Posted on 12/18/2001 1:48:32 AM PST by dhuffman@awod.com
The number of people requesting pistol permit applications has skyrocketed since the Sept. 11 attacks, as Capital Region residents reached for guns to help fight off a new sense of vulnerability.
Pistol permit clerks in Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer and Saratoga counties were swamped with application requests. And a monthly handgun safety course required for pistol permit applicants in Saratoga County was filled to overflowing. Local gun dealers report seeing scores of new customers checking out their stocks.
"It's not much of a mystery,'' said Gary Hobbs, an Albany psychologist. "What's going on is people obviously identify with their countrymen who have been killed en masse in a totally unpredicted and unpredictable catastrophe, an attack. Among other things, it raises a sense of vulnerability and insecurity, and that comes out in different ways.''
Gun sales are soaring too.
" 'I'm scared,' that's what I get. Anti-gunners coming out of the woodwork. Now they want guns,'' said Michael Zullo, who has a firearms sale business and also teaches handgun safety courses mandated for pistol permit applicants in Saratoga and Schenectady counties. Zullo estimates he saw a fivefold increase in sales right after Sept. 11.
Sales also surged at Wayne Shrome's Accurate Arms & Ammo store on Central Avenue in Niskayuna immediately after Sept. 11.
"Home-defense shotguns was a big thing,'' Shrome said. "Even older people here, who never had guns, came in and got them.''
The practical value of obtaining a gun for protection from terrorists is debatable.
"I don't know why,'' Vic Ferrante, a retired Air National Guard firearms instructor who teaches gun safety for Schenectady and Saratoga counties, said of the apparent increased interest in acquiring guns. "I guess they expect the Afghans to come in by parachute or something.''
But mental health experts recognize the phenomenon -- particularly among regular folks who have not experienced combat or carried guns before. It is, they say, part of a craving for comfort.
In county clerks' offices around the region, pistol permit applications flew off the shelves for a time.
Schenectady County had to print up extra permit forms, said County Clerk John Woodward. The county issued 184 permits all last year, but since Sept. 11, the office has handed out some 300 applications, Woodward said.
Joyce Sullivan, who handles pistol permits for Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, said she issued more amendments -- the paperwork that adds a new gun to a permit or makes other changes -- than ever. She also noticed an unusually high number of women seeking pistol permit applications.
"That's all I did for three weeks after it happened,'' she said. She estimates she distributed 20 forms a week, four times the norm.
It's too soon to say, however, how many will follow through with their permits. The process of securing references, submitting fingerprints, awaiting a background check and obtaining approval from a judge -- who also has wide discretion to reject applications -- takes at least four or five months and sometimes close to a year.
Albany County Clerk Thomas Clingan said permit applications have risen perhaps 50 percent, but won't guess how many of the applications will be completed and approved.
The process varies greatly according to county. Saratoga and Schenectady counties require applicants to take handgun safety courses from certified firearms instructors.
The three-night Schenectady County class has seen no increased participation because enrollment is capped at 20 each month. But attendance at the Saratoga County course skyrocketed from the normal 20-30 to 91 people in October, instructors said. There were more than 60 last month and 58 on hand for the four-hour December lecture session with Zullo and co-instructor Dean Guenther last Wednesday night.
None of roughly a dozen students interviewed at the Schenectady and Saratoga county classes cited the 9-11 attacks as influencing their decision to seek a pistol permit. Most are seeking standard permits for target shooting and hunting, and a few -- including an armored car driver and an assistant to a private detective -- are applying for permits that will allow them to carry their guns.
Some students said they expect to inherit guns, and others said they want to be more comfortable with guns belonging to a spouse. A few said they had been contemplating a pistol permit for years and just decided to act now.
That's not to say fear from Sept. 11 isn't at work, psychologist Hobbs noted. When people react to traumas -- particularly if the reaction comes weeks or months later -- the connection between their behavior and the event may not always be apparent to them, he said. And even if the connection is clear, the reaction often is more symbolic than practical, he said.
Feeling motivated to buy a gun after 9-11 "is a sense-of-security-related issue,'' Hobbs said. "It's an emotional thing. It's just far-fetched that they're going to protect themselves from a terrorist.''
Some people will avoid airplanes or don gloves before opening mail, reacting to the mailing of anthrax spores. Others will count rosary beads and pray. "We do a lot of things symbolically to help ourselves calm down and feel more secure,'' Hobbs said.
Because the pistol permit approval process takes several months and many clerks don't record or count each application picked up, there is no way to precisely quantify the current interest in pistols, but the state Department of Criminal Justice Service has started to see an upswing in the number of fingerprints submitted for permit background checks.
FBI statistics support gun dealers' observations that new customers unwilling to take the time and trouble to apply for pistol permits are opting instead to buy rifles and shotguns, which can be purchased on the spot with an instant background check.
