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From the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/07/n...00&en=c11158d464ec7ec0&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/07/n...00&en=c11158d464ec7ec0&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
Libertarians' Toy-Gun Joke Is a Flop in East Harlem
By NICHOLE M. CHRISTIAN
The Manhattan Libertarian Party had hoped to dramatize its opposition to a City Council proposal to ban toy guns by distributing hundreds of free plastic water pistols yesterday at a public school in East Harlem.
The stunt turned out to be more of a dramatization of how to shoot yourself in the foot.
The intention, said Gary Snyder, the Libertarian Party chairman, was to make light of the proposal on the day it was introduced. "We thought silly legislation such as banning squirt guns warranted an equally silly response, such as toy guns for tots, all done in good fun," he said.
Few were amused. From City Hall to the streets of East Harlem, whose residents are predominantly Hispanic, the Libertarians were branded racists and accused of exploiting an issue and a neighborhood where the toll of gun violence is far from child's play.
"I'm livid that the Libertarian Party would have the racist nerve to come into a community of color just to get some attention," Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn said as the hearing opened, "to give toy guns to our children, knowing that these toy guns have led to deaths. This is not a game for media attention."
Tempers were equally high at the school, Public School 72 at 104th Street and Lexington Avenue, where Mr. Snyder and James Lesczynski, a party spokesman, faced off with the police and a dozen protesters.
"Get out of Harlem," protesters shouted as the two men tried to hand out the guns, many of them from donors across the country. "Go to your own neighborhood." The confrontation ended without any arrests and only a handful of the guns distributed, several to pupils who smashed them in protest.
Ydanis Rodriguez, 38, a teacher at Gregorio Luperon High School in Washington Heights, was among the parents and protesters alerted to the Libertarians' plan by a letter from Maria Diaz, the P.S. 72 principal.
"They wouldn't go to Stuyvesant or Bronx Science to do this," Mr. Rodriguez said. "They thought that in a Latino community the parents wouldn't mobilize."
In an interview at City Hall, Mr. Snyder said the party selected P.S. 72 to show support for a deprived neighborhood. "We narrowed our choice down to a school on Park Avenue and one in East Harlem," he said. "We ultimately thought the kids of East Harlem might appreciate a free toy more than kids on Park Avenue."
The bill introduced yesterday at City Hall, through the Council's Consumer Affairs Committee, would make it a misdemeanor for merchants to sell any kind of toy gun and might in some cases lead to jail time for children caught with a toy gun, said Councilman David Weprin of Queens, a sponsor of the bill. Under current city law, stores are allowed to sell only brightly colored toy guns.
"Obviously, it's going to be a discretionary thing, about whether to put a kid in jail," Mr. Weprin said. "But the idea is to keep guns off the shelves and eventually they won't be accessible to children."
Representatives of the toy industry called the proposal harsh and unrealistic. "For this Council to blame the toys for criminal activity is a red herring," said Frederick B. Locker, a lawyer for the Toy Industry Association. "It's overly simplistic and unfair to the children who play responsibly with toy guns."
Inspector Steven Silks of the Police Department told the Council that since 1998 there had been 12 cases in which officers had fired at someone holding a toy gun that had been mistaken for a real weapon. Inspector Silks said it was unclear how many of the instances involved fatal shootings.
But council member after council member seemed to know the name of at least one child for whom playing with a toy gun had turned violent. Some worried aloud about the fate of the children at P.S. 72.
"Wouldn't it be horrible if one of these very guns they handed out to a youth ended up with that youth being killed?" asked Councilman James Sanders Jr. of Queens. "I'm sure they would come and they would say the youth had the right, it was a perfect freedom to go out there and get themselves killed."
Copyright 2003
