Chapter 11
Guns and Gun Control
By David J. Krajicek

			In this chapter
			• Introduction • The American Gun Conundrum    Second Opinion    Gun Heritage    The American Soul    Guns: A Health Issue    Attitude Changes?    Mitchell Johnson • Gun Basics    How Many Guns?    Guns and Crime    Gun Manufacturers    Brief History of Guns • Gun Cases • Gun and the Laws    1911    1934    1938    1968    1977    1986    1987    1993    1994    1997    1998    2003    2004    2005    2006    2007 • 2nd Amendment    Brady Center’s Perspective    NRA’s Perspective • ATFE, Gun Groups    The ATFE    National Rifle      Association    Brady Center to Prevent      Gun Violence    Mayors Against Illegal      Guns    Other Organizations

Gun Cases

A timeline and thumbnails of some of the country’s seminal firearms cases:

• Feb. 14, 1929: Six members of Bugs Moran’s gang and an innocent bystander were gunned down in a Chicago garage by members of Al Capone’s rival gang. The shooting was one of the gangster-era atrocities that gave impetus to the National Firearms Act of 1934.
• Nov. 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, a misfit with a fixation on Russia who bought the rifle used in the murder by mail order under a false name.
• Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Whitman, a student and Marine, shot and killed his mother, then climbed a tower at the University of Texas in Austin and opened fire. He killed 15 and wounded 31 before police shot him.
• April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by rifleman James Earl Ray while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, touching off riots in 60 American cities.
• June 6, 1968: Robert F. Kennedy was murdered at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan, a pistol-wielding Palestinian. The slayings of King and Kennedy provided the impetus for the Gun Control Act of 1968.
• 1976-77: David Berkowitz, a deranged man who became known as the “Son of Sam,” shot and killed six young people in a serial murder case that terrified New York. The case led to laws denying financial gain by criminals capitalizing on their notoriety through books and films.
• March 30, 1981: President Reagan, two law enforcers and presidential press secretary James Brady were shot and wounded in Washington by John Hinckley, an unstable young man trying to attract the attention of the actress Jodie Foster. The shooting led Brady and his wife, Sarah, to become leading advocates against handgun violence.
• July 18, 1984: Spraying shots from a 9mm Uzi, James Huberty, 41, killed 21 and wounded 19 at a McDonald’s restaurant near San Diego. Huberty, who had been fired from a security job a week before, was killed by a police sharpshooter.
• Aug. 20, 1986: In a mass murder that inspired the term “going postal,” Patrick Sherrill shot and killed 14 colleagues and himself at a post office in Edmond, Okla.
• Jan. 17, 1989: Patrick Purdy, an emotionally disturbed drifter, used an AK-47 combat rifle to murder 5 children and wound 30 others at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif. Purdy killed himself. The shooting led to calls for a ban on assault rifles. A federal moratorium on the manufacture of certain types of the weapons was enacted in 1994, but it was allowed to expire in 2004.
• Oct. 16, 1991: A suicidal George Hennard drove a truck into Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, then calmly walked about the place shooting customers and employees. He killed 24 and wounded 20 in what until 2007 was the most deadly incident of gun violence by a single shooter in American history. The shooting led Texas to approve a right-to-carry gun law.
• April 20, 1999: Alienated teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a rampage at Columbine High School near Denver, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 24 others before committing suicide. The shootings ushered in a new era in which schools across the country began screening for weapons and psychological problems and adapting a no-tolerance policy for threats.
• 2002: John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo, the “Beltway snipers,” murdered 10 people—most in random sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area—as part of a Quixotic plan to extort money from the government. Muhammad was convicted and condemned to die, and Malvo got life in prison. The Brady Center sued the snipers and two firearms firms on behalf of the victims under the District of Columbia’s Assault Weapons Manufacturing Strict Liability Act, a 1990 initiative that holds gun-makers liable for violence committed with their weapons. In 2004, Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply, the Tacoma, Wash., shop where Malvo shoplifted the murder weapon, and Bushmaster Firearms, the Maine manufacturer of the rifle, contributed to a $2.5 million out-of-court settlement that was regarded as landmark.
• April 16, 2007: Another disaffected youth, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 27 students and five professors and wounded 61 at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. Cho was approved for gun purchases even though he had a history of mental problems that should have disqualified him. The diagnosis was not forwarded to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Politicians later took action that they said closed this “loophole.” The pro-gun lobby said lives could have been saved if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.

Continue to the next page in "Chapter 11: Guns and Gun Control " >>>
<<< Return to the previous page in "Chapter 11: Guns and Gun Control "