succession. The New Hanover County Sheriff's
Office is conducting tests on the rifle to see if it was altered to be
used automatically. Fully automatic weapons are not legal but many are
easily retrofitted to make them fire continuously with one pull of the
trigger.
According to current federal guidelines, assault weapons — other
than those specifically mentioned in federal statutes — must have
any two of the following five features: a semiautomatic rifle with a detachable
magazine, a folding stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, a flash suppresser
or threaded barrel or a grenade launcher.
The SKS is easy to afford. Most costing under $200. What makes them so
dangerous is the velocity in which they fire a 7.62mm round. The bullet
travels at 2,300 feet per second, meaning it hits you before you can hear
it being fired.
Signed into law in 1994, the federal assault weapons ban will expire in
September unless Congress and President Bush renew it.
The murderer of Grand Prairie Police Officer Sgt. Gregory Hunter, was
in possession of a SKS weapon with a fixed bayonet attachment and some
350 rounds of ammunition. Now with the recent deaths of three Birmingham
police officers who were killed with a SKS weapon there is a renewed interest
in the Second Amendment.
Gun safety proponents quote FBI data as indicating that assault weapons
were used to kill one out of five law enforcement officers slain in the
line of duty from 1998 through 2001.
A recent survey commissioned by the Consumer Federation of America found
that 63 percent of Americans -- including a majority of gun owners --
favor strengthening the assault weapons ban to prevent the gun industry
from manufacturing commercial models of military-style assault weapons.
Do we have a right to all weapons available? No, we certainly do not.
We cannot possess a rocket launcher, a grenade, a bazooka, and we certainly
cannot possess a weapon of mass destruction such as a sawed off shotgun
or a nuclear bomb. In fact I almost hate to even publish those words over
the internet for fear of just using the words might raise a flag in some
secret, dark, NSA building somewhere.
So why do we have legal access to weapons that fire the same bullets,
at the same speed, out of the same barrel, yet if the bullets can be fired
faster than you can pull the trigger it is illegal? Or if its barrel is
short or has threads on it for attachments or there is a collapsible stock,
the why is that even something to evaluate, shouldn't we be talking about
the firepower and not the style when we judge what is legal and what isn't?
That big ass, powder packed bullet can rip thru a car door just as fast
as twenty bullets can. Christen Naujoks would have died from half the
number of bullets, would she have escaped had the gun used fired much
slower? Who knows.
In the past week's remembrance of President Reagan we also saw images
of the assassination attempt on his life. John Hinkley did not use a high
powered assault rifle to try to kill Reagan, he used a .22 caliber pistol.
What makes even a .22 dangerous is the velocity of the bullet. Although
the lead fired from the muzzle is much smaller than the SKS round it travels
so fast it easily penetrates causing serious damage.
Yet the .22 failed to kill President Reagan. Had the bullets been larger
in size and fired by a gun using heavier and larger loads of powder, Reagan
and others would have easily died. That is common sense, bigger hole,
bigger damage.
To say "Guns don't kill people, people do" is like saying "
it wasn't the bullet that killed Naujoks it was the hole" . We need
a better argument to allow these weapons to be legal.
I have no answers, only questions. I own guns, keep a shotgun at the ready
in my house for protection and would not feel comfortable without it.
There are crazy people in this world, in my neighborhood and I don't want
to be defenseless when and if the time comes. I made a choice not to have
a high powered weapon for home security because I don't want errant rounds
slicing through my walls then potentially through those of my neighbors.
I don't need that kind of power. I just need stopping power. I consider
my weapon a defensive weapon.
I never understood why you don't have to take a gun operators course and
get a license to carry a gun just like you do to operate a motor vehicle
or an airplane. Gun safety should be a requirement at the very least.
Maybe we can try that before we do away or tamper with our Second Amendment
rights. I would be proud to have a gun safety card in my wallet. There
are lots of law enforcement officers and ex-military men and women that
are fully trained and capable of training the rest of us how to use a
weapon safely. I am sure they can use the extra money too. This way the
students will learn that for defensive measures sometimes high power is
not needed. The students will go out and buy a shotgun (made in America
of course) instead of a SKS for instance. That way when their house is
robbed and their gun is stolen it doesn't end up in the hands of some
criminal.
And one last observation. This weapon of choice, the SKS, is made in China.
Maybe at the very least we should be a little more patriotic and buy American.
After all who knows how much of the profits gained by selling the thousands
of SKS rifles here go to build the forces of the Red Army of China? And
what sort of weapons are being fired on our troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq? SKS. What sort of weapon is being tugged around on the shoulders
of 13 year old warriors in Somalia or the Philippines? SKS Chinese made
rifles.
Just thinking.
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