Desertdog
Member
A good illustration of where more guns DO NOT mean more, but less, crime.
The BGs would probably be on the losing end it the areas mentioned.
There are a lot of guns in some small towns
Many residents learn to shoot at young age and say the right to own and carry weapons is the American way.
An Indianapolis Star review found that there are 395 gun permit owners in Coatesville -- a town of a little more than 500 people. That gives the town the second highest firearms permit rate of all Indiana towns. -- Mike Fender / The Star
By Richard D. Walton
[email protected]
July 11, 2004
Wilbur Jones can hardly remember a time when he wasn't shooting guns.
"As soon as I was 12, 14 years old," the 84-year-old Coatesville man said, "I was learning to carry a gun and how to use it."
Today, Jones keeps a Ruger .22 semi-automatic handgun in his Dodge Ram truck. He says it's partly for protection -- and partly for pesky creatures.
"We try to take care of not letting the coyotes get so thick. They're pretty thick out in the country."
In this Hendricks County community, the right to bear arms is passed on from generation to generation, as it is in Morgan County, where Jones grew up.
An Indianapolis Star review of gun permit data found that 395 permit holders listed Coatesville -- a town of slightly more than 500 people -- as their place of residence.
Measuring the number of permits against the town's population, Coatesville has the second highest firearms permit rate of all Indiana cities and towns. The ranking is approximate because it is not known how many who gave Coatesville as their address live in or outside the town limits.
ZIP code 46151 in the Martinsville area has the highest number of active gun permits -- 2,605 -- of any ZIP code in Indiana.
Lying in a rural stretch of the state between Indianapolis and Bloomington, Martinsville has more than 20 times the population of Coatesville. But the two communities are linked by a heritage where learning to shoot is a rite of passage and gun ownership, a God-given right.
"That shows we live in a free country," Jones says.
"Second Amendment," says Lester Sichting, of rural Martinsville.
Sichting is an uncle of former Purdue University basketball star Jerry Sichting. No fewer than seven members of his Morgan County family have gun permits, the data show.
Lester Sichting, 74, first fired a gun when he was 5 or 6. He keeps a semiautomatic handgun in his truck. There's not a lot of crime in the area where he lives, he says. "But you never know. Stop at a stoplight and somebody might come up and jump on your car or something."
For all the gun permits in Coatesville, violent crime is virtually unheard of.
It was a big event a few years ago when somebody splashed paint on the library. And there remains a small hole in one of its windows that vandals put there about five years ago.
Town Marshal David Gunn says he serves a lot of restraining orders, responds to the occasional domestic dispute and deals with traffic accidents. In his 12 years on the job, the most serious crime he's handled was a break-in.
So, Gunn says, it's not like some crime wave is pushing people to go out and buy protection.
There's a slow-paced feel to Coatesville. The joke here is that when the only doctor in town closes his office each Wednesday, Coatesville shuts down.
Last Wednesday, the streets were virtually deserted except for children riding their bikes. Some shops were dark.
Not Pam's Place, however. The proprietor, Pamela Gibson, was open for business. And she wasn't talking up guns.
Gibson, in fact, won't have a gun in her home -- ever.
In August 1970, her father was gunned down and her uncle wounded during a robbery of their store in nearby Belleville. Edward Gibson took a fatal shot to the abdomen.
Pam Gibson was almost 14. She painfully recalls the trip to the hospital and then back home, and how the streets were full of police cars.
"I don't need a gun," Gibson said the other day. "If you want something from me: Here, I'll give it to you."
But Gibson, too, learned as a youth how to shoot weapons.
Her father, a hunter, taught her.
Marian Gouker, 64, says she owns no real guns, just a BB gun she inherited from her mother.
Sitting on her porch swing, her front door flanked by the American and Confederate flags, she sees no need for a weapon.
"We're not hunters," Gouker says. "And we don't have, as far as I know, drug gangs and whatever around here."
She expressed surprise so many local folks had firearms permits. "They don't carry 'em on their hips like they used to," she said. "So it's hard to tell who's got one and who don't."
Guns, says Tim Smith, a Coatesville mechanic, are part of the local landscape.
"We were raised around them," he said. "Raised with them."
Love of guns is hardly restricted to one or two areas of the state.
According to the gun permit data, ZIP code 46102, which includes Advance in Boone County, has 32 permits. Just 40 people live in that region.
ZIP code 47123, which contains Grantsburg in southern Indiana, has 30 people and 21 permits.
Smith, who used to pack a handgun and still owns rifles, speaks for many Hoosiers in his passion for guns.
"As long as a weapon is used in the correct manner," Smith says, "there is nothing wrong with having a house full of 'em, as far as I'm concerned."
Staff writer John R. O'Neill contributed to this report.
