KHorrigan Kastigates Knox? 

GUN CONTROL Guns, schmuns

I was riding around in a police car with St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa and a couple of his detectives last spring when the issue of St. Louis' reputation as a murder capital came up. "Hey," said Mokwa, "if you're not a black male with an arrest record who's messing around with drugs, this is a pretty safe place." 

Crime statistics bear him out. St. Louis is not a real safe place to park a nice car, but as far as getting murdered is concerned, most folks can probably relax.

  You would be hard-put to convince most of the advocates of concealed carry of that. When the issue was being debated in the Missouri Legislature, time and again people mentioned their right to protect themselves from armed attack, particularly when they went into the city.

Perception outstripped reality. Concealed carry passed, and, assuming courts agree, people will have the right to carry guns to protect themselves from threats that, by and large, don't exist.

I favor strict regulation of all firearms, but at the risk of being shunned at the office Christmas party, I must say it's OK with me if qualified gun owners want to carry them. It's also OK with me if people want to carry concealed silver crosses in case they are attacked by vampires. Some tragedies will occur, some tragedies will be prevented.

Unless you happen to be directly involved, it probably won't make any difference. There are more important issues - education, health care, the tax structure - that have fallen victim to acrimony over guns.

What's striking about this whole debate is how the facts get lost amid the fears. Guns offer a sense of power to people who feel, for whatever reason, powerless. They become a substitute for faith, or an adjunct to faith, even a faith unto themselves. There's an overriding feeling that the world is a confusing and dangerous place, and the average guy hasn't got a chance without a gun, which of course is why "they" want to take away his guns. 

Consider the level of fear and paranoia behind the National Rifle Association's decision to release a list of anti-gun organizations and celebrities. It ranges from "A" (the AFL-CIO) to "Z" (Moon Zappa) and includes such dangerous outfits as the American Medical Association, Hadassah, the United States Catholic Conference and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Anti-gun celebrities include not only the usual liberal suspects like Alec Baldwin and Ed Asner, but such subversives as Tony Bennett and Julia Child.

The list even includes the Sara Lee Bakeries. You think that "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee"? Think again, pilgrim. The list includes the American Firearms Association, a much smaller organization of gun owners that is guilty of the crime of moderation. Like most of the organizations and individuals on the list, the AFA doesn't advocate taking away guns. It has merely expressed the thought that some teensy-eensy little bit of regulation might not hurt.

The paranoia of the gun lobby - indeed, its very existence - largely stems from one man, Neal Knox of Manassas, Va., a one-time gun magazine columnist and a former NRA vice president. Knox fervently believes that the government is out to get gun owners and that any compromise will open the gates to hell. In 1995, he suggested that the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could have been staged by anti-gun activists to build support for their cause.

In the mid-1970s, Knox and his hard-line allies turned what had been a sportsman's organization into the most effective lobby in Washington. Knox is no longer directly in charge of the NRA, but through his allies, he still controls the board of directors. Anyone with a taint of moderation is blackballed. The actor Charlton Heston, who had once expressed the ridiculous thought that AK-47s were "entirely inappropriate for civilian ownership," was able to serve as the NRA's president for five years only because Knox gave Moses a dispensation.

So here's one guy, driven by who knows what inner fears and worries, who managed to turn the whole nation into an armed camp. He became the index case for an epidemic of big government paranoia, made the political process hostage to his own fears and turned moderation into a dirty word. Only in America. Unfortunately.

E-mail: khorrigan@post-dispatch.com