Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 27, 1993 TAG: 9301270143
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
RALLIERS STAND UP FOR THEIR RIGHTS
When Blake Brandon and her physician husband wound up their studies at Princeton, Georgetown and Duke, they decided to root themselves in the open spaces of Western Virginia.The Old Dominion won out over Maryland in part because of that state's more restrictive gun laws. "It was just that gut feeling of freedom," said Brandon.
Tuesday, the 39-year-old homemaker from Natural Bridge and her children - Lexie, 11, and Max, 9 - were among about 1,200 Virginians who turned out at the Capitol in defense of the unrestricted freedom to bear arms.
In an overwhelmingly male crowd dotted with billed caps and hunting jackets, Brandon's spiky blond hair, black stretch pants and stylish jacket set her apart. What united her and her children to the group were their beliefs and their tiny, gold-edged National Rifle Association life membership pins.
"I think you should be allowed to have guns for self-defense and hunting, and people should stand up for what they want," said Max Brandon.
"You watch the old film clips of the Nazis, and the first thing they did was take people's guns away," added his mother, whose husband is a Lexington radiologist and whose family lives on a 200-acre farm.
Reflecting on the crowd that showed up a day earlier to support the gun limits that she opposes, Brandon observed: "Many of the liberals I know are so nice. But it's a tough, cruel world out there."
The Rev. Rodney Longmire, who delivered the benediction at the NRA rally, said he joined the organization last year after personally discovering that toughness.
Longmire, minister of the Covenant Reformed Episcopal Church in Roanoke County, said he purchased his first handgun - a .22-caliber revolver - in response to death threats received when he wrote a letter to the editor of The Roanoke Times & World News to oppose the ordination of a lesbian priest.
Longmire is ordained by the Reformed Episcopal Church, a more conservative group than the larger Episcopal Church - United States of America.
Having lived in Philadelphia (where, he says, most of the people he knew did not have guns, but crime was rampant) and in Kansas (where he found guns everywhere and crime minimal), he has concluded guns may be a deterrent, Longmire said.
"Where I have seen people going about armed, crime has been diminished," he said.
Since buying his first gun, Longmire said, he has purchased three others and has begun shooting competitively with a Bedford County group. The oldest of his four daughters, who is 7, has had her first lesson in shooting, and he expects her siblings to follow suit.
"My girls as they grow will know how to exercise their Second Amendment rights," he said.
Betsy Hostrop, another of those stamping their feet against the bitter cold at the rally, said she got her first handgun three decades ago after encountering a motorcycle gang in a Utah canyon.
Then 30, pregnant, and an agent for the National Forest Service, Hostrop was driving home one night when she found her pickup truck surrounded by a half-dozen motorcyclists. They had slowed her to about 5 mph when a state trooper miraculously appeared.
"I went home and I told my husband I wanted to learn how to shoot a handgun," she recalled.
Hostrop, who now lives in Warrenton and teaches self-protection classes sponsored by the NRA, said Gov. Douglas Wilder's proposed one-per-month limit on handgun purchases is a simplistic approach to a complex problem.
"I'm not a Second Amendment fanatic," she said. "But I don't think this is the way to do it."
Gunrunning can be controlled, she argued, by tightening up the issuance of driver's licenses, which are used as IDs in buying guns, and by requiring that multiple purchases of guns be reported to state police.
Arthur Pierce, 50, a computer specialist from Stafford, said his heritage makes him hold the freedom to bear arms especially dear.
His grandparents left Czechoslovakia for America in the 1920s. His father served in the merchant marine, and a string of other relatives have been in the military. "My Uncle Frank was with Patton. My Uncle Jimmy was in the Air Force in World War II and was killed," he said.
When Pierce visited the family graveyard in Assumption, Ohio, he was astonished at the number of military wings or insignia on the tombstones.
"I get a little excited when people say I'm going to take a little bit of your freedom," he said.
"I've never bought more than one handgun at a time," said Pierce, commenting on Wilder's gun-a-month plan. "It would not affect my gun buying."
But in words echoed repeatedly by the men and women crowding the General Assembly building and the Capitol driveway, he added: "I am absolutely sure it won't stop with this."
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1993