Weapons

DESPITE SEPT. 11, 2001, changing the calculus of our lives, little attention has gone to a looming deadline that'll make this country even more hospitable to really bad guys: the expiration in September of the federal ban on assault weapons. The 1994 law, which forbids manufacturing 19 different types of assault weapons, included a "sunset" clause as a sly way to get the bill through Congress. For some legislators, a decade minus certain weapons that lack any conceivable recreational use - unless you consider homicide to be a recreational sport - was just enough to earn their vote.

Two men each were charged with five counts of deadly weapon-related offenses after their arrests yesterday in Taneytown by a sheriff's deputy who found a stolen 9 mm semiautomatic pistol and a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun in their vehicle.Taneytown Police Chief Mel Diggs said his office received a call about 11 a.m. yesterday from a resident who said a Ford Ranger with a Pennsylvania license tag was parked on the lot of Sheetz convenience store on East Baltimore Street with weapons on the front seat.

You won't find radical feminist Robin Morgan cheering the troops in the Persian Gulf.Noting she would have preferred prolonged diplomacy to war, however swift and victorious for American forces, she said, "I don't support the people in the Middle East as troops, don't support them being killers and forced to do what they had to do."If that weren't enough in this time of fervent patriotism, this 5-foot woman with short, sculpted salt-and-pepper hair and soft, brown eyes fired away at Pentagon generals with smart weapons from her personal arsenal -- scathing wit and satire.

Howard County police collected three guns and an unspecified amount of ammunition during the department's "no-questions-asked" gun turn-in Saturday."Anytime you do this type of thing, you don't know what you're going to get," said Howard County police Sgt. Steven Keller. "Although it's not a lot, if we get one gun, that's a success."The turn-in at First Baptist Church of Guilford in Columbia was the second time Howard County has taken part in a regional gun turn-in, sponsored each year by Enough is Enough, a Prince George's County group that works to prevent gun violence.

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council agreed yesterday to send the chief of its weapons inspection effort to Baghdad with the implicit warning of renewed military action if Iraq continues to block monitoring of its weapons programs.The decision escalated a new confrontation with Iraq less than three weeks after an American missile attack was launched in retaliation for an alleged Iraqi attempt to assassinate former President George Bush.The outcome will test the Security Council's determination to ensure that Iraq remains unable to threaten its neighbors with weapons of mass destruction far into the future.

Two alleged members of a neo-Nazi group were charged with federal weapons violations yesterday as a result of a raid in which four high-powered assault weapons and 2,000 rounds of ammunition were seized from their East Baltimore apartment Friday night.Kerry Troy, 21, of the 100 block of N. East Avenue, was accused of making false statements to a firearms dealer to buy weapons for others. She was released to the custody of her mother, who resides in New Jersey, after appearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- The United States and Israel have launched a diplomatic effort to prevent other countries from helping rearm Hezbollah, warning that a resumption of the weapons flow could ignite new fighting in Lebanon just as the cease-fire begins to take hold. Officials have been pressing major world arms suppliers - notably Russia and China - not to allow their weaponry to find its way to the Lebanese militant group. They have also been urging Turkish officials to prevent any flow of weapons across their land or airspace.

A distressed Baltimore City Council searched for solutions last night to the epidemic of violence that recently claimed the life of 10-year-old Tauris Johnson and left Tia Lipscomb with a bullet wound in her back.With the city on pace to exceed last year's record toll of 335 murders, one councilman called for offering rewards to schoolchildren to get information on weapons while another urged increasing federal taxes on handgun ammunition."Let's start a crusade to turn in the guns," said Councilman Lawrence A. Bell III, a 4th District Democrat who wants to create a school program patterned after Metro Crime Stoppers, which offers up to a $1,000 reward for information on criminals.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. defense and intelligence officials, seeking to lend credibility to allegations that Iran is providing weapons to Shiite militants in Iraq, displayed munitions and fragments of weapons yesterday that they said constituted solid evidence that Tehran was contributing to Iraq's violence. They also alleged that a group under the command of Iran's supreme leader was behind the smuggling of the weaponry across the Iran-Iraq border. The briefing, held under unusually secretive circumstances, featured three U.S. officials, none of whom would be identified by name, and two tables laden with what they said were uniquely Iranian military hardware and weapons fragments.

All Maryland State Police troopers soon will be armed with new Beretta .40-caliber pistols that pack more power and are considered ballistically superior to the 9 mm models being replaced.Probationary troopers who graduated last month are trained and carrying the new semiautomatic handguns.Veteran troopers such as Lt. Lawrence E. Faries, commander of the Westminster barracks, began three days of training with the new handgun yesterday."The best thing about the .40-caliber Beretta is that the trigger pull is always the same because the hammer recocks each time the gun is fired," Faries said.