#31

A Gun In The Home
                          By NEAL KNOX
        Washington, D.C. -- It was tremendous radio and television
drama: a 911 emergency operator's audio tape of a frightened 9-
year-old girl tearfully giving a blow-by-blow account of a bloody
knife fight between her father and a robber.

     Many local stations and national television played it, and it
was reported in most major newspapers.  With minor variations,
every report stated that she had saved her critically injured
father's life, and perhaps her own, because she called 911.

       What utter nonsense.  Her father's life was saved because
the girl's 14-year old brother shot and killed the robber.

      What happened (the best we can piece it together from a half-
dozen reports) was that a young man with a gun demanded money from
her father.  The father refused, and the robber attempted to shoot
him, but his gun misfired (one more argument for junk so-called
"Saturday Night Specials").

      The robber and father then began fighting with kitchen
knives, and the girl's 14-year-old brother was also attacked and
slashed.  The brother got a family gun and shot the robber.  Police
weren't present until it was all over.

     That critical last part of the story, almost totally ignored
in some accounts, probably would never have been known if the tape
hadn't included the girl's suddenly relaxed and relieved voice
saying:  "Oooh, he shot him."

      How to "play" that story was difficult for the press.  It was
too-high drama to ignore, but the outcome conflicted with the
media's propaganda that a self-defense gun is many times more
likely to be used against a family member than an intruder.

     In fact, if there had not been a gun in the home, and if the
14-year-old hadn't had the knowledge and guts to use it, at least
the critically injured father probably would have been killed, and
perhaps the girl and her brother.

      The "studies" often cited in the press, circulated by Handgun
Control Inc. and National Coalition to Ban Handguns, were Cleveland
and Seattle coroners' "body counts" of burglars killed compared to
the number of intentional murders, manslaughters, suicides and
fatal accidents with guns.

     The greatest fallacy of such "studies" is that they do not
consider the number of burglaries, robberies or assaults prevented
with guns that are never fired.  (In most jurisdictions, it's
against the law to shoot a non-violent burglar.)

      However,  Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck
has stated that "gun use by private citizens against violent
criminals and burglars is common and about as frequent as arrests
(for those criminal acts)."

      In the February 1988 issue of "Social Problems" Kleck
estimated (on the basis of six surveys conducted by groups on both
sides of the gun issue over a decade) "there were about 645,000
defensive uses of handguns against persons per year, excluding
police or military uses."

     One thing is certain, the gun in the home of that Texas 9-
year-old cost a life -- the robber's -- but it saved at least one,
and maybe three, innocent lives.  Without that gun and a courageous
teenager, we could have heard that little girl's throat being
slashed -- as we have heard other 911 tapes of murders of people
who were killed because they only had a telephone in their hands.

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