Why Your Neighbors May Keep Guns

THERE ARE 65 MILLION gun owners in this country, but most of us don't know whether our neighbors are among them. Seattle Times reporters went to four neighborhoods to check attitudes about gun ownership.

On a quiet street in Wallingford, the mother of a 7-year-old boy who's planning a sleepover gets telephone calls from six parents, each asking the same question: Does she keep a gun in her home? She does not, she reassures them.

That woman lives next door to a 21-year-old self-proclaimed liberal who could never imagine owning a firearm. Next door to her is a mortgage broker, a Vietnam-era conscientious objector, who used to plink at cans with a .22 as a kid. Today, he's unarmed and unwilling to own a gun.

Next to them is a 66-year-old retiree with a .38 and a license to carry it concealed.

That trim neighborhood, an easy stroll from Lake Union, was one of four The Seattle Times surveyed door to door last week, asking residents about guns: Do they own them and why or why not? What we found was that far fewer people owned them than didn't. But even if there isn't a pistol on the night stand, the topic of guns in the home was very much on people's minds.

The tragedies at schools in Littleton, Colo., and Springfield, Ore., and the tense standoff just over a week ago in Shoreline, where a murderer broke into a home and stumbled onto an arsenal, are fueling the debate. And the discussions around dinner tables and in living rooms have moved beyond gun ownership. Now, it's about whether the Smiths or Joneses down the street have guns in their homes.

The fact is, most of us don't know. As a rule, Americans don't like the idea of government knowing who has firearms and who doesn't. Guns don't have to be registered. But the statistics that are available are telling.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms figures there are roughly 200 million guns in private ownership in the United States, spread out among roughly 65 million gun owners.

Those numbers cover everything from the single-shot .22-caliber rifles used by Boy Scouts to punch holes in paper targets to the most sophisticated and deadly assault weapons, capable of firing dozens of rounds a minute.

In April, federal agents raided the home of Robert Stratton Maxey in Federal Way, confiscating dozens of firearms and other military ordnance, including rocket launchers. While Maxey has been indicted for owning some allegedly illegal machine guns, most of the weapons he had were entirely legal.

More recently, there was the case of 21-year-old Lonnie Cedric Davis, killed nine days ago by a police sniper after he fired at officers in Shoreline during an hours-long standoff. Davis, who police believe fatally stabbed or bludgeoned three people, including his mother and 18-month-old nephew, before the standoff, was apparently otherwise unarmed before breaking into the home of Fred Westphal, where he came upon ammunition and no fewer than five guns.

Again, there was public surprise at the number of guns - and that they were so readily available in a home with three children.

Children and guns were a driving theme in the random neighborhood interviews conducted by The Times in Wallingford, Shoreline, Redmond and Burien. Another was the responsibility of gun owners to store their firearms safely. A few of the people called upon wouldn't talk, and others asked for anonymity. But for the most part, people were surprisingly candid. In all, 35 families and individuals were willing to share their thoughts.

Neighbors ask neighbors

"We feel very strongly that guns are not appropriate in homes with children," said Tricia King, 31, the Wallingford mother whose son held the slumber party. She and her husband have discussed the issue at length, both the pros and cons.

"What we decided, the majority of our discussions, is that a gun in the house would actually make us feel less safe," said King, the director of enrollment facility in the Seattle School District.

Indeed, King helped draft and implement the district's assault and gun policy. A key factor in her decisions was that the district found the majority of children caught with guns at school had brought them from home.

The topic of guns has found its way into King's conversations with neighbors, as well. She found it refreshing that other parents weren't afraid to call and ask about guns in her home.

"I'm glad people feel comfortable enough now to ask that question," she said.

Likewise, Doug and Dawn Evanson say they don't worry about sending their 8-year-old son, Nick, or their 2-year-old daughter, Geni, over to play with their neighbors in their Redmond neighborhood. They know they aren't armed, because they've asked.

In fact, when Dawn Evanson heard about the Shoreline shooting, she confiscated her son's cap pistol, just for good measure.

"Even with the best-trained kids, curiosity gets the best of them," Dawn Evanson said. "I just don't think guns are something that should be in the house."

A few houses away, attitudes are different.

