July 96 Column: Accursed District

Our sister publication, The New Gun Week, has an occasional feature 
dubbed, “The Curse of the Gunnies.” It is a (mostly) light-hearted, 
(mostly) tongue-in-cheek attempt to dismiss various calamities that befall 
elitist disarmists as their just deserts, given their views on gun control.
An example: the arrest, conviction and incarceration of New York 
Congressman Mario Biaggi (who never met a gun law he didn’t like, and 
who used his committee power to help create, out of whole cloth, the 
entire “cop killer” bullet issue in the early 80s). Biaggi, a former 
policeman himself, apparently forgot that taking bribes was against the 
law, and became enmeshed in one of those money scandals that cause the 
general populace to wonder why it is that heretofore normal Americans 
can’t live on their $125,000 base salaries, plus perks galore.
There are dozens of other cases of “The Curse,” but a recent one found its 
way to my desk (with a stop at the fax machine), from an unlikely source: 
Time magazine, and the essayist Margaret Carlson, neither of whom could 
be counted among the gunowning public’s boosters.
In a piece titled, “District of Calamity,” Carlson enumerates the many 
burdens residents of the Nation’s capital face, like a shrinking tax base, 
filthy streets, haphazard garbage collection, woeful snow removal 
(particularly piquant to those of us who dealt with this year’s incredible 
winter the way we have with all other comers: walked it off—literally in 
most cases), streets in such desperate need of repairs that residents were 
filling potholes the size of meteor craters with bags of mulch, and, in one 
case, a mattress, and, finally, a rise in crime in what once were considered 
the city’s better neighborhoods.
At first glance, this haven of gun prohibition—where the possession of all 
firearms not registered before 1976 (20 years ago)—is illegal, should 
qualify as its own “Curse.” At a meeting of “angry residents,” Carlson 
reports, “a police lieutenant advised them to get guns to defend themselves 
in the ‘war zone’.”
The angry residents of the District of Columbia are indeed cursed, but it is 
one of those curses laid upon them by mysterious gypsys who then 
disappear into the night (or their suburban Maryland and Virginia homes), 
bracelets jangling, and not one they brought upon themselves with their 
own misdeeds.
Angry residents, the kind who, in exasperation, fill potholes with 
mattresses in the hope of making their street at least passable, are not the 
problem in Washington, DC. Neither are frightened residents made angry 
by rampant, vicious crimes in their neighborhoods—whether the 
neighborhood in question is “good” or “bad.” That this is true seems to be 
admitted by honest policemen who advise citizens to break the law, and by 
national magazine columnists who let a report of the same pass without 
comment, let alone hand-wringing. 
Instead, there seems to be a sort of tacit admission that people have a right 
to be vexed when a city that is literally falling apart decides that one 
solution is to fine homeowners that don’t rake their leaves via a new 
unraked-leaves task force. (These, presumably would be last fall’s leaves, 
the ones covered up by the snow the city’s 1-in-3 working plows didn’t 
remove in the winter.) 
Most of us city dwellers are aware of similar absurdidities in our own 
municipalities. Every year I bake brownies for National “Night Out” on 
my street, where residents, already known to one another pass each other 
cookies while waiting for the representatives of our council members to 
drop by, scarf down a confection or two and tell us that Councilperson X 
feels our pain on the crime issue. Then other community helpers stop in, 
to run the siren for the kids and pass out their cards. We keep our porch 
lights on and chat until around ten, secure in the knowledge that no 
criminal would dare breech the conviviality—at least until tomorrow 
night. Okay, so I’m a cynic, maybe connecting with a few new faces on 
the block will come in handy some night when I’m jockeying with the 
patrons of the “bistro” on the corner for a parking spot. Maybe the 
community policing officer’s card will come in handy some day, albeit 
almost certainly after the fact. Maybe if they’re forced to come out among 
the voters (or send their minions), politicians will come to realize people 
have legitimate—and immediate—concerns about crime. 
That neither Carlson, a frequent critic of gunowners from her television 
pulpit on the pundit shows, nor Time, who writes back to those who 
challenge their knee-jerk embrace of all gun ontrol measures with a chilly 
“Too bad, that’s what we think” was moved to remark on the police 
officer’s advice, should tell us all something. 
First, that these neat little efforts to wrap the problems of a city up in town 
hall type meetings go only so far. Sooner or later, people will stare down 
even the most haughty politician, mutter, “Sez You,” and vote the rascal 
out. That’s if they don’t have the financial means to abandon the city 
completely, coming in only for hockey games or the symphony and 
sniffing about the general decline of the place. After a while, those public 
officials who have the courage to be honest with their fellow citizens will 
advise them to make do the best they can—even if it means skirting or 
breaking the law.
Second, anxiety about crime is everywhere, and catches up with everyone 
eventually. Carslon writes of the robberies at Georgetown stores, citing 
“The Gap and Eddie Bauer,” with a sort of offhand wonder. Sure, she 
implies, you expect this at the (family run) deli on the corner in a crummy 
neighborhood—but is nothing sacred when brand names—worn by people 
like me—come under attack?
Last year in these pages, shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, 
Publisher Julianne Versnel Gottlieb told of taking her three children to 
Washington. Julie lived and worked in DC for a number of years, knows 
the city, was excited to share it with Merril, Alexis and Andrew. But she 
and the kids were met with barracades on Pennsylvania Avenue, security 
checks in galleries and museums. It bewildered and saddened Julie, and 
probably scared the kids. It’s not the way anyone would want to introduce 
their children to the glories of democracy or the Republic’s home base.
The rubble of the cities is not the “curse” under discussion. Instead, it is 
the indifference of those who work at big national media outlets, those 
who pretend to “run” cities, who cannot see the problems because they 
have barracaded themselves up from the realities of the street. The 
barracades go up, and the elitists shake their heads—that it has come to 
this—but whether in power or merely commenting on power they never 
seem to understand that what is really ratcheting up everyone’s anxiety 
level is not the barracade, but the mind that finds this an acceptable 
solution. Those barracades in Washington, like the ones around Buffalo’s 
Federal Building, or Dallas’ or Phoenix’s, to name several I've seen 
recently, are an admission of failure so public that they can’t even be 
ignored by those who once thought them wise.
Eventually, they are moved to report on the phenomenon of a DC police 
lieutenant telling people to arm themselves, but it is with the same arched 
eyebrow they cock at all life’s misieries until it effects their Gap, their 
neighboorhood, their city.
The real curse is not that sometimes life catches up with these folks, but 
that they so seldom realize it, and that the rest of us are left to make 
arrangements for survival.

Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor