Reporter Norm Parish and
Reporter Dawn Fallik of the
St. Louis Post Dispatch

October 26, 2001


I was dismayed at the story published in A-section on Friday, October 26, titled “BB handguns create problems for police.” Quite frankly, it is ludicrous that a toy is being elevated to the status of a deadly weapon. First off, I’m sure you both are very responsible reporters. But I must conclude that neither of you have any experience whatsoever with firearms. Because quite frankly, anyone that has fired a real handgun would have laughed at the claims of East St. Louis Detective John Baum, and St. Louis Police Chief Joseph Mokwa.

It may surprise you, but I assure you it is true that there are many in law enforcement that have less knowledge about guns, even those that they carry, than many citizen gun owners. I assure you that law enforcement officers {LEO’s} that seriously deal with firearms and the people that misuse them, such as Special Agents for the ATF, FBI, and SWAT would have repudiated statements of danger and lethality made by East St. Louis Detective John Baum.

I have .22 & 9mm handguns and a Daisy BB gun. BB guns are powered by compressed air, not the explosive force of a cartridge. The power difference between a .22 and a BB gun is enormous. A handgun must be fired at a gun range, such as Bullseye on Manchester Road. A BB gun can be shot in one’s own basement. A few simple precautions and a backstop made from any reasonably thick hardbound book will suffice for recreational plinking with a Daisy BB gun.

There are more differences than similarities between a handgun and a BB gun. For a LEO to be killed by a BB gun would require an almost mystical aiming ability by the thug coupled with monumental bad luck on the part of the officer.

You may well ask, why would these officers and citizens like Stacey Newman, make misleading statements? With the LEO’s,  it's a case where the personal politics of certain political chiefs and officers are coloring their statements. What they won’t tell you is that these characters are using look-alike replicas precisely because our gun laws are working so well that they can’t get the real thing! And when the would-be scoundrel can’t get a gun he’ll use a toy, and they’ve even been known to use crudely carved copies.

In regards to Stacey Newman, co-president of the St. Louis Million Mom March, you have been mislead here also. The Million Mom March does not advocate gun control, they advocate an extremist view of gun banning. And when an anti rights liberal can't grab a gun, he (or she) tends to grab the next best thing, even if it’s a toy.

It is long past time for us to stop fixating on the guns, or toy guns, or gun like objects, and to start dealing with the persons who threaten peaceful society. Every law that blames the object instead of the criminal is an obstacle to genuine solutions, because it offers political officials a high-profile (but empty) way to tell the public that they are "doing something."  

I challenge you to investigate instead  the social conditions under which innocent babies grow into criminals in less than two decades.