Carry A Gun

Mayor S. Fred Simmons' habit of carrying a gun around Aberdeen has received criticism from residents in recent weeks. Last week, it got him an award. An organization Simmons says he had never heard of announced it has bestowed upon him the Responsible Democracy Award - because he carries a gun and isn't afraid to say so. Maryland Shall Issue Inc., a gun-rights group based in Libertytown in Frederick County, proclaimed that it was "impressed by Mayor Simmons' declaration that he carries a gun because it is his right to do so, and because he may frequent high crime areas."

Editor's note: Pinkus Aylee, a black soldier, rescued Sheldon "Say" Curtis after he was wounded by Confederate troops. Pink took the feverish Say home to his mother's farmhouse, where he recuperated.Then fever must have took me good, `cause I could feel a cool, sweet-smelling quilt next to my face. Soft, gentle warm hands were strokin' my head with a cool wet rag cloth. "Look at the mornin' that's comin'," a woman's voice said as she spooned oat porridge into me. "Do your momma know what a beautiful baby boy she has?"

If you're hanging out on a street corner in Baltimore in the next few weeks, a police officer might hand you a black card with a warning on it."Carry a gun. Go to jail," read the business cards, 50,000 of which will be distributed by police as part of a federal and city anti-gun publicity campaign."

RECENTLY someone asked me jokingly, "Do you carry a gun in that bag, it's so big and heavy?"No, I don't carry a gun, I told her, but I need a big bag because I carry an EpiPen, an emergency injection pen used by people who suffer serious allergic reactions.I carry the life-saving medical device whenever I am with my 9-year-old grandson whose severely allergic to peanuts. Just a bite of something containing a peanut or its derivatives can send him into anaphylactic shock -- a deadly condition that includes itching, swelling, a swollen throat, and, possibly, respiratory arrest.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, addressing a federal law that adds lengthy prison time for carrying a gun during a drug crime, agreed yesterday to spell out what "carrying" means.Accepting two cases for review, involving marijuana dealing in Louisiana and cocaine sales in New York, the court stepped in to resolve a widening conflict among lower courts over the meaning of the law.The law at issue makes it a separate crime to "use or carry" a gun while committing specified crimes, including drug trafficking.

Sean Freeland Sr. was a loving father, loyal son and a good neighbor -- but not anyone who was known to carry a gun, say friends and relatives.However, police say Freeland, who has had run-ins with the law, was trying to shoot a police officer when he was killed Saturday night in an incident that nearly sparked a riot in Upton in West Baltimore.Yesterday, residents of the 700 block of W. Lanvale St., where the shooting occurred, and relatives recalled the former Southwestern High School football player fondly.

JERUSALEM -- In a country where armed soldiers casually chat on street corners and Jewish civilians frequently carry handguns, the Israeli government has decided to relax the requirements to carry a gun.The decision by Israel's Interior Minister Eliyahu Suissa comes amid heightened concern about possible violence from extremist Jewish and Islamic groups over the planned removal of most Israeli troops from Hebron, a West Bank city that is overwhelmingly Palestinian....

JINOTEGA, Nicaragua -- When Mervin Gonzalez returned to this remote mountain area from South Florida exile, he didn't expect masked kidnappers. Or a gun in his mouth. Or two men shot to death during a rescue attempt.Unlike hundreds of others who have died in Nicaragua's smoldering "silent war," Gonzalez survived to describe the 1995 adventure."When I came back to Nicaragua, I didn't expect to carry a gun," said Gonzalez, 33, a coffee farmer who once worked at one of Miami's best-known restaurants.

Corrections and clarifications: A recent column discussed the need for stop-and-frisk laws to check handgun violence. Pat Smith, who is running for attorney general, called to point out that Maryland already has such a law on the books. Whether it's used effectively is, of course, another question. Your correspondent is abashed, and apologizes.Havre de Grace. -- When this year's gun-control performance in Annapolis is finally, mercifully, concluded, the Maryland General Assembly should get an Oscar for irrelevance.

A Lutheran bishop stood in the chancel of Baltimore's Episcopal cathedral yesterday, surrounded by Christian and Jewish religious leaders who had come together to pray for urban peace. On behalf of the whole group, he declared war on guns.The battlefield will be the Maryland General Assembly in January. The cathedral at Charles Street and University Parkway was the site of the latest in a series of meetings arranged with the help of Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse, which is preparing a bill to strengthen the state's gun-control laws.

In the wake of the killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh, we've learned that Richard Poplawski, the killer, was something of a conspiracy nut. He embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America and was convinced the government, at President Barack Obama's command, was going to take away his guns. In the month before his killing spree, Mr. Poplawski reportedly posted a link on a white nationalist Web site to a video of Fox News' doomsday host Glenn Beck as he referenced a conspiracy theory about how the federal government, under the auspices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was building concentration camps in order to institute totalitarian rule.

It's often hard to know or predict how the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will vote on critical cases, but anyone concerned about the level of gun violence in America has to hope that a majority will uphold the reasonable restrictions on gun ownership that have long been in effect in Washington, D.C. Those restrictions - and a serious challenge to them - were the subject of a spirited debate before the court yesterday, with pointed questions directed...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Orioles manager Dave Trembley knew about the intensity, all-out hustle and powerful uppercut swing. But he still had one question about his new left fielder, so he approached Luke Scott while Scott was shagging fly balls last week. "Talk to me about the gun situation," Trembley said to Scott. Trembley, who has never fired a gun and joked that he wouldn't know the difference between a water pistol and a BB gun, had read about Scott's thoughts on gun control and about how the player almost always carries a concealed firearm.

Mayor S. Fred Simmons' habit of carrying a gun around Aberdeen has received criticism from residents in recent weeks. Last week, it got him an award. An organization Simmons says he had never heard of announced it has bestowed upon him the Responsible Democracy Award - because he carries a gun and isn't afraid to say so. Maryland Shall Issue Inc., a gun-rights group based in Libertytown in Frederick County, proclaimed that it was "impressed by Mayor Simmons' declaration that he carries a gun because it is his right to do so, and because he may frequent high crime areas."

CARRY A GUN, go to jail. That's the idea behind Maryland's toughest gun laws, the ones state legislators passed specifically to help Baltimore City get control of gun-toters and the violence they perpetrate. And it's also how things have to work in a city that aspires to reduce the more than 250 murders it endures each year - most the direct result of gun violence. But Baltimore's criminal justice system is so hobbled by incompetence and lack of cooperation, so ineffectual in the pursuit of tough sentences (or any sentences)

WASHINGTON -- More than a year ago, when former Sen. John Ashcroft testified at his confirmation hearings to be attorney general, he bent over backward to assure the Senate Judiciary Committee that if he got the job he would put his personal views on such issues as abortion and gun rights behind him and just carry out the laws on the books. As Mr. Ashcroft put it then, he recognized he would be moving from the "enactment-oriented role" of a legislator to a "law-oriented role" as head of the Justice Department and the nation's chief law-enforcement officer.

'Maternal' traits don't keep prosecutor from doing her job Warren A. Brown recently criticized Baltimore City State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy for being "too grandmotherly to inspire fear in criminals" ("Lawyer plans run against Jessamy," Aug. 31). Many people would agree that her office is failing in its mission, but this is not because of Ms. Jessamy's gender or whether she has children or grandchildren. Ms. Jessamy is a warm and nurturing person. These "maternal" traits should not be mistaken for weakness; in fact, they are positive attributes for any prosecutor.

THINGS WERE getting downright Socratic in the offices Empower Baltimore Management Corp. in downtown Baltimore at Market Place. There sat Donald Glover, a public information and marketing assistant at Empower Baltimore, prodding his four teen-age charges to think about the question that had come up. A young man in prison for murder claimed he had acted in self-defense, that he had pulled his weapon only when the other guy pulled a gun. Phillip Perkins...

LIKE a politician or a dishwashing detergent, the U.S. Attorney's Project Disarm needs name recognition. It needs to be aggressively sold. It needs to invade the criminal consciousness of Baltimore with its message of fear: "Carry a gun. Got to jail." The project itself needs to be more universally deployed -- and to become a household name, synonymous with long prison terms in remote places. More criminals -- and more law-abiding citizens -- must know about Disarm's impressive sentencing results under tough federal laws: an average of 7.8 years in jail for each of 275 cases it has successfully prosecuted over the last five years.

If you're hanging out on a street corner in Baltimore in the next few weeks, a police officer might hand you a black card with a warning on it."Carry a gun. Go to jail," read the business cards, 50,000 of which will be distributed by police as part of a federal and city anti-gun publicity campaign."