No end in sight to US guns horror

By ROGER FRANKLIN

NEW YORK - Jimmy Foye, if that is his current alias, was not taking callers this week.

This was a pity because it is impossible to report what the paroled paedophile thought of the Million Mom March that descended on Washington to demand that America end its long and lethal love affair with the gun.

"Get lost!" was the only comment to crackle over the vestibule intercom at the rundown Manhattan apartment building that has sheltered the convicted molester and sometime mugger since his release from prison.

Jimmy, or "Jimmy Mook" as they used to call him at the betting shop on West 23rd St, was deaf to all subsequent pleas - including a reminder that once we had enjoyed a nodding familiarity. He was not a certified hazard to public safety back then, a man whose face, name and address are now posted with an official warning on the Internet.

Before he was convicted of raping a 13-year-old boy, he was but another of the low lifes who infested my local horse parlour, a pest who had made a career of cadging small "loans" from more astute punters.

On the subject of gun control, Jimmy's perspective would have been invaluable. How does he feel about the National Rifle Association's argument that the solution to crime is for more Americans to go armed? How would he react to the possibility that a future victim just might be packing heat?

The next questions would have dealt with Jimmy's new status as one of the Internet's most reluctant celebrities. Does his notoriety on the Web give him a taste of the same fear he has inflicted on others? After all, it would be so easy for a former victim, an outraged parent or vigilante to come looking for him: Log on, download Jimmy's address, set an ambush and pull the trigger.

It has happened repeatedly in other states, where cyber-posted sex offenders have been burned out of their homes, shot at, beaten and shunned. If Jimmy has any sense beyond the rat cunning he employed to lure his last young victim into a cheap hotel, he should keep glancing over his shoulder.

Some folks, inmate advocates and civil libertarians for the most part, do not think it is fair. But then a lot of people are nursing grievances in America these days about guns, crime and frequent police failures to protect the public.

Those million marching moms had a bone to pick with the Founding Fathers, who enshrined the right to bear arms in the Constitution. It must have been a mistake, they assured each other as speakers at the Washington rally invoked the ghosts of the Columbine school massacre.

"Rubbish!" responded the gun lovers, who assembled elsewhere in Washington to quote Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. "The pistol and the rifle are to be revered" as "vital instruments" of democracy, wrote Hamilton, whose enthusiasm for sidearms came to an ironic conclusion when he was shot dead in a duel by rival Aaron Burr.

To the NRA and its 20 million members, the police and politicians are the real villains. Every sensible citizen should pack a weapon, they say, because society's protectors so often fail to do their job. It sounds ridiculous - a theory worthy of All in the Family's Archie Bunker, who once suggested that the best way to foil aircraft hijackers would be to hand every passenger a gun when they stepped on board. But live under the gun in America for a while and somehow, in some strange and insidious way, it all begins to make a kind of twisted, seductive sense.

"Take the guns from good people," said NRA chief Charlton Heston, "and pretty soon only the bad people will have guns. We have more than 20,000 gun laws on the books in this country and they are not being enforced. More than two thousand students were caught taking guns to school last year alone and do you know how many of those were prosecuted? The answer is 13! We don't need more laws that won't be enforced. We need to enforce the ones we have already. We need the politicians to stop posturing and employ common sense."

Jimmy's new life after the Big House makes a good case for its scarcity. Though he has a known weakness for children, the authorities have allowed him to live less than a block from the local primary school. True, there is a police station across the street. But as long as the ex-con reports to his parole officer, neither cops nor neighbours can give him a hard time.

And it is also true that there was an awful lot of political grandstanding going on at the march, which was organised by the sister-in-law of Hillary Clinton's intimate friend and Whitewater lawyer, Susan Thomases. The strategy, as Democratic operatives admit, has been to stop Republicans closing the so-called gender gap. Through two terms and countless scandals, a majority of women has stuck with President Bill Clinton like glue. Now the polls show many are looking kindly at Republican contender George W. Bush.

"Keeping the mothers of America on the Democratic team is obviously a top priority," a party functionary admitted. "We want the moms to know that there will never be meaningful gun control with a Republican Administration."

But can guns ever be banished from a country that boasts more weapons than people? There are laws against drugs but they are available on street corners all over town. Why should firearms be any different? Yet it is equally hard to accept the NRA's view that Americans must routinely arm themselves as if for a bad day in Beirut.

Particularly for this reporter, who 18 years ago became the illegal owner of a black and battered, snub-nosed .38 special, the sort off-duty cops carry in their ankle holsters. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. A young woman who lived in the apartment above my own had just been raped by a midnight intruder. Fear gripped the building. Some residents refused to open their windows at night. Others had alarms installed, or turned their homes into virtual prisons with bars on every window. One woman bought a Doberman.

Me, I purchased a gun from an Irish guy in a local bar. Even with its broken grip and taped butt, it was a satisfying presence in the hand. And yet the weapon was a total failure as an antidote for fear. Even tucked behind the pillow, its presence dominated my home. Would I be able to get off a shot before an intruder wrested it away? Would I have the guts to pull the trigger and then face criminal charges? What if it was stolen and used to shoot some innocent third party? So, six weeks after bringing it home, I consigned it to the East River and ordered a set of window bars.

No doubt Charlton Heston would have disapproved, which I can live with. Far more unsettling is what Jimmy Foye might have said. I am pretty sure it would have been a contemptuous "Sucker!" - followed by a gloating grin at the thought of one more potential victim who would no longer be in a position to cause him serious grief.

If someone can square that circle, America's nightmare with guns may end. Until then, Washinton is always ready for a photogenic protest march.