A couple of doors down and across the street from the Evansons lives Mike Rumsey, a single construction worker with a "North American Hunting Club" sticker on his front door.

Rumsey says he "used to have assault rifles and tons of ammo." But then his teenage son came to live with him. So he pared the collection down to a single handgun, and he keeps it locked in a safe.

"If someone broke into my house, it would be impossible for them to use it," he said. "It would take them a good part of the day to get it out."

He keeps the powerful 9-mm semiautomatic Glock in the event of a break-in, so he could "hold someone at bay until the police arrive."

Clearly, Rumsey doesn't hold anything against someone for having a gun for self-protection or hunting.

"What they do in their own place is their own business," he said. "But I kind of wonder why someone needs six or eight guns in their house. It seems kind of excessive. In this country they fall into the wrong hands."

King, back in Wallingford, said she'd be surprised if any of her neighbors were armed. Five houses up the block, though, lives Jose Gemora, a 66-year-old retired mechanical engineer who acknowledges keeping a .38-caliber revolver in a safe.

Gemora, who has a concealed-carry permit, says the weapon hasn't been fired in 15 years and he hasn't carried it since he took a camping trip in bear country several years back.

"To be honest, I actually can't even tell you why I own it," he said.

Nevertheless, Gemora keeps his gun locked up where others can't get to it. That gun owners should be responsible for their firearms was another opinion that cropped up repeatedly during the interviews.

John Loschky, a 30-year-old business-development director for an unnamed Seattle Internet company and a neighbor of the Kings' in Wallingford, echoed the opinions of several others when he said the Second Amendment, which guarantees citizens the right to keep and bear arms, should remain unchanged in the Constitution.

"But people need to start questioning the laws that dictate the punishment of those who can't manage the guns themselves. We need to strengthen the laws that support that Constitution," said Loschky, who does not own a gun. "Parents need to be held accountable."

Lynn Turnbloom, a mother of two who lives just blocks from the Shoreline neighborhood where Davis holed up with Westphal's guns, relates how angry she became when another neighbor, on hearing of the standoff, announced he would load his rifle to protect the block.

"Protect the block," she snorted in disgust. "I hate guns."

Down the street, a single mother living with her teenage daughter said she doesn't have a gun "because too many accidents can happen" and she can't imagine shooting another person. "I just do not want to put myself in a position when I would have to use one."

`A right to defend ourselves'

Among the gun owners, self-protection was perhaps the dominant justification. In a working-class Burien neighborhood, just a block off busy First Avenue South, five of 12 homes had guns, more than any of the others.

With the exception of one young man whose rifle was a childhood keepsake, all the others said they have more than one - a couple of handguns for protection and maybe a rifle for hunting.

The gun owners tended to be men who grew up around firearms. They hunted with their fathers, or shot bottles in their back yards with the .22 they got when they were 12 or so. Over the years, some of them have owned dozens of guns. Now, they tend to keep a gun or two for sentimental reasons and have a couple for protection.

"By God, if me and my neighbors hear a noise and have to come out at night, you can bet we're going to have something in our hand," said one lifelong Burien resident who asked for anonymity.

"We have a right to defend ourselves against anything they shove in our face, and we'd feel pretty silly if all we had was a stick to throw at them."

A 75-year-old retired clothing buyer in Shoreline, who asked that her name not be used, expressed similar feelings. She packs a little .25-caliber pocket pistol. "I would use it fast," she said with conviction.

That attitude disturbs some of the non-gun-owners, who believe that a firearm would only increase their chance of getting hurt. Still, a few were ambivalent when it came to the possibility of finding themselves or loved ones in danger and needing protection.

"I sometimes ask myself what I would do if somebody broke in," said 45-year-old Michael Kroll, a Wallingford resident and self-described pacifist. "I guess a gun would come in handy. But it would take a pretty extreme circumstance to point a gun and pull the trigger on another human being."

King, the Wallingford mother of two, also quietly admitted she was relieved that Davis was killed - by a police sniper - before he could hurt anyone else.

"The reality is that, in a situation like that, I'd much rather have a cop with a gun than one with a Ph.D. in psychology," she said.

Mike Carter's phone message number is 206-464-3706. His e-mail address is: