Posted on 10/11/2002 3:48:32 PM PDT by RogueIsland
WASHINGTON -- There is everything to like about Carolyn McCarthy.
The New York congresswoman who got to Washington on the trajectory of tragedy still laughs with gusto and dresses without flash and pulls back her hair in a ponytail like a suburban homemaker. That is what she was when a gunman on a Long Island Rail Road train shattered her old life and launched her toward another.
She took to politics after her husband was killed and her son gravely wounded aboard that commuter train. It was a way, maybe, to do something about guns in America. A way, perhaps, to keep the comfort of someone else’s daily routine from becoming a catastrophe.
McCarthy has been in Congress six years now. But you could, at any moment, imagine her not standing at a microphone but loading groceries into her car, or vacuuming it out, or mowing the lawn.
She is still just like her constituents. And they are just like the people of suburban Washington, terrorized by a sniper who has randomly killed six people and injured two while they were encased in the fragile comfort of daily routines.
So it is easy to like McCarthy. But it is hard to talk to her.
When we talk, it is usually because some new horror requires the conversation. And these conversations remind us only that we have done so little — nothing, really — about the glorification of guns and the way in which we make them so easily available to just about anyone who wants one.
“Did he buy his gun at a gun show?” McCarthy asked of the sniper, who experts say is using high-velocity, military-style bullets designed to cause maximum damage to a target. “Did he go through one of the loopholes that we have been trying to close?”
Maybe, maybe not. Civilian sales of military-style sniper rifles and ammunition are, apparently, all the rage. These may have replaced assault weapons as the latest must-have gadgets. In certain circles, anyway.
The trend was documented in a 1999 report by the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control group. It was, of course, ignored.
“A sniper subculture is burgeoning within the American civilian gun culture,” the report said. “This subculture glorifies the sniper fantasy, diminishes its human cost and teaches everything about sniping — from equipment and shooting skills to military and police sniping tactics.”
Its unofficial motto is “One shot, one kill.” This has, apparently, been taken seriously by Washington’s suburban sniper. He has murdered or wounded each of his victims with a single shot.
“The accuracy, range and power of a sniper rifle could present a grave danger if used by a determined criminal or a deranged gunman, and a serious threat to national security in the hands of a terrorist,” the report said.
McCarthy wonders if this sniper has a history of mental illness. That was the case with the gunman who disturbed another comforting routine — mass at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Lynbrook, N.Y., last March — by killing the priest and a parishioner. The mentally ill are barred under a 1968 federal law from getting guns, but they still do. It is, in part, because states haven’t automated patient records or shared them with federal authorities, so they cannot be checked when a person buys a gun from a licensed dealer.
After the Lynbrook murders, McCarthy sponsored legislation to give states money to automate mental health records and turn them over. It passed easily out of the House Judiciary Committee; the selling point for the pro-gun lawmakers who control the panel was that her bill didn’t create some new law. But the House Republican leadership hasn’t allowed a floor vote.
McCarthy’s bill to keep mentally ill people from getting guns must wait its turn, she said, behind another piece of gun legislation now pending in the House: A measure to prohibit lawsuits against the gun industry.
McCarthy expected the leadership to bring the industry-protection measure up for a vote Thursday. Now it’s been put off. “We understand it was pulled,” she said.
The timing, you see, wasn’t quite right.
Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is:
Second Amendment and your birth cirtificate (DD214 is optional).
Good Grief! What in the world are the people of NJ thinking? Man, I'm glad I live somewhere else!
Thanks!
Probably not and Probaly not!
Got a bunch of dad's guns which are really sweet that certainly weren't purchased at gun shows.
Where is your darn "BARF ALERT"?
We (from rural Ohio) were visiting in-laws in New Joisey a couple of Thanksgivings ago. My (then) 12 year old son brought his BB gun to show his cousins, shoot old cans etc. My (27 year old) brother in law was in amazment. How could such a (kid) have a *eeek* GUN!
Before the weekend was over *all* were having *fun* with the *gun*. Needed more BB's and the only option was to go over the border to Metamorphis [sic] Pennsylvania. That same brother-in-law was *shocked* -- *shocked* I tell you to learn he could actually buy a BB gun!!!!!!! No ID required (probably because he looks well over 18).
When we were driving back to the New Joisey DMZ he also stated he felt like a *criminal* for having a (BB) *gun*. Amazing what mind control can do to folks.
Is it just me, or does it seem to the rest of you like every time a pro-gun law (whether state or federal) that is likely to pass is up for a vote, some nut-job goes on a rampage?
The bill in question would have prevented the hoplophobes from putting firearm manufacturers out of business by filing countless frivolous lawsuits against them.
Note that she never calls for closing that "loophole" called the U.S.-Mexico border.
McCarthy doesn't give a rat's ass about violence - just about guns.
Scandals of antigun politicians - from Manhattan to Kalifornia!
I would have thought they had learned their lesson on gun control. But in order to install their Marxist state, they must disarm the populace. THAT is why the gun control monster will never sleep. And that is why we must stand our staunch vigil by its crypt.
I doubt we have any political "leaders" at all. Any who are capable -- or INCLINED -- to defend the Constitution under ANY sort of circumstances. We have elected a parliament of whores and cowards. And we're likely to do it again.
Honest to Pete, do these writers have to get an "A" in ignorance before joining a newspaper staff???
The -16 was NEVER and will NEVER BE a 'sniper rifle.'
The sniper rifle of choice is usually a .30 cal, and usually a bolt-action--like a Remington Model 70.
Assault weapons, by definition, are full-auto; although one can obtain them legally, you have to be as pure as Moses to get one, and you will pay a LOT to have it.
Of course, in newspaperland, words mean only what we SAY they mean, no more, no less, until tomorrow, when we will change the definitions.....
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