enter private practice. But this year, when Sandy Hook re-energized evangelists of gun prohibition, Shapiro felt he had to respond. He began rummaging
through Justice Depart- ment statistics on homi- cides in the district, com- paring homicide levels during the gun ban to what happened after the restric- tions were lifted. The diff er- ence was striking. The D.C. gun ban was
enacted in 1976. That year, there were 188 homicides in the district. In a good year, about 60 percent of D.C. homicides stem from gun violence; in a bad year, it can account for over 80 per- cent of murders. By 1988, despite the
I grew up on a farm in Alabama. I can remember my dad putting me on his shoulders and going into the granary
and shooting a mouse that was eating grain. I can remember watching him for a long time before he shot it, because I was actually on his shoulders. I remember one day he put a nonsafety match
strict gun laws, D.C.’s annual homicide toll had jumped to 369. The high- water mark came in 1991, when a staggering 482 homicides occurred. That’s when some cynics began to joke D.C. stood for “Dodge City.” Eight out of 10 slay- ings that year involved a fi rearm, The Washington Post reported. Part of the problem, Shapiro
says, was that police resources were diverted from fi ghting crime to enforcing gun laws. He says D.C. police created a special Gun Recovery Unit in 1995, meaning offi cers would spend time grabbing guns from otherwise law-abiding citizens. In one four-month crack- down, offi cers only managed to stumble across 282 guns in a city of over half a million residents. After 1991, the murder numbers
gradually declined. Police attribut- ed it to the aging crack population.
in a railroad tie at my grandmother’s, right behind the house. And he went back quite a distance. As a young child, I could hardly even see over his shoulders when he was kneeling. He took a long time to shoot. But when he shot, he lit the match, and that just impressed the hell out of me. It wasn’t until I was years older that I realized what the man was doing and how he did it, that with one shot he lit a match quite a distance away with a rifle. And just before he passed away, I could put him on my shoulders and take him hunting. I went from me riding on his shoulders, to putting him in a Lincoln Continental and taking him groundhog hunting. He was in the Army, so he carved his dog tag number in the rifle. I still have that rifle today. And I will pass it on to my son.”
— Dave Butz
retired NFL defensive lineman, fi rearms instructor, NRA board member
In 2008, the year the ban was overturned, the grisly murder stats dropped to 186. Last year, only 88 homicides occurred in the district — the lowest number in the past half-century, D.C. police reported. Shapiro concedes that there
are many factors that infl uence homicide statistics: crime and law enforcement trends, medical inno- vations, and population changes. But as Shapiro related in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed in January, this much was clear: Fears that lifting the gun ban would touch off a spike in gun deaths proved unfounded. “I guess in a way it sort
of saddened me,” he says when he saw the numbers. “Because I’d like to believe that there is some kind of simple solution to this. A simple solution would be, Hey, we take more guns out of circulation, we reduce violence.
“Unfortunately, it
doesn’t seem to work out that way. I have to admit when I looked at those numbers, I sort of felt a sinking feeling in my heart. Because for a while, it was my job to champion it on some level. I have to admit, I could have felt vindicated. But on some level, I just sort of felt sad.” If, as Shapiro and the
Supreme Court suggested, the Second Amendment occupied the rational high ground in the debate over gun control, Second Amendment champions harbored no illusions that reason alone would prevail. From New York to Califor- nia, from Maine to the tip of Florida, gun-rights pro-
ponents spoke as if this gun-grab frenzy were the most existentially threatening ever. In New York, The Journal
News published an interactive map that listed the names and home addresses of all Westches- ter and Rockland County pistol permit holders. Rockland law offi - cers condemned the map, which included the names of corrections offi cers, stating it endangered lives. The newspaper removed the interactive map, but not before some of the homes listed on the map were raided by burglars look- ing for guns. Gun owners felt fur-
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