Responsible Firearms Ownership 

                   WASHINGTON, DC --
                   Congratulations to Janet Reno: She finally
                   managed to "rescue" a child without burning him to death.

                   "Elian Gonzalez is lucky to be alive -- since, for Attorney
                   General Janet Reno, compassion is all too often a death
                   sentence, and justice is just another word for no one left to
                   kill," said Ron Crickenberger, the party's political director.

                   "Elian Gonzalez's mother died trying to escape from Fidel
                   Castro. We should be grateful that Elian Gonzalez didn't die
                   trying to escape from Janet Reno -- since Reno's last rescue
                   attempt left 24 children dead in the inferno in Waco, Texas."

                   On the Saturday before Easter, a SWAT team of Immigration
                   and Naturalization Service agents -- dressed in paramilitary
                   uniforms and armed with MP-5 submachine guns -- kicked down
                   the door of the home in Miami where Elian Gonzalez, the
                   6-year-old defector from Cuba, was staying with relatives.

                   The boy was taken from relatives at gunpoint, and then
                   whisked by government jet to an Air Force base near
                   Washington, DC, where he was reunited with his father. Reno
                   said the armed incursion was necessary after negotiations with
                   relatives stalled.

                   But, said Crickenberger, Libertarians have to ask: Was this
                   really the only way to resolve what is ultimately nothing more
                   than a complicated child custody dispute?

                   "Is this the kind of America we want: Where armed,
                   paramilitary federal agents kick down doors in pre-dawn raids?
                   Where excessive force seems to be the first option? Where the
                   Justice Department can authorize such a raid without a
                   judicial order? And where Janet Reno can place a child's life at
                   risk -- just a trigger's pull away from sudden death -- to 'save'
                   him from relatives who, right or wrong, seem to want the best
                   for him?"

                   And another important question, said Crickenberger: Should
                   Janet Reno be in the business of returning children to a
                   country that our own government considers a "terrorist"
                   nation?

                   "According to the State Department, Cuba is a terrorist state,"
                   he said. "Why would our government use terrorist-style tactics
                   to return a child to a terrorist state?"

                   And according to Human Rights Watch, Fidel Castro's
                   government:
 

•                       Has executed at least 15,000 political opponents since
•                       coming to power.
•                       Makes it a crime to distribute Bibles, spread "unauthorized
•                       news," or "insult dead heroes."
•                       Restricts fundamental human rights such as the right of
•                       expression, association, assembly, movement, and the
•                       press.
•                       Imprisons or kills people for the crime of "illegal exit" --
•                       trying to leave the country.
•                       Requires parents to raise children with "Communist
•                       personalities." If parents stray from the official ideology,
•                       they can be charged with the crime of "hindering the
•                       normal development of the child."

                   The Libertarian Party tends not to take sides in child custody
                   cases, said Crickenberger, and Libertarians can disagree about
                   the proper outcome of the Elian Gonzalez case.

                   "But every Libertarian would probably agree that the boy
                   would be better off if the federal government stayed out of
                   the case -- and allowed it to be settled by family members
                   who love the boy, or by a family court, or by an impartial
                   arbitrator," he said.

                   "And every Libertarian would probably agree that, given her
                   track record, Janet Reno shouldn't be allowed to intervene in
                   any case where a child is at risk -- since too many children
                   have died already because of Janet Reno's so-called
                   compassion."