ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997 TAG: 9704040040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
Parents worry their kids might get shot; state Sen. Bo Trumbo frets they won't be able to take their dart guns to rec centers.
OH, BO. Say it ain't so!
Was that really Republican Sen. Bo Trumbo of Fincastle on the radio Thursday morning? Or was some alien in temporary control of his mind as he defended Gov. George Allen's veto of a bill to bar weapons from recreation centers in Fairfax County?
Trumbo said he can understand the concerns of the people of Fairfax - where eight times in less than a year, weapons or the perception that weapons were present interrupted activities at county rec centers. In November, an angry basketball player went out to his car and returned with a bulge under his shirt, scattering frightened players and bystanders.
How reassuring that Trumbo did not argue that such behavior is just a healthy exercise of one's constitutional rights.
But, the gentleman from Botetourt County recalled nostalgically, when he was raising his children in gentle Botetourt County, they liked to play with plastic dart guns. If the proposed Fairfax restrictions were ever to be expanded to other localities, he fretted, these could be considered weapons.
"My concern is that in interpreting the words of the language of this act, what we are doing is taking some of these things away that, in fact, our children enjoy playing with."
Oh, no!
Granting the farfetched scenario that similar legislation would ever be extended to bucolic Botetourt, children might have limits placed on the toys they could bring to a community center!
Far better, Trumbo seems to think, to have children and adults fleeing in terror from ungentlemanly players who take their games a tad too seriously than to deny red-blooded American kids their right to bear dart guns in gymnasiums.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB