Loaded Gun

If you're around anything long enough, you'll see it all. Saturday was horse racing's day for the amazing and bizarre.On the final day of MATCH (Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred Championships), the 35-race series that began in April, two horses with chances to clinch the title (and $150,000 in bonuses for their owner and trainer) encountered trouble in the starting gate.At Delaware Park in the afternoon, Crab Grass, trained by Barclay Tagg at Laurel Park, needed to finish third or better in the $100,000 Sweet and Sassy Stakes to win the championship.

SAT SCORES, high school graduation rates and college enrollment are up.Teen sex, teen pregnancy and teen abortion are down.Condom use is up. Seat belt use is up.Physical fights on school property are down.Alcohol is used by an alarming 50 percent of all teens, but the good news is, it's not increasing.These statistics and others like them paint a picture of teen-agers today who are smarter and more ambitious, healthier and more safety conscious; wiser and more gifted; optimistic and with positive visions of their own futures.

MANY PEOPLE may be wary of a gun safety program offered by the National Rifle Association to the Carroll County elementary schools. Some parents may object that there is no such thing as a safe firearm for young children. Others may find that a school-sanctioned program, replete with fuzzy animal mascot, stickers and coloring books, is a mere propaganda ploy of the gun lobby.With those reservations understood, the county school system should still take a hard look at the NRA's Eddie Eagle gun safety program.

THE STORY IS repeated too often: Two or more kids get to fooling around with a gun that's in the house. Someone is shot. Sometimes, someone dies.It happened one week ago in Havre de Grace. James Irwin Ashby, 13, was fatally shot by his 14-year-old brother as they apparently toyed with one of their father's guns when their parents were out. How many more tragedies must occur before stronger gun safety measures are taken?Gov. Parris N. Glendening should follow through on a campaign promise to make Maryland the first state to ban the sale of any handgun that isn't child proof.

The danger of weapons was a prime topic yesterday at Anne Arundel County's Meade Middle School, and a second pupil was arrested in connection with Thursday's discovery of a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic handgun -- seized from a seventh-grader in a lavatory there.County and military police officers spent the day at the school on the Fort Meade Army reservation, continuing an investigation into the gun's ownership and why the weapon was brought to school."We don't have any indication of why or any kind of a plan for use," said Stephen G. Barry, a county school system specialist on student safety, who noted it was the first time in a decade that a loaded gun had been found at any of the system's 120 schools.

The 18-year-old Edgemere man whose body county police found in Odenton woods Monday night was shot to death after he and two friends had been drinking and began playing with a loaded gun, police said witnesses have told them.Police spokeswoman Carol Frye said Billy Joe Ace of the 2500 block of Wagner Ave. was shot once in the head early Monday in a townhouse in the 500 block of Realm Court. She said Ace and his friends might have been smoking marijuana."Somehow the gun was brought out, some horseplay started and the gun went off," Frye said.

A 3-year-old boy who was playing with a gun that he found under a mattress shot himself in the head yesterday at his family's Northeast Baltimore rowhouse, city police said.Charles Mangum of the 3300 block of Kenyon Ave. was in critical condition last night at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.He shot himself with a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun, said Agent Ragina Cooper, a police spokeswoman.Charles was home with his grandmother, who police said is his legal guardian, when he found the loaded gun about 3: 45 p.m. in an upstairs bedroom.

NEW YORK -- Behind the 30 percent drop in murders and shootings reported in New York City this year is a startling development: Drug dealers and gang members have apparently begun to leave their guns at home.Police department and federal law enforcement officials say that gunplay has decreased from the South Bronx to the Rockaways, partly as a result of the tightening of local and federal gun-control regulations and crackdowns on youth gangs.But more than anything else, federal and local officials say, it is the increase in police friskings for such minor violations as loud radio playing and public beer drinking that has discouraged people from carrying unregistered guns.

Two boys with guns: One, a 13-year-old Ferndale youth on a hunting trip, helps save his father's life after they are accidentally shot by another hunter. The other, an 8-year-old pupil at Ferndale's Hilltop Elementary, is suspended from school after being caught with a loaded handgun in the cafeteria.These two incidents, which appeared in the same issue of The Sun this week, illustrate a point often overlooked in the din of the debate between gun control advocates and opponents: Gun owners have a moral obligation to store their guns safely, and to teach their children when they are old enough to handle guns carefully.

MIAMI -- When Ignacio A. Perea Jr. was arrested for raping three boys, police found a clinic receipt in his pocket indicating that he had tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.On Monday, a Dade jury ruled that Perea's sexual behavior was tantamount to using a loaded gun: They found him guilty of attempted felony murder against one of the boys. He still faces charges in the alleged rapes of the other two boys.To win their case under Florida law, the prosecutors had to show that HIV -- like a loaded gun -- was capable of causing death.

