Responsible Firearms Ownership 

By Neal Knox

    WASHINGTON, D.C. (Sept. 12) --  Terrorists took advantage of
the ultimate "gun free zone" yesterday morning to bring the nation
to its knees.

    The stupid notion that evil, vicious killers can be deterred
by preventing law-abiding American citizens from having guns made
it easy for terrorists who were armed with nothing more than small
knives.

     With those small knives a handful of well-trained kamikaze
warriors -- backed by anonymous multi-national powers -- killed and
wounded many thousands of Americans, utterly destroyed the World
Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, shut down the entire airline
system, closed the stock market, crippled the nation's
communications network and sent a warning that more is to come.

    Yesterday's terrorist success will inspire more efforts, and
countless more Holy Jihad warriors ready to kill and transport
themselves to a bevy of virgins in Paradise.  Sure that's an
unverified conclusion, but what terrorists except muslim fanatics
use suicide bombers?

    Terrorism always escalates.  Yesterday was a few small knives.

Tomorrow may be a crude nuclear device in a shipping container, or
a vial of sarin or anthrax spilled in America's heartland.

    Other terrorists -- not political terrorists but individuals
who spread terror just as effectively -- have also taken advantage
of "gun-free zones": in U.S. Post Offices, in offices like 101
California Ave., in churches like the Baptist congregation in Fort
Worth, in restaurants like Luby's in Killeen, and most heart-
wrenching of all, in schools like Stockton and Columbine.

    Yet in the next few days political opportunists like Charles
Schumer and Dianne Feinstein will do their utmost to create more
"gun-free zones."

    It will probably start as soon as the recessed Congress
convenes, for the Commerce, Justice and State Appropriations bill
-- always a target for restrictive gun amendments -- is on the
Senate floor.

    People became afraid to fly -- one of the objects of
yesterday's terrorists -- during the plague of skyjackings in the
early 1970's.  The government's quick fix was to hire Sky Marshals
who, anonymously but with great publicity, rode airliners at
random, prepared to shoot any would-be skyjacker.

    That dampened the enthusiasm to divert an airliner to Cuba,
though I don't remember any Sky Marshal firing a shot.

    Sky Marshals were replaced by the "permanent fix," the costly,
airline passenger screening system which is easily evaded -- as
shown in numerous television exposes, countless government tests,
and yesterday's horrors.

    The present security system, which Congress mandated but made
airline passengers pay for, created "gun-free cockpits."

    That put a stop to many airline pilots' personal anti-
skyjacking system: a Chief's Special .38 tucked among the charts
and approach plates in the pilots' "brain bags."

    The randomly armed pilots system could have stopped -- or made
more difficult -- yesterday's skyjackings with knives.

    At minimum, flight crews with the skills and desire to protect
themselves, their passengers and innocents on the ground should
immediately be allowed to have the means to do it.

    There will be an orgy of anti-terrorism bills in Congress,
and like the last one -- after the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing  --
drawing every cockamamie gun proposal imaginable.

    The new anti-terrorism bills, just like like the ones before,
will undoubtedly call for further expansion of government powers
and blatantly disregard personal freedoms -- not just the Second
Amendment but the Fourth, Fifth and other Constitutional
protections.

    This morning's Washington Post flashed Congress a green light
with an overnight poll that allegedly showed "Two in three were
willing to surrender 'some of the liberties we have in this
country' to crack down on terrorism."

    And if that happens, the terrorists -- who hate the freedoms
this nation still enjoys -- will have won.

    The way to defeat them is not to circumscribe Americans'
freedoms, but the freedom of the terrorists -- by Congress formally
declaring war on the terrorist organizations and their backer
states.

   Forget the legalism by which we ask a world court to try the
terrorists' colleagues and sponsors, as we did in the Pan Am 103
bombing.

   Make war, as war is being waged against us, on the known anti-
American terrorism groups.  And not just against front men like
Osama Bin Laden.

     Yesterday's horrors were too expensive, too well-planned and
coordinated to have been conceived and carried out by any one
individual or group.  Governments must have been involved, and we
can find out who -- if we have the courage, and the willingness to
defend ourselves against the war being waged against us.