The Buffalo News, Inc. - June 15, 2005

THE GUN BATTLE
FROM THE MEAN STREETS TO CONGRESSIONAL HALLS, THE FIGHT OVER GUN CONTROL VERSUS CITIZENS' RIGHTS

By DAN HERBECK, LOU MICHEL and SUSAN SCHULMAN, News Staff Reporters

Budd Schroeder and Taurean Smith never met, but if they did, they'd have a lot to talk about.

Both men are big Second Amendment supporters.

"Everyone should have the right to have a gun," Smith says. "You are only trying to protect yourself."

"I have more than three guns," Schroeder says. "I am not violent or a danger to anyone."

Despite their common ground, these men are polar opposites. Schroeder, 69, lives in Lancaster and uses guns he legally purchased for recreation and sport. Smith, 22, lived on Buffalo's East Side and used guns he obtained illegally - including one of James Nigel Bostic's guns - to shoot people. He's now in prison.

Schroeder and Smith represent the seemingly unyielding dilemma in the gun control debate: How do you keep guns away from gun runners and shooters like Bostic and Smith without violating the rights of honest gun lovers like Schroeder and his friends?

It's among the most polarizing debates of our time - one of the hot button issues that divides America into Red States and Blue States. At this moment, gun rights advocates are having their day on Capitol Hill and at the White House, but given the political nature of the debate, that's a changing dynamic.

And people like Smith and Bostic, sitting in their sparse prison cells, are a part of that debate, as are Schroeder and others in the powerful National Rifle Association, sitting comfortably in their homes and offices.

Guns are easy to get

At Five Point Correctional Facility, Smith talks about drug dealers like himself needing guns for protection and how easy it is to buy guns on the street. He's had about 15 guns in his lifetime, he says.

"Guns come and go," Smith said. "You gotta stay with a gun. You never know when you're going to need it."

A few years ago, Smith had a 9 mm Hi-Point handgun that was among the almost 250 Bostic sold on Buffalo streets. Smith won't say how he got it, or how much he paid for it, but he does talk about the day he got arrested with it.

A friend was picking Smith up at his Best Street home for summer school on Aug. 9, 2000 when gunshots rang out. Fearing his friend was hit, Smith emerged from the house firing his 9 mm Hi-Point toward a group of people waiting at a bus stop. His target was a 15-year-old Smith claimed shot at his home.

"I wanted to kill his ass," Smith said,

No one was injured. Smith was arrested, and served two years in prison. Shortly after being released, he was arrested again on an attempted robbery charge, and sent to Five Points Correctional Facility in the Finger Lakes.

Others in prison for shooting Bostic guns tell similar stories.

Raymond Miller, 26, bought one of Bostic's Hi-Points guns for $350.

"It was cheap," Miller recalled. "They were hot."

When some of his friends mocked the pistol, saying it probably didn't work, Miller fired the gun four times into the air. He was arrested.

Walter Knightner, 25, is also in prison for shooting one of Bostic's Hi-Point guns. Authorities said he fired the gun at four cops. No one was injured.

"Guns," Knightner said, "are easy to get."

Gun control advocates say it doesn't have to be that way. Tougher laws, they say, would discourage gun traffickers like Bostic from bringing weapons into Buffalo, making it more difficult for people like Smith, Miller and Knightner to buy weapons on the streets.

Friends in high places

Federal law enforcement and gun control advocates generally agree on how to help stem the seemingly endless supply of illegal guns on city streets.

Federal laws should be enacted, they say, limiting the number of guns a person can buy in a day, or perhaps a month.

"Why does someone need 25 guns in one day?" asked Eric Howard, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence.

Also needed, gun control proponents say, is improved oversight at gun shows - giving federal law enforcement more authority to police them and requiring all buyers at the shows to go through criminal background checks, even those involved in private sales.

A national gun licensing law to replace the state-by-state patchwork that now exists is also needed, they say.

"It makes it much tougher on New York law enforcement when the U.S. government doesn't do its job, because bad people can go to a nearby state like Ohio and bring guns back to New York State," said U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.

Such proposals, however, are quickly shot down by gun rights groups, fearful that handgun regulations represent a step toward taking away their right to have a gun for hunting, target practice or self protection.

"What we have found throughout history is when you talk universal gun registration, the purpose of the registration is confiscation," said Schroeder, a local gun advocate who is a member of the NRA Board of Directors.

Gun control, the NRA argues, discourages honest people from buying and selling guns, but won't stop criminals from getting and using them.

"The only universe of people that gun control laws affect are law-abiding citizens," said Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA's public affairs director. "The criminals by definition break the law and will find a way to go around the law or deal in the black market."

Arulanandam's words carry a lot of weight in Washington, D.C. With four million members and many powerful supporters in Congress, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the NRA in recent years has succeeded in getting the nation's assault weapons ban repealed, reducing regulations on gun dealers and keeping records on crime guns secret from the public.

"The gun lobby has a fantastic friend in George W. Bush, and in Congress too," said Brown, from the Brady Campaign. "The leaders in this Congress and the administration are willing to listen to and do everything the gun lobby asks them to do."

It was named America's most powerful lobbying group in a recent survey of congressional members, but the NRA says its power is overstated. The group says it isn't doing anything different from other Washington lobbies.

The NRA's political contributions, however, total as much as $4 million in national elections. Its contributions are among the largest of any interest group, and more than 10 times greater than contributions from gun control supporters, election records show.

The roots of violence

Gun proponents say they too are concerned with urban violence, but that the answer is to enforce existing laws, not pass news ones.

"There are approximately 20,000 gun laws on the books. We need to strictly enforce the laws," said U.S. Rep. Michael Turner, a Republican whose district takes in the Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio, where Bostic purchased an arsenal of guns that he sold on Buffalo streets. "When those who choose to break these laws realize they will be punished, we will begin to reduce the number of people willing to engage in illegal activities."

Beyond that, gun supporters say, government must address the underlying causes of urban violence. "The best thing is to start by helping people raise their children," said Schroeder.

"If you can't stop children from being abused, when we have babies having babies, if you don't grow up learning responsibility, we will breed a whole new generation of criminals," he said.

Some criminals agree with Schroeder. "There aren't any jobs, no recreation, no place for kids to go," said Smith, who has 15 brothers and sisters, and has lived on his own since age 16. "This is how it starts. There is nothing for the little kids, only a park with one basketball court, and the fighting starts over the court."

Miller shares that view, saying he learned the drug trade from a crack house in his neighborhood. "Older kids hanging out there, they needed someone (to sell crack) and I volunteered," he said. "I thought it was normal."

Knightner has a similar story. He started dealing drugs at 13 and considers a gun part of drug dealer's street gear.

The continued violence in his neighborhood is a government conspiracy to promote black-on-black crime, he said.

"Drugs and guns," Knightner said. "It's been that way for so long. They want to kill the black race."

His street view has a supporter in academia.

"There's little doubt that there is big business in supplying guns to vulnerable people," said Peter K.B. St. Jean, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo, who specializes in law and society. "This big business often functions in very unscrupulous and racially biased ways, and some might add it fits into a form of genocide."

St. Jean believes government could slow the flow of guns into troubled urban neighborhoods if it had the desire.

"If you can find Saddam Hussein in a hole, you can remove guns from urban streets in America, if you want to," said St. Jean.

Some of the criminals aren't so sure.

"There ain't no solution," Smith said. "You can't end the violence."

"I don't know what it would be like to get rid of the violence," said Knightner. "I always look at it as there will always be violence."

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