Gun owners graying in WNC, nation.
BTW, there's currently a gun related poll on the paper's frontpage: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
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Gun owners graying in WNC, nation
by Jordan Schrader
published September 30, 2006 12:19 am
ASHEVILLE — With five guns inside his house, 68-year-old Jess O’Strander feels pretty safe.
Not that he would worry without them.
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“I live in Fletcher,” he said. “The only crime is if you’re going six miles over the speed limit.”
For rougher areas, like those along the 16-hour drive to Michigan he makes four times a year to see his children and grandchildren, he keeps a .22-caliber pistol in his car’s console.
Americans 65 and older now make up the age group most likely to own guns.
By renewing his concealed-weapon permit this fall, O’Strander will rejoin the 1,821 Western North Carolina permit holders born before the United States entered World War II.
No doubt many are like the retired printing foreman, who has never shot a gun at another person and isn’t sure he could if it came down to it.
But two acts of apparently random violence in the past two months led to the arrest of senior citizens.
Joseph Boyer Candler, 68, of Wolf Laurel and Tilson B. Crowe, 76, of Asheville each are charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
A paramedic was hospitalized in Madison County after a shooting that Sheriff John Ledford attributes to alcohol rather than age. No one was hurt in the Asheville shooting, which also involved alcohol.
Such gun crimes are rare enough that even supporters of stiffer gun control say the elderly are not on their radar screen.
“There’s not an issue with judgment or physical limitations that’s causing a huge problem with guns,” said Zach Ragbourn, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Aging of gun owners
Young people may be more likely than their elders to commit violent crimes, but older Americans are more likely to have guns in their homes.
“We found that it was the older group that had the highest level of gun ownership presently,” said Tom Smith, director of the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, which recorded those results in 2002 and 2004.
“That wasn’t true 20 years ago. It was middle-age people who were most likely to own a gun.”
Throughout the 1980s, more than half of survey respondents in their 40s consistently reported living in households with guns. That has sunk to an average of 38 percent this decade while seniors dropped less, to 42 percent.
A decline in hunting accounts for much of the change, Smith said. But handguns as well as rifles are more common among the Social Security set than younger people.
“I figure if my car breaks down between (WNC and Michigan), there’s a lot of open areas,” O’Strander said. “I just feel more secure if I have some kind of protection.”
His parents frowned on guns, but O’Strander has owned them all his adult life.
He bought his first rifle in 1958, his first pistol in 1962. He still has both.
Like O’Strander, most seniors are simply keeping guns they’ve long owned, Smith said. He doesn’t see in the survey results any evidence that seniors are acquiring guns out of fear of being preyed upon.
As seniors keep their guns, fewer young people buy them. In the latest survey, 22.1 percent of adults younger than 30, reported having one in their household.
Alcohol involved
The two recent shootings involve men who have led very different lives.
Crowe lived with a female companion in a motor home parked in the 1200 block of Brevard Road. Now in the Buncombe County jail, Crowe is no stranger to imprisonment. His crimes in the county stretch back to 1970.
Candler was wealthy enough to leave the Madison County jail once officials set a $750,000 bond, a month after he was first jailed. He and his wife are residents of the upscale Wolf Laurel community and were guests at a country club fundraising event for the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre Guild on July 30, the night of the shooting.
But investigators say a mix of guns and alcohol led to attacks outside both men’s homes.
The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department said Crowe, on Sept. 11, shot the rear window out of a car leaving his home after dropping off his companion. Investigators said the man driving the car told them he didn’t know Crowe.
Detectives said Crowe then fired in the direction of a neighbor who was shouting at him to stop. Neither neighbor nor driver was hit by the gunfire.
Finding Candler intoxicated at the Wolf Laurel Country Club, emergency medical service workers and firefighters followed his wife as she drove him back to their house on El Miner Drive, Madison County, investigators said.
Among them was Tami Stephen. As the Madison County paramedic helped Candler out of his car, detectives say he pulled a gun and shot her in the chest.
A doctor on Monday approved Stephen to go back to work in mid-October, she said.
She attended a ceremony in her honor Sept. 23 in her hometown of Burnsville where she and other emergency responders received recognition.
The shooting that shocked 911 responders has also made them more cautious, Stephen said.
“If they all have learned something from my example,” she said, “hopefully it will never happen again.”
A grand jury indicted Candler on Sept. 18 on three assault charges.
Statistics
WNC is home to 1,821 residents 65 and older with a concealed weapons permit:
• Avery: 53.
• Buncombe: 297.
• Cherokee: 140.
• Clay: 50.
• Graham: 50.
• Haywood: 176.
• Henderson: 146.
• Jackson: 87.
• Macon: 174.
• Madison: 30.
• McDowell: 105.
• Mitchell: 76.
• Polk: 51.
• Rutherford: 149.
• Swain: 44.
• Transylvania: 42.
• Watauga: 89.
• Yancey: 62.
Source: State Bureau of Investigation
Contact Jordan Schrader via e-mail at [email protected].
BTW, there's currently a gun related poll on the paper's frontpage: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Vote away...