If certain members of the U.S. Congress seriously believe that Americans should be able to carry a loaded gun anywhere they like, let them introduce such a bill and debate its merits. But instead, senators will today consider legislation that accomplishes much the same thing with a "lowest common denominator" approach to concealed-carry permits. Under this backdoor gun-deregulation effort, grafted by South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune onto a wholly unrelated defense authorization bill, a concealed-weapon permit issued in a gun owner's home state would be good anywhere in the country.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon was back in Annapolis yesterday, trying to persuade legislators to tighten laws on illegal gun possession. Too often, she says, people convicted of possessing illegal guns spend little time in jail. A review of 2008 District Court cases by the mayor's staff found that judges gave suspended sentences to 86 percent of gun offenders who were convicted. That's not a punishment, it's a pass. What's more troubling is that many of these same offenders go on to commit more serious - and violent - crimes with a gun in hand.

Hear that? It's the deafening silence of politicians not talking about how the way to deal with gun violence is to deal with guns. A Baltimore 8-year-old brought a loaded gun to school last week that his classmate accidentally fired about the same time an Amish school in Pennsylvania was being razed in memory of five girls shot to death there by an intruder the week before. Those events closely followed fatal school shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin and the arrest of a Missouri middle-schooler armed with an assault rifle.

A Glen Burnie teenager was charged with reckless endangerment, accused of accidentally shooting a 17-year-old Odenton girl Friday night at an Annapolis High School football game, police said yesterday. The 17-year-old boy charged in the shooting, whose name was not released by police, was not a student at Annapolis High or Old Mill High School, the opposing team in the game. He was later released to the custody of his parents, police said. The victim had been shot in the left thigh, was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore and later released, police said.

WE GRIEVE for Miles Patrick Smith Jr., the 4-year-old from Randallstown who shot himself in the head with a handgun he found inside a duffel bag on the living room sofa three days ago. Our sympathies go out to his family and friends. It is a terrible thing to lose a child. The fact that such a tragedy might have been averted can only add to their grief. If there is purpose to be found in so awful a death, perhaps it is to serve as a wake-up call: The presence of a firearm in the home poses an extraordinary risk to children.

Howard County prosecutors said yesterday that they will drop a gun charge filed against a White House Secret Service officer whose 3 1/2 - year-old son shot himself after grabbing the officer's loaded, unlocked service weapon off the top of the family's refrigerator. Kenneth John Bouley, 33, had been scheduled for trial Aug. 28 on a charge of allowing access to firearms by minors, but Howard County State's Attorney Marna L. McLendon said yesterday that the facts of the case don't meet the "difficult" burden of proof required by the 9-year-old statute.

County police are trying to figure out how a loaded gun ended up in a Southern District jail cell. The .25-caliber handgun was found Friday afternoon, concealed by the holding cell's combination toilet, sink and water fountain - posing the most immediate danger to unarmed booking officers and inmates held there. Police commanders said yesterday that they are trying to determine whether an inmate had hidden the gun and to identify which of the officers might have failed to search someone properly and thoroughly check the cell for contraband.

IN MY old neighborhood, one of the guys had access to guns. These things weren't much, as guns go, but they were certainly capable of putting out an eye or blowing off a head. The guns belonged to my friend's father, who wasn't around the night my friend called several of us over to his house and said, "Let's play poker." So there we were, half a dozen of us gathered around this kitchen table to play poker, and no parents in sight, which was always a beautiful thing - when my friend sits down, pulls a green eye shade over his head, shuffles the cards - and, with considerable dramatic flair, puts a pistol on the table at his side.

IF CHILDREN are going to be safe from handguns, it looks like it will be up to their mothers to make it so. Great. Another item on our list of things to do. Another chore. Another responsibility. One more damn thing we have to do before we can turn in for the night. And one more thing we can't count on the husbands and fathers to do. Like the laundry or the grocery shopping or remembering to make well-baby check-ups. We elected them to Congress and the state legislatures, and we tried to relax our controlling natures and delegate to them the responsibility of gun safety.

The danger of weapons was a prime topic yesterday at Anne Arundel County's Meade Middle School, and a second pupil was arrested in connection with Thursday's discovery of a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic handgun -- seized from a seventh-grader in a lavatory there.County and military police officers spent the day at the school on the Fort Meade Army reservation, continuing an investigation into the gun's ownership and why the weapon was brought to school."We don't have any indication of why or any kind of a plan for use," said Stephen G. Barry, a county school system specialist on student safety, who noted it was the first time in a decade that a loaded gun had been found at any of the system's 120 schools.