Right? I read an article years ago (forgot some of the detail now) that a rabid anti-gun city councilman in one of the Northern states spent his life attempting to pass gun control measures while on the city counsel.
Anyhoo, one night late, a bunch of teenagers sneaked into his backyard swimming pool. He arrived home, saw the teens in his pool and confronted them. All the teens scattered and jumped the backyard fence to get away. One didn't make it. The councilman open fired on the teen still in his backyard..wounding or killing him...can't remember. The councilman was arrested and told the police he obtained the .357 magnum from a relative that happened to be a state trooper.
Hypocrites.
Shooting controversy
Rowan gained public notoriety on June 14, 1988, when he shot an unarmed teenage trespasser, Neil Smith, who was on his property illegally. “The interloper was a near-naked teenager who had been skinny-dipping with friends in Rowan’s pool, and the columnist’s weapon was an unregistered, and thus illegal, .22 caliber pistol.”[7]
From People magazine: “When Rowan heard the police arrive, he stepped outside to let them in. It was then, he says, that he was confronted by “a tall man who was smoking something that I absolutely was sure was marijuana.” Rowan says he repeatedly warned the intruder that he was armed and would shoot. “My first words were: ‘Freeze! Stay where you are!’ “ says Rowan. “Then I said, ‘I have a gun.’ “ Rowan says the man kept coming and that he finally felt forced to shoot in self-defense. He says he aimed at the intruder’s feet but hit him in the wrist when the man lunged forward.
The intruder, Chevy Chase, Maryland, teenager Benjamin Smith, 18, tells a different story. “I was in my underwear,” he told a radio interviewer. “I just climbed out of the pool. It was pretty innocent. I never spoke with him. He just shot me and closed the door and went back hiding in his house. I mean, I guess I was trespassing. But that’s no reason to shoot a person, is it? For swimming in their pool?”[8]
Rowan was charged for firing a gun that he did not legally own. Rowan was arrested and tried. During the trial, he argued that he had the right to use whatever means necessary to protect himself and his family. He also said the pistol he used was exempt from the District’s handgun prohibition law because it belonged to his older son, a former FBI agent. He was called out for hypocrisy, since Rowan was a strict gun control advocate. In a 1981 column, he advocated “a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail—period.” In 1985, he called for “A complete and universal federal ban on the sale, manufacture, importation and possession of handguns (except for authorized police and military personnel).[9]
Rowan was tried but the jury was deadlocked; the judge declared a mistrial and he was never retried. In his autobiography, Rowan said he still favors gun control, but admits being vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy.[10]
Carl Rowan, now deceased, was a DC City councilman and a nationally syndicated columnist, espousing GUN CONTROL practically non stop....................