We face too many guns

[FWiedner]

We face too many guns

by Michael Daly  
 
Nicole duFresne (l.), a vibrant, beautiful actress, had circle of loving friends. The feisty 28-year-old was gunned down early Thursday after confronting gang of muggers. Yesterday the reward for helping find her shooter was doubled.  
 
Two hours after leaving the Republican convention and listening to George Bush speak about a safer America, yours truly found himself facing a gun in the safest big city in America.

The gun was held by one of two teenagers who had suddenly appeared out of the early morning darkness. I kept my eyes lowered and my hands at my sides and I said not a word. I have seen several hundred gunshot victims. I long ago learned what can result from even the slightest challenge to someone with a pistol.

"If somebody offered you $100 million, but you had to give up your life would you do it?" a cop friend named Vertel Martin once asked.

The robbers fled with less than $100. I felt angry and violated and maybe a little shamed for having allowed myself to be bullied. That was still much better than feeling my life bleed out into the gutter.

If I had resisted you might very well not be reading these words today. I often pass that Brooklyn corner where a teenager with a gun would have needed to do nothing more than flex his right index finger. I would then have fallen bleeding to that grimy patch of pavement at Carroll St. and Polhemus Place in Park Slope.

Yesterday morning, I stood on another patch of pavement, this on Clinton St. just below Rivington St. on the lower East Side. There were two quarter-sized splotches and a dozen smaller spatters of what was almost certainly blood on a dirty snowbank.

A pair of blue disposable gloves such as paramedics use lay discarded just down the block. Up at the corner flickered eight candles sheltered by a white cardboard box weighted down with clumps of snow. A shred of yellow crime scene tape remained knotted to a store grating.

Here was where the 28 year-old actress and playwright Nicole duFresne was walking with her fiance, Jeffrey Sparks, and two friends just after 3 a.m. Thursday. A group of teenagers then appeared out of the early morning darkness and demanded money.

One of the teens wore a white hood and had a white scarf half covering his face. He was holding a gun, but Sparks apparently did not understand the threat and he pushed through the teens. The gunman responded by pistol whipping him.

Any of us would have been outraged to see a loved one struck in the face with a gun. DuFresne had proven her dislike for bullies back in high school in a suburb outside Minneapolis, when she challenged somebody who had been taunting a special education student. She had been raped during college and she had dedicated her first play to the therapist who taught her "the importance of dealing with tragedy head-on . . . to come out of hiding."

She must have been determined not to be a victim again, not to let anybody make her feel violated or shamed, not to give in to anyone who sought to control her with the threat of violence. She had not seen enough gunshot victims to know how easy it is to become suddenly dead. She uttered a variation on a line that goes back to the old westerns and B movies.

"What are you going to do, shoot us?" duFresne reportedly said.

A Google search of the more usual "What are you going to do, shoot me?" produces 541 hits. The usage in movies and TV often involves a man challenging a woman who has a gun.

In real life, the line is more often uttered when both parties are male. The seemingly invariable response is typified by a 1994 New York case in which one Eric Copeland confronted one Rodney Cox, who was armed with an automatic pistol.

"Copeland said to defendant, 'What are you going to do, shoot me?'" court documents report. "In response, defendant fired one fatal bullet."

The "us" variation appears only 44 times on Google. Two of these are news accounts of duFresne's shooting, among scant reports in which someone faced with a gun was roused to fury on behalf of not just "me" but "us."

The response was the same. The gunman first tried to shoot duFresne's friend, Mary Jane Gibson, but the gun apparently jammed. He then shot duFresne in the chest and she fell to the pavement, dying.

Yesterday, as the police hunted the killer and his cohorts through the cold, the blood in the dirty snow prompted me to write some words that duFresne will not be able to: Until we do something about handguns there will be no real safety even in the safest big city in the safer America

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/276153p-236477c.html

[huntsman]

Oh, how different this story might have been had one of her party been carrying a weapon of their own. Bullies and cowards thrive on the fearful, unarmed citizens of this planet. They feel powerful when they can pull a trigger, or threaten to pull one, with the knowledge that they are not in harm's way. Somewhere I read that something like 80% of all incidents  where a defender merely showed a weapon resulted in a hasty retreat of the criminal.

Never mind that the heroine taunted a gun-toting cowardly teen on a rough city street with an incredibly stupid provocation. Never mind the issue that the assailants were using an illegal weapon in an illegal act, lest we jeopardize the argument that laws prevent crime. Let's simply take the handguns away from the assailants. Instead, let's say the assailants instead must arm themselves with a deadly weapon of a non-handgun variety. Let's be crude and just say they all had pipes, and our heroine instead uttered, "What are going to do, beat us with your pipes?" A single well-placed blow to the head would have left her just as dead. A determined person with just a little training in hand-to-hand combat could have choked the life out of her with bare hands or a handkerchief.

Will there ever be an end to the inventiveness of the criminal in devising a tool that gives him or her an advantage in lethal combat? The problem lies not in the tools of combat, but in basic instinct of lesser humans to resort to combat as a self-justified means to their twisted ends. Until we address this issue, the tools of combat will remain simply an interesting diversion.

Meanwhile, it would make a lot more sense if the common, law-abiding person were permitted, in fact encouraged, to carry their own efficient tool of combat to level the playing field should the need arise. Instead we strip these figurative soldiers of all armament and march them into battle armed only with legislation that protects the criminal and a weak system of enforcement. Little wonder why the barbarians beseige our streets.

[pinduck]

Huntsman very well said, thats why I have a CCW permit and always carry. But to be prepared one must practice, practice, and practice. Find the best combination of firearm and gear then learn how to use it instinctively.

[Graybeard]

Until we do something about handguns there will be no real safety even in the safest big city in the safer America

Man I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what we need to do. We need to put those handguns in the hands of the potential victims. Then we'd see the potential perps looking for an easier and safer way to make a living. It's been proven by statistics that in areas where the number of folks carrying concealed weapons goes up crime goes down.

[IntrepidWizard]

Speaking of only Britain look at their violent crime rate,it is going up and up and home invasions are up and successful.

[FWiedner]

New York, New York, the gun control utopia.

It always amazes me that whining sissies like the author of this piece always come to the conclusion that if only the perpetrator HAD NOT been armed that the crime would not have occurred.  Chances are he would have found another tool with which to do his dirty deeds.

The light just never seems to pop on that if the victim(s) HAD been armed and been able to respond to defend themselves in kind, that there is every liklihood that the crime would not have occurred either.

Thugs tend to limit their activity when they don't know who is armed and who is not.

[Nightrain52]

Put hand in purse, faint click while perp is trying to unjam his gun, POW. Problem overwith. Of course being in New York city you would have been taken to jail for a gun violation. What does it take to get it in these peoples minds?

[jackfish]

The victim in these instances do not actually have to be armed.  Only that the citizen could be armed is enough to turn the tide.  In those places where the citizen can carry these occurrences have all but disappeared.  In those places where the citizen is restricted from protecting themselves and others these things will continue.

[unspellable]

Victims yes.  But victims of what?  The anti-gun crowd would say they were victims of the gun.  I'd say it's a tough call whether they were victims of the thugs, New York City and its laws, or a society that seeks to "educate" people out of basic self defense.

[williamlayton]

These folks were not a victim of weapons. These folks were victims of Folks bent on criminal behavior.
Blessings