-Caveat Lector-
Brothers and Sisters: Please distribute far and wide!
Shogun-Era Japan
The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their
possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The
possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and
dues, and tends to permit uprising.
-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Shogun of Japan, August 29, 1558.
NRA, Protesters Face Off in Denver
By JOHN HENDREN AP National Writer
DENVER (AP) -- The National Rifle Association defiantly took aim today at
the media and gun control advocates, while a human chain of protesters
shouted anti-gun slogans and denounced the group for meeting so soon after
the Columbine High School massacre.
NRA President Charlton Heston demanded an end to ``this cycle of
tragedy-driven hatred'' and said gun owners were not to blame for the April
20 shootings.
``We're often cast as the villain,'' said Heston, who wore a blue Columbine
memorial ribbon on his lapel. ``That is not our role in American society and
we will not be forced to play it.''
While 2,500 people attended the NRA's annual meeting, about 8,000
demonstrators gathered outside. A rabbi asked the protesters to work to make
the streets, their homes and their schools safe.
``After Columbine anything is possible,'' said Rabbi Stephen Foster of
Littleton, home of the school where two young gunmen killed a dozen fellow
students, a teacher and themselves.
``It's much too easy to blame the NRA for last week,'' he told the
protesters, who gathered at the state Capitol before marching to the
convention site at a nearby hotel.
``It was not the NRA that took guns into that school,'' Foster said. ``We
have to look to ourselves, too.''
The demonstrators carried signs that read ``Shame on the NRA,'' and ``NRA,
Pusher of Child Killer Machines,'' among others. One placard displayed the
picture of a Columbine shooting victim.
The gathering by the NRA, the nation's largest group of gun owners, was
planned long before the Columbine melee. It was scaled back -- its gun show
was canceled -- but thousands of students, gun-control groups and local
leaders still have a message: Get out.
Handgun opponents have planned protests in more than a dozen cities, from
Atlanta to Seattle. Protests were also planned in Johannesburg; Tokyo;
London; Vienna, Austria; Sydney, Australia; and Auckland, New Zealand.
The NRA, which elected Heston as its president last year, refused to cancel
the conference, saying that as a nonprofit group it was required to hold an
annual meeting.
It did cut back the meeting from three days to one, canceled
drink-and-dinner festivities, removed billboard advertisements and
jettisoned plans for an exhibition in a 170,000-square-foot hall where 350
gun makers and other exhibitors were to sell their wares.
For protesters and several lawmakers, that wasn't enough. Denver Mayor
Wellington Webb called the NRA two days after the April 20 shooting to
uninvite the group.
``When a community is grieving and going through a mourning, when you have
more than 65,000 people showing up for services and people are burying these
kids, you shouldn't have a meeting that talks about selling more guns,''
Webb said after the shootings.
``I don't know how many times you have to call and tell them they're not
welcome,'' he added Friday.
Attendance is expected to be low. The gun show at the Jefferson County
fairgrounds was canceled ``due to politics,'' as its host put it.
Investigators said some of the four weapons used by the two teen-age gunmen
in Littleton were bought at a gun show.
NRA spokesman Bill Powers concedes the timing of the meeting couldn't be
worse: ``It's a difficult situation for everyone involved in any way.''
The meeting site bore no NRA signs when the first registrants arrived this
week. Powers said the group has no plans to heighten security.
``People have a right to express their views in a peaceful manner,'' he said
of the critics. ``That's one of the great freedoms of this country. They
have as much right to their opinions as NRA members do.''
Aaron Cohn, 15, remains loyal to the group despite having had a shotgun
leveled at his head as he lay on the floor of the Columbine library. He
believes he survived only because a girl jumped on his back, covering the
baseball slogan on his shirt. The gunmen began their assault on the library
by shouting: ``All jocks stand up! We're going to kill every one of you.''
The gunmen spared Cohn, however, and moved on to another victim.
``It's not the guns, it's the people,'' said Cohn, who owns two shotguns and
a rifle. ``These guys were just sick in the head.''
AP-NY-05-01-99 1418EDT1
------------------------------
There is no reason for anyone in this country -- anyone except a police
officer or a military person -- to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun
... The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the
guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.
--- Michael Gardner, president of NBC News,
in USA Today, January 16, 1992.
Bard
Visit me at:
The Center for Exposing Corruption in the Federal Government
http://www.xld.com/public/center/center.htm
Federal Government defined:
....a benefit/subsidy protection racket!
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