Call Star reporter Richard D. Walton at (317) 444-6289.
The BGs would probably be on the losing end it the areas mentioned.
There are a lot of guns in some small towns
Many residents learn to shoot at young age and say the right to own and carry weapons is the American way.
An Indianapolis Star review found that there are 395 gun permit owners in Coatesville -- a town of a little more than 500 people. That gives the town the second highest firearms permit rate of all Indiana towns. -- Mike Fender / The Star
By Richard D. Walton
[email protected]
July 11, 2004
Wilbur Jones can hardly remember a time when he wasn't shooting guns.
"As soon as I was 12, 14 years old," the 84-year-old Coatesville man said, "I was learning to carry a gun and how to use it."
Today, Jones keeps a Ruger .22 semi-automatic handgun in his Dodge Ram truck. He says it's partly for protection -- and partly for pesky creatures.
"We try to take care of not letting the coyotes get so thick. They're pretty thick out in the country."
In this Hendricks County community, the right to bear arms is passed on from generation to generation, as it is in Morgan County, where Jones grew up.
An Indianapolis Star review of gun permit data found that 395 permit holders listed Coatesville -- a town of slightly more than 500 people -- as their place of residence.
Measuring the number of permits against the town's population, Coatesville has the second highest firearms permit rate of all Indiana cities and towns. The ranking is approximate because it is not known how many who gave Coatesville as their address live in or outside the town limits.
ZIP code 46151 in the Martinsville area has the highest number of active gun permits -- 2,605 -- of any ZIP code in Indiana.
Lying in a rural stretch of the state between Indianapolis and Bloomington, Martinsville has more than 20 times the population of Coatesville. But the two communities are linked by a heritage where learning to shoot is a rite of passage and gun ownership, a God-given right.
"That shows we live in a free country," Jones says.
"Second Amendment," says Lester Sichting, of rural Martinsville.
Sichting is an uncle of former Purdue University basketball star Jerry Sichting. No fewer than seven members of his Morgan County family have gun permits, the data show.
Lester Sichting, 74, first fired a gun when he was 5 or 6. He keeps a semiautomatic handgun in his truck. There's not a lot of crime in the area where he lives, he says. "But you never know. Stop at a stoplight and somebody might come up and jump on your car or something."
For all the gun permits in Coatesville, violent crime is virtually unheard of.
It was a big event a few years ago when somebody splashed paint on the library. And there remains a small hole in one of its windows that vandals put there about five years ago.
Town Marshal David Gunn says he serves a lot of restraining orders, responds to the occasional domestic dispute and deals with traffic accidents. In his 12 years on the job, the most serious crime he's handled was a break-in.
So, Gunn says, it's not like some crime wave is pushing people to go out and buy protection.
There's a slow-paced feel to Coatesville. The joke here is that when the only doctor in town closes his office each Wednesday, Coatesville shuts down.
Last Wednesday, the streets were virtually deserted except for children riding their bikes. Some shops were dark.
Not Pam's Place, however. The proprietor, Pamela Gibson, was open for business. And she wasn't talking up guns.
Gibson, in fact, won't have a gun in her home -- ever.
In August 1970, her father was gunned down and her uncle wounded during a robbery of their store in nearby Belleville. Edward Gibson took a fatal shot to the abdomen.
Pam Gibson was almost 14. She painfully recalls the trip to the hospital and then back home, and how the streets were full of police cars.
"I don't need a gun," Gibson said the other day. "If you want something from me: Here, I'll give it to you."
But Gibson, too, learned as a youth how to shoot weapons.
Her father, a hunter, taught her.
Marian Gouker, 64, says she owns no real guns, just a BB gun she inherited from her mother.
Sitting on her porch swing, her front door flanked by the American and Confederate flags, she sees no need for a weapon.
"We're not hunters," Gouker says. "And we don't have, as far as I know, drug gangs and whatever around here."
She expressed surprise so many local folks had firearms permits. "They don't carry 'em on their hips like they used to," she said. "So it's hard to tell who's got one and who don't."
Guns, says Tim Smith, a Coatesville mechanic, are part of the local landscape.
"We were raised around them," he said. "Raised with them."
Love of guns is hardly restricted to one or two areas of the state.
According to the gun permit data, ZIP code 46102, which includes Advance in Boone County, has 32 permits. Just 40 people live in that region.
ZIP code 47123, which contains Grantsburg in southern Indiana, has 30 people and 21 permits.
Smith, who used to pack a handgun and still owns rifles, speaks for many Hoosiers in his passion for guns.
"As long as a weapon is used in the correct manner," Smith says, "there is nothing wrong with having a house full of 'em, as far as I'm concerned."
Staff writer John R. O'Neill contributed to this report.
Call Star reporter Richard D. Walton at (317) 444-6289.
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