The telephone woke me up. The call was from a neighbor who
said, "Did you hear the gunshots? Someone just emptied their
gun and it sounded like it was close by." I hadn't heard a
thing because this old lady was sleeping on the only ear that
still works well. My husband went to the front door and didn't
see or hear anything amiss. My neighbor had reported the
incident, and the NYPD was now in charge, so I went back to
sleep.
I've always lived in neighborhoods where deadly popping noises
have become commonplace, so perhaps my perspective on gun control
is different from that of the elite pundits in New York City and
from celebrities who can afford armed bodyguards. For all our
tough gun control laws, chances are the gun fired that night was
an illegal one. Last summer, police arrested a man for a DUI and
discovered weapons in his car. A search of his home uncovered a
huge stash of weapons ranging from pistols to assault weapons.
This man lived just up the street from my house.
I have the choice of spending sleepless nights worrying about a
gunman invading my home and slaughtering my family, which
includes five darling grandchildren, or of rallying with our
mayor for stricter gun control legislation and harsher penalties
for gun manufacturers. Instead, I choose to ask God to keep my
family safe, because the other options just don't work.
No matter how many tough laws against guns are enacted, the bad
will get their hands on them. They will buy them on the black
market from either licensed dealers or thieves who've broken into
armories. Down the street from where I live, there's a car parked
in a driveway with a bumper sticker that reads " Vietnam
POW." I have no idea if it's the truth, but I'll bet the
owner has a gun in the house. There are just as many homes on
Staten Island with Colt .45 "Beware the owner" signs as
there are those showing installed alarm systems. These people
have no intention of being sitting ducks in a no-gun zone like
the students at Virginia Tech. Good for them.
I came to that epiphany about the futility of sleepless nights in
2003, when I had encountered the dangerous element up close and
personal. An ex-boyfriend of my daughter-in-law firebombed my
son's truck in my driveway, and even though he had violated more
than 20 orders of protection, he always managed to be out on bail
issuing death threats. After a plea deal, he was sentenced to
three years for kidnapping and assault. The firebombing was
downgraded to criminal mischief. He served only two years, and I
would cringe whenever I read about a woman being killed by an
ex-husband or boyfriend despite an order of protection.
When Daniel Donovan took the office of Staten Island district
attorney in 2004, he worked tirelessly to keep my daughter-in-law
safe, but his hands were tied by weak stalking laws. My
daughter-in-law has a pink piece of paper as her only defense.
Mr. Donovan may have another solution.
He has proposed using Global Positioning System technology to put
real protection behind that order of protection. Federal
authorities and several states have used GPS monitoring systems
as a condition of bail and as an alternative to incarceration
during criminal proceedings. The jurisdictions using this
technology outfit the defendant at the time of release with a GPS
ankle bracelet. That bracelet is then matched to a monitoring
system maintained by local law enforcement. Defendants can be
tracked nearly anywhere in the world with GPS, which can pinpoint
their location within a matter of feet.
Some jurisdictions have taken the additional step of giving
alleged victims or witnesses pagers that would be used to signal
alerts of a possible violation of the order. This is what's
brilliant about the plan. The victim can be alerted immediately
when the predator has entered the area designated as protected,
and the police will be notified at the same time. There is no
cost to the taxpayer, because the defendant pays the daily fee
for monitoring.
"Modern technology allows us to grant orders of protection
strength beyond simple paper," Mr. Donovan told me.
"The only thing we need is our legislators to give
prosecutors and courts the ability to do so."
Rather than more ineffective gun control laws what we really need
in New York City is criminal control. Albany, are you listening?