TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061791/0617104.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 121 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 30

FIREARMS

Chicago's Uphill Battle


As housing officials mop up illegal weapons, the N.R.A. has a
novel solution to crime in the projects: more guns

By ALEX PRUD'HOMME -- Reported by Nina Burleigh/Chicago and
Elizabeth L'Hommedieu/San Francisco


    There are few innocents in Chicago's violent public
housing projects. Children who live in the 19 complexes
scattered around the city regularly witness random shootings and
brutal deaths. One of the first things they learn is to hit the
deck when gunfire erupts. Playing in the courtyard of the Henry
Horner Homes -- a 21-building project made infamous by Alex
Kotlowitz's book There Are No Children Here -- Meeka Boyd, 11,
described the shooting of a young man on a basketball court that
she saw last year. Her friend Netisha Stroger, also 11, saw a
girl shot in the leg on the playground. "When it's real hot out,
it's real bad," says Netisha. "That's when people start
shooting, and you can't go outside. It's scary."

    The statistics are certainly frightening. Police say one
innocent bystander is shot at every day in the projects, one is
hit by gunfire every week, one is killed every month. Last year
Chicago's public-housing complexes saw 72 murders, the vast
majority involving firearms; in the first four months of this
year, the toll was already 36.

    To curb the violence, the Chicago Housing Authority has
begun to enforce a 20-year-old rule forbidding tenants to keep
guns on its premises. Since 1988, when Vincent Lane was named
C.H.A. chairman, Operation Clean Sweep has sent teams of police
and housing-authority guards to conduct surprise searches for
weapons, drugs and illegal residents in project buildings. In
1989 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp
praised Clean Sweep as a "model for the rest of the country."
The operation has posted impressive results so far: the police
confiscated 817 weapons last year and 214 in the first three
months of 1991. But faced with a flourishing drug trade and an
illegal-arms bazaar, the C.H.A. is fighting an uphill battle.

    Now that struggle is being made even more difficult by the
National Rifle Association. Last month the N.R.A.'s deputy
general counsel, Robert Dowlut, charged that the C.H.A.'s gun
ban infringes on residents' constitutional right to bear arms.
The N.R.A. maintains that law-abiding residents need guns to
protect themselves from criminals. Furthermore, it says, because
most of Chicago's public-housing residents are black, a ban on
guns would have a "disproportionate impact on persons of African
heritage" -- a particularly offensive argument since virtually
all the victims of project shootings are also black.

    While the N.R.A. has yet to sue the housing authority,
Richard Gardiner, director of the gun lobby's state
government-relations division, says a future lawsuit is
possible. Among other possibilities, he adds, is "using
legislation to prohibit housing authorities from putting such
((antigun)) provisions in place."

    The N.R.A.'s protest has infuriated Chicago's housing
officials. C.H.A. chairman Lane calls the N.R.A.'s protest an
"intrusion on public-housing residents. Clearly they are not the
N.R.A.'s constituency. Eighty percent of the residents are
single mothers, with children, on welfare. I can tell you they
are not out hunting pheasant or taking target practice. The only
use of weapons in the housing projects is for negative reasons."
And Ira Harris, chief of the housing police, blisters the N.R.A.
for attempting to focus the debate on the question of race. Says
he: "They have never cared about black people before."

    The illogic -- some would say hypocrisy -- of the N.R.A.'s
position is underscored by the fact that there has been little
visible support within the project for its initiative. On the
contrary, members of the Mother's Guild, a tenants' advocacy
group at the Henry Horner Homes, strongly favor the gun ban.
Though guild member Hazel Holmes has been robbed several times,
she says she does not want a gun for protection. "I was raised
in Mississippi, and my father had hunting guns around the
house," she explains. "But he always ((said)) that guns are not
for killing humans."

    Another irony in the N.R.A.'s stance is that while it
claims to be upholding the constitutional rights of the C.H.A.'s
150,000 authorized tenants, most of the firepower seems to be
in the hands of illegal occupants. Police estimate that 80% of
the crime in the projects is caused by 50,000 to 70,000
unauthorized residents, often gang members who move in with
their girlfriends or take over empty apartments.

    The Chicago dispute is not the first time the N.R.A. has
attacked such gun bans. A similar measure in Portland, Ore., was
defeated in 1988 when both the state attorney general and the
N.R.A. objected. When a federal judge upheld a Richmond ban on
guns in public housing last December, N.R.A. lobbyists swung
into action; in April the state legislature outlawed such
restrictions.

    The N.R.A.'s air of invincibility was badly shaken last
month when the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in
favor of the Brady bill. The gun lobby had orchestrated a
massive campaign against the bill, which will require a
seven-day waiting period for all handgun purchases. Now cities
from Los Angeles to New York are monitoring the debate over the
Chicago gun ban. Says Marshall Kandell, a spokesman for the
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles: "If the
enforcement of a gun ban in the Chicago housing projects is
successful, you can bet that the Los Angeles Housing Authority
and housing authorities across the country will take a close
look." All the more reason to hope that Operation Clean Sweep
will keep on sweeping.