Not Enough Guns in Washington, DC

(Springfield, VA) — “The recent murder of Allen Price in Washington, DC underscores a simple fact of life in the nation’s capital: there are not enough guns in town,” said GOA’s Executive Director Larry Pratt in a statement issued today.

“The criminals have all they want. The good guys have been disarmed by law, and the criminals love it. They are so brazen that they feel free to gun down a man pumping gas in broad daylight as was the fate of Allen Price.

“Taxi Commissioner Sandra Seegars has called for arming cabbies. That would be a good first step.

“The typical objection to citizens carrying guns was heard from Tony Bullock, a spokesman for DC Mayor Anthony Williams: “…you don’t solve a problem of that nature by distributing hand guns to thousands of people who have no training how to use them.”

“The Mayor and Mr. Bullock are dead wrong. If they were correct, then Fairfax County, Virginia across the river from Washington should have a murder rate in excess of DC’s scandalous 41 per 100,000. Fairfax, an urban county of 1,000,000 has a murder rate of a little over 1 per 100,000. Thousands of people have handguns and they have had minimal or no training at all.

“Many people were shocked that Price would be allowed to lie dying with no one rushing to help him, not even making a call to 911 for over 30 minutes. Comparisons were made, rightly, to the shocking murder of Kitty Genovese decades ago in New York City. In her case dozens of people heard her being murdered during her last terrifying 30 minutes of life and did not even call 911.

“Why would people not want to be involved? Because they might get hurt by weapon-wielding assailants.

“If witnesses were armed, they just might get involved, unlike the folks who have been disarmed by law in New York City and in Washington, DC.

“In Arizona, a state in which citizens may easily get a permit to carry a concealed firearm, an armed citizen came to the aid of Phoenix police in 1999 and prevented drug dealers from fleeing back to Mexico. When Rory Vertigan saw shots fired at Officer Marc Atkinson, Rory used his own gun to shoot the assailant and helped to capture the getaway driver.

“But of course, in Washington, DC and NY City, Rory would have been prohibited by law from doing what he did in Phoenix. He would have been arrested for having an unlicensed gun,” Pratt concluded.