By Reid Collins on 10.3.02 @ 1:23PM
More people were killed on purpose in Montgomery County, Maryland, today than died at the hurricane hands of ''Lili'' in Louisiana.
More people were killed on purpose in Montgomery County,
Maryland, today than died at the hurricane hands of "Lili" in
Louisiana, but I doubt a network anchor will stand in front of the
killing scenes in safari jacket and microphone. The background,
suburban America, is too prosaic.
It began last evening in a shopping center and continued
relentlessly until mid-morning. A male shopper, a man on a lawn
mower, a taxi driver getting gas, a victim near a post office, and
finally, a woman cleaning her car in a service station. All five
shot to death, apparently by occupants of a white truck. No known
connection among the victims. Just a few miles apart.
It happened in a state where a primary issue in the
hot-and-heavy gubernatorial campaign is gun control. To say the
least, Maryland is not a "right to carry" state. It is more a
"wrong to own" state. Handgun manufacturers are required to provide
state police a fired cartridge from the individual arm in hopes
this "fingerprint" may be helpful should the weapon be involved in
crime. Would-be buyers of arms go through contorted checks and
hoops seeking approval through waiting periods. There is a high
commission seated to approve or disapprove some guns on the basis
of their cost or looks. The so-called "Saturday night special" was
banned long ago. In theory this is a weapon cheap in price and
therefor available to the masses and therefore verboten.
Any police department will tell you it hasn't worked out that
way: the Saturday night marauder has better stuff than the standard
departmental issue. And the shell casing fingerprint is yet to make
its first collar.
But the Brady group is spending millions in ads shellacking the
GOP gubernatorial candidate, Robert Ehrlich, for his legislative
votes against restrictive gun legislation and his campaign promise
to review the work of the gun-ban high commission. The Brady folk
support Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a gun control advocate.
The issue of gun control may be a deciding factor in the race. And
more especially along the corridor of death in Montgomery County
where yellow police tape adorns five scenes of death. The
conversations, in the nearby hardware stores, the grocery stores
and pizza parlors is not, "How did they get those guns?" But
rather, "Shouldn't I have one?"
That police are powerless in these situations is testified to by
the length of time over which these killings took place -- some 15
hours -- without apprehension. And the record: the closure rate for
murder in Montgomery County runs around 30 percent, about the same
as in the nearby District of Columbia. In other words, two out of
three murders go unsolved.
It is against the law in Maryland to have a loaded gun in an
automobile. And it is useless to speculate what might have happened
had some motorist near one of the killing scenes had one or, were
this a "right to carry" state, some citizen afoot. That is as
useless as speculation about what might not have happened had the
9/11 airline pilots been armed.
But there is a question that runs beyond statute, to the first
law, that of preservation. Should there be something in the seat
pocket, or secured under the dash, a forbidden implement that
remains unused until that moment when the penalty for having it
pales compared to the price of not having it?
Looking at the yellow tape, assessing the grief it represents,
the futility of closure, it occurs that that redneck T-shirt speaks
an elemental truth: "Better To Be Tried By Twelve Than Carried By
Six."
topics:
Law, NATO
