European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - March 24, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns the stars and stripes Friday March �4.1989 George f. Will assault rifles not handguns need controls president Bush balancing when he should be choosing says he is seeking an accommodation be tween the police and the sporting interest regarding assault rifles. So much for the interest of ghettos where such guns Are frequently fired. The Urban poor arc As usual invisible while their a Tim plan their betterment. But he poor have a Spe Cial interest in firearms policy. They would gain from a prompt ban on assault rides and would suffer from gun control focused As it usually is on handgun. The reasons for acting forcefully against the former arc reasons for leaving the latter alone. Assault weapons arc not yet prevalent and never will be needed for legitimate civilian activities. Handguns Are widely Dis Persed and poignantly necessary for some people. Don Kales or. Notes that new York s pioneering Sullivan Law 1911 was an example of gun control advocated by conservatives who associated handguns with foreign born anarchists labor agitators and Crimi nals. Newspapers of the Day denounced Low bowed foreigners with guns guns in the pockets of i no rant and quarrelsome immigrants of lawbreaking  /. Today Loo. There is a class Bias in the gun Contro argument. Literature from the National coalition to ban handguns includes this Gem a docs the Banning of handguns discriminate1 against minority members of society a. No. Handguns would be illegal in the hands of the Tola populace,.including All racial and religious groups the Rich and poor alike. Wonderful. It would impartially disarm White Safe Park a venue and the South Bronx a War zone. Kales makes a disturbing but not unsupported argument As follows Many Urban americans live where government cannot or will not enforce its proper monopoly on the use of Force Given this failure or Abdi. Cation by government it is unseemly for the Safe majority to deny the endangered minority the handguns needed for self help. L. A Chicago judge Wittine in a Legal publication stresses that his readers would not go into ghetto areas except in Broad Daylight under the most optimum conditions surely  night alone or on foot. Bui some pc Pic a pc no Choice. To live or work  some need to be on this Frontier imposes a fear which is tempered by Possession of a gun  Kates cites data that indic Alc that handgun armed Citi ens actually thwart almost As Many crimes annually As handgun Arroyd criminals succeed in committing. Citizens acting in legitimate self defense kill about three times More assailants and robbers than do to William Buckley  he says prison surveys show that criminals fear armed victims More than pol ice and that fear of armed civilians do Lars criminals into non confrontational crime. Burglars rarely encounter armed victims be cause burglars target unoccupied premises. Even so More burglars meet armed resistance than arc arrested and sent to prison. -.-, a about half of America s households possess at least one gun. Among those owning at least one gun the average is three. About 50 million households have handguns. Prohibition of handguns would be a bigger failure than prohibition of Gin. Handguns unlike liquor notes Kates arc reusable and their continued use docs not involve the visibility of perpetual illegal  a -., assault rifles Are different. Daryl Gates los Angeles police chief,.says a reasonable right to Bear arms docs not mandate that weapons designed and built for the express purpose of killing human beings on Battle Fields he made available to the general Public. In fact the general Public is already prohibited by the nation Al firearms act from owning most weapons made for that  but assault rifles have enthusiasts the Bush administration even worries about the interests of gun col Lector so a president whose primary objective is popularity is resorting to a tested technique when the subject is politically problematic Swallow it up in a larger subject  the administration s position is assault weapons arc misused by drug dealers so let s not ban the guns Lei s win " he War on drugs which must be won in the words of attorney general Dick Thom Burgh last sunday on the Banle fico of  meanwhile Back on the non Mcl physical Battle Field where Many poor people live the poor must be bemused a Bush s idea that his temporary ban on the importation of some rifles is a Cooling of period. It is not Cooling their streets but it is not supposed to. No wonder the Nalion Aluinc association is so pleased by Bush s policy. The policy is to Cool of Public opinion until some fresh menace say a tainted banana from some banana Republic appears a menace that threatens substantial interests like the serenity of the comfortable. I Phi Orllo to