Nationally, there was a 12 percent spike in transactions submitted to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS, immediately after Sept. 11, said Daniel Wells, assistant operations manager for the NICS system. For New York, NICS checks were up 24 percent in September, October and November over the same period last year.
Wells likened the unexpected increase to an uptick at the end of 1999, when experts surmise Y2K anxieties prompted citizens to stock up on weapons.
Potential terrorist threats aside, Ferrante and his fellow firearms instructors work hard to disabuse their students of any notion that a pistol or revolver is a practical means of self-defense at home -- though they suspect that's what prompts at least some of their students to buy handguns.
"We don't teach marksmanship, self-defense, anything like that,'' Ferrante said. "This is strictly safety. We try to advise people here not to have a handgun. Too many of 'em watch TV.''
In Schenectady County, in a unique curriculum approved by County Judge Michael Eidens, students get to handle and examine a variety of unloaded guns, and they target shoot using a pellet pistol at an indoor range at the final class before taking a written test.
For home defense, Ferrante recommends "a big ugly dog.'' If a student insists on a firearm, he and his fellow instructors suggest relying on the distinctive sound of a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun being
"Me, I have the cat from hell,'' Guenther told his students. "The last thing you want to do is hurt somebody, in home defense or any case. You've got a few seconds to make a decision. The judges and the lawyers and the juries have years to make theirs.''
Brady's Bunch lives by the poll and press release. Now let it die at the hands of honest journalists!
The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.
Study, practice, practice, practice, learn more, practice, practice, practice...and don't leave home without it.
It may not be used against a terrorist, but is sure as hell can be used to defend oneself against scumbags who take advantage of civil disorder to rape and pillage. Remember that the response time by police to 911 calls before Sept. 11 was not too great to begin with, now with their priorities more to protecting government buildings and false threats, as well as actual terrorist events, getting to a home reporting an intruder will be significantly slower yet.
Guenther, in his oddly mincing way, is trying to discourage people from defending themselves.
If I were one of his 'students' I'd take from his 'class' the lesson that I lived in such a tyrannically administered region that justice was not an option for citizens who exercise their God-given right to defend themselves.
I'd conclude that, if I had to dispatch a criminal, that I also had to dump the body in a river. (using due care to avoid leaving 'evidence', or being detected in the act)
If I were unfortunate enough to have neighbors within earshot I might also conclude that a folded towel, to muzzle the pistol's report, might be a handy item to keep next to the weapon.
Yes... Guenther the effeminate one has much to teach.
The use of weapons, carried by decent people with or without the blessing of some regime, is always and everywhere a powerful remedy for crime and terrorism.
A gun in hand has saved me more than once in my life. There is no better security for the individual except for a bona fide miracle from God.
Barn doors get shut AFTER the cattle get out.
< sarcasm > Don't they realize that hunting is protected activity under the Second Amendment?
< / sarcasm >
Potential terrorist threats aside, Ferrante and his fellow firearms instructors work hard to disabuse their students of any notion that a pistol or revolver is a practical means of self-defense at home -- though they suspect that's what prompts at least some of their students to buy handguns.
Sure, a long gun is better for some things, but a pistol or revolver beats a whole lot of other choices.
"We don't teach marksmanship, self-defense, anything like that,'' Ferrante said. "This is strictly safety. We try to advise people here not to have a handgun. Too many of 'em watch TV.''
Hopefully, this was for the reporter; and not what they really believe.
I anchored by Beneteau 235 within a mile of its normal marina. I used my service anchor and the largest Danforth Standard that I could afford. I dropped the mast, taped openings and removed hard heavy stuff.
After the H-storm the only 'damage' was the muddy foot prints of the helicopter crews checking for occupants. When I weighed anchor, the Danforth's chain had mud twenty feet up the chain. It took two hours of winching the rode hard up and down, then walking fore and aft to work the boat up and down and then winch the slack out. I learned alot.
The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.
There's nothing stranger than a man or a woman who will act against decency, common sense and personal interest, simply because they have been told to do it.
I doubt that you and I could find common ground if we had a century to search for it.
Let me rephrase that. Blowing someone away so that their blood is imbeded into your carpeting and the media hounds are stomping all over your front lawn is a last resort. Having a good secure dwelling and staying out of Code White is a first resort. Any firearms instructor who fails to teach their students how to stay out of a gunfight in the first place isn't a very good teacher. 'Nough said?
A gunfight is most studiously to be avoided, if at all possible. You avoid it if you can because you might lose it, and -if you lose it- you might also lose your life.
But once the balloon goes up it is kill or be killed. Once the enemy has exceeded your pre-set tolerance for provocation/threat he must be engaged and destroyed. No 'oops', no 'time-outs' no 'do-overs'.
If you live in a region in which the powers that be will punish you for defending yourself or your family you then have a decision to make... Cooperate with the enemy, or not.
And, despite anything you've ever heard to the contrary friend, 'cooperating with the enemy' isn't a duty, it's a choice.
And an easy one, at that...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.