No Serial Killings This Week In Santa Clara

by Vin Suprynowicz

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

           Racist nut Benjamin Nathaniel Smith killed two and wounded nine in a series of drive-by shootings of blacks, Asian-Americans, and Orthodox Jews in Illinois and Indiana before dying in a struggle with police on the Fourth of July.
           Smith had tried to buy firearms from a federally licensed gun shop in Illinois on June 23, the AP reports, but was turned down when he failed the "background check."
           Did he lie when filling out the federal form? Of course -- all such forms ask whether the applicant is under a court restraining order. Is lying on that form a federal felony? It is. Did anyone try to detain, locate, arrest, or prosecute this would-be killer in the ensuing 11 days? Of course not.
           So -- confirming the fact that such "gun control" laws never work (confirming, in fact, that the folks who pass them have no intention of trying to make them work, counting on their predictable failure to justify further steps to disarm law-abiding folk by making gun ownership even more expensive, inconvenient, and embarrassing), Smith remained free to buy pistols in .22 and .380 caliber -- not "assault weapons," as some would have it -- illegally, from an unlicensed dealer already under investigation by the BATF.
           Now, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's insane crime spree brings predictable calls for more "gun control."
           What do they propose to do: make it illegal to buy guns illegally?
           Meantime, no one mentions that again, as in Colin Ferguson's terrible shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad a few years back (in a jurisdiction where none of the victims were allowed to carry arms), and as in the worst American mass shooting in recent memory, in which 23 occupants of the Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas were shot down like dogs because state law required them to leave their firearms out in their cars ... none of Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's victims were armed.
           Such squirrelly characters are cowards at heart. Would someone like Benjamin Nathaniel Smith even have attempted such a thing if it were known that as many as 30 percent of blacks, Asian-Americans, and Orthodox Jews in the Midwest were now carrying concealed weapons, and had received training in how to use them? No.
           Yet instead of urging more folks to buy and carry guns and learn how to use them, the "reformers" can only think of ways to create more disarmed victims!
           "Oh, being armed is no solution," the mincing minions of genocide will surely simper. "The bad guy will only take your gun away and use it on you."
           OK: Let's take a look at what really happened last week when the intended victim of such a would-be shooter turned out to be armed:
           Reuters reported on July 6 from Santa Clara, California:

"A shoot-out at a California shooting range ended a bizarre hostage drama during which three gun store employees found themselves staring down the barrel of one of their own rented rifles, police said Tuesday.

"Sgt. Anton Morec of the Santa Clara Police Department said the aspiring gunman, 21-year-old Richard Gable Stevens ... 'intended to go out in a blaze of glory,' noting Stevens had accumulated more than 100 rounds of ammunition for his rented 9mm semi-automatic weapon.

"'It certainly looks like he intended to take a lot more people out.'

"Morec said Stevens arrived at the National Shooting Club Monday evening and rented the rifle for target practice. ... After several minutes on the range, however, Stevens returned to the club's gun store and shot at the ceiling. He then herded three store employees out the door into an alley, saying he intended to kill them.

"Unknown to Stevens, one store employee was carrying a .45 caliber handgun concealed beneath his shirt. When Stevens looked away, the employee fired, hitting Stevens several times in the chest and bringing him to the ground."

           After police arrived, Stevens was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. Finding a note from Stevens to his parents, predicting they would be bankrupted by lawsuits from the relatives of his intended "victims," police concluded "The quick action by the gun club employee may have headed off a massacre," Reuters reports.
           Yet which case made the front pages and the evening news -- the tragedy with the unarmed victims, or the story that proves, not in theory but in real life, the best way to stop such crimes before they start?
           Speaking of the 1991 Luby's cafeteria massacre, Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp was there. She had left her firearm in her car, as required by law. She therefore had to watch both her father and mother -- along with 21 others -- butchered before her eyes. Dr. Hupp, who won election to the Texas legislature in 1996 on a "right to self-defense" platform, will speak on the Second Amendment and recent calls for more victim disarmament at the monthly breakfast of the Nevada Republican Liberty Caucus, 7:30 a.m. Monday July 12, at the Country Inn in Green Valley.
           Tickets are $25; call Chuck Muth to see if any spaces are still open: (702) 454-0350.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, Send in the Waco Killers is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127, or at 1-800-244-2224.

Next to advance to the next article, or
Previous to return to the previous article, or
Table of Contents to return to The Libertarian Enterprise, Number 51, July 15, 1999.