roup the old orders Are undergoing Rad Ca changes Boris Yeltsin is publicly Cam paining for office in Moscow on the grounds thai his free Market Agenda has been insufficiently implemented under perestroika Walter Mitty time in the Union of soviet socialist republics but it is happening. In China i Nui ional Congress con Venes and is finding it difficult to re press chinese intellectuals who threaten to Pound on the table and demand greater Freedom than they arc fitfully per milled under inc Post Mao regime ii is even being debated whether the huge portrait of hat ugly Man should be re moved from the prominence it has in Tien an men Square remove a picture of the great helmsman rather like plucking the heart from revolutionary China certainly inc Tjui Valcom of plucking the Windpipe from it. And in South Africa the dutch re formed Church sheepishly admits that All the time All those years it was mis taken about the inherent Justice of apart Heid you cannot be a Christian in Good standing and endorse apartheid. The meaning of. This coming from what amounts to inc established Church in South Africa cannot be . Thoie who Clung to apartheid As a Means sanctioned by Christian tradition of solv ing the problem of mixed races suddenly stare Down and the keel of their proud vessel is gone. It is not to give in to economic determinism to relied on the proximate pres sures bringing about Icse reforms. The late Alan Paton Over and Over again stressed that reforms would come to South Africa As the result of economic pressures. Pawn himself was something of a scrambled socialist but he always insisted that the need of South Africa for Black technicians and for Black economic patronage would Edge the nation away from apartheid. As that which the nation clearly needs becomes transparent the reigning Church re examines its doctrines and conforms to the transcendent Mes Sage of the Bible which has to do with Nighbor Linss not fences. And what is it thai tempers the appetite of Mikhail Gorbachev for bloody expansionism Answon. There is no evidence that his appetite is tempered but much evidence that his Appe Tite cannot be sated because of what George Bush might Call the economic thing in Afghanistan his legions came upon one . Stinger too Many and to mount the kind of military Campaign he d have needed to kill another million Afghani or 2 million or 3 million would have strained i sparse resources so he had to Retreat. As also Retreat however ambiguously " the cuban troops Aren t due Home until 1991from Namibia. So far he has yet to Retreat from Cuba Cost j8 million per Day or Nicaragua Cost Over $ i million or Day but he relics on his successful Guzic to get West German Banks and other centers of capitalist sen Timenia greed to finance these sallies to Gether with his ongoing rearmament. And of course in China the reign of Deng Xiaoping brought in nothing less than a transfiguration of the agricultural picture. In four years production in creased by 35d per cell. The demonstration what a Semi rce agriculture would do that socialized agriculture could not do is the starkest evidence that the turn to the right was a turn in the necessary direction. The chinese communists Are not Likely o renounce heir phantasmagoria explicitly nor to sacrifice what they Call socialist Central ism. But they Are driven driven by the Laws of the Market. And the relative civil serenity of the one party state permits a Prosic Clive Rise in economic production that is proving impossible in the chaotic political situations in so much of Lalin America. In Brazil inflation brings unemployment Shulti fiction and grinding poverty brazilians complain of having to make payments on their staggering National debt and inc Burden is real. Bui that Burden is being met by the simple expedient of printing More Money wit the result that inflation will be on the order of 1,000 percent during the year. In Peru also suffering from a heavy debt it did t work for the demagogue who serves As president simply to suspend payments the shining path guerrillas arc As implacable As the guerrillas in it Salvador and the tumult begins by Dis crediting1 democratic stability and ends by terrorizing Hose who seek to keep democracy in place Van Czerula explodes under the Burden and Carlos Andres Perci president for the second time considered calling in the army settling instead for a curfew. But the Knock on the door in Bra Zil Peru Van Tecula _ May come from the army the next time around. Economic forces brine discontent but Progress requires political stability. They say the Market is ruthless. But one can Only be Giad for the pressures it exerts. Uni Wal pitas  opinions expressed la the columns Noil cartoons on this Page represent Tho seat the authors and sat in no Way id be considered As representing the views of the stars and stripes or the United states