Date: Mon, 3 Apr 95 17:42:19 CDT From: bob@sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil (Robert S. Linzell) To: firearms-alert@shell.portal.com Subject: LETTER: Reply to "Tulane Student Robbed" Below is my letter to the editor of _The Times-Picayune_ in response to their front page story this past Sunday about a Tulane University student who was robbed at gunpoint. The article describes the victim's feelings in great detail as he recounts the incident. It has a distinctly anti-gun slant. The story at one point describes one of the robbers' Tec-9 as "more sinister" than the other's blue steel semi-auto. The author goes on to describe the shotgun that the robbery victim bought for self-defense after the incident: "It's an evil weapon, a short-barreled shotgun with a pistol grip, `the biggest, meanest thing they had,', he said." "Koeneker knew the purchase was irrational: If he had been armed the night he was robbed, he's convinced he'd be dead. He shelled out the $250 anyway. "`It helps me to sleep,' he said. 'It's sad that I felt I had to get a gun for my house. But it makes me feel safer, it really does.'" The reference in the 1st paragraph below to a Ms. Stinson is to another article in the same paper, in which a woman successfully brings a civil suit against a man who stalked her for several years. She apparently carried the .357 with her everywhere she went after the man started stalking her. Little else of the gun was mentioned in this (Boston _Globe_) article. Comments by e-mail welcomed. The T-P e-mail address is: tpletters@aol.com. The FAX number is: 504-826-3369. --Yours in the Struggle, Bob __________________________________________________________________ |Robert S. Linzell bob@sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil (128.160.33.30) | |#include | (Just my own $0.02) | | Neptune Sciences, Inc. 150 Cleveland Ave. Slidell, LA 70458 USA | |__________________________________________________________________| ----- Begin Included Text ----- 123 Main Street Anytown, USA April 3, 1995 Letters to the Editor The Times-Picayune 3800 Howard Avenue New Orleans, Louisiana 70140 Editor, I am writing this letter to comment on the article in yesterday's paper entitled, "Tulane studend robbed of more than money," by Christopher Cooper. In the article, Mr. Cooper describes the robbery victim's gun as evil. This mistake is a common assertion made by the liberal media, but is completely at odds with the facts. If it were true, if Mr. Koeneker's new shotgun were truly evil, it would have made hime go out and kill his attackers, and quite possibly the rest of his neighborhood. Likewise, Joanne Stinson's .357 Magnum would have forced her to kill her stalker if it had any of the evil qualities Mr. Cooper so quickly ascribes to these inanimate objects. On the other hand, there may be a tiny grain of truth to this guns = evil myth. That possibility may help to explain the rash of crimes allegedly committed by the NOPD lately. Those evil guns must have caused the massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, almost two years ago. Surely it was the evil nature of the gun that caused Vicky Weaver's murder at an FBI raid in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, a couple of years ago. Colin Ferguson's jury, however, failed to recognize that it was the evil gun, not the man, who shot up the Long Island Railroad. I am still skeptical of the anthropomorphizing of guns by the press, and tens of millions of law-abiding gun-owners in this country are the proof. Some two million times a year, law-abiding citizens use guns to PREVENT crimes from occurring, more than 90% of the time without even firing a shot. These lawful, defensive uses save lives, prevent injuries (thus saving untold medical costs) and significantly enhance community safety, without infringing on the duties and usefulness of the law enforcement community. The anti-self-defense lobby will not stand in the way of regular people who wish to avoid joining Mathew Koeneker as another crime statistic. As a Naples, Florida, police officer stated last week (after a 71-year-old man and his wife held a would-be burglar at gunpoint until police arrived), "a gun in the right hands can be a tremendous equalizer. This man used the weapon to neutralize the situation and protect himself[1]." If Mr. Cooper wishes to print fictional accounts about some evil machinery, he should consider another outlet for his fantasies. Or has the Times- Picayune changed its genre without informing its readers? Sincerely, Robert S. Linzell linzell@nrlssc.navy.mil (601) 688-2476 Reference: [1] "Man holds intruder at gun point," _Naples Daily News_, Naples, FL, March 30, 1995, p. 1D. ----- End Included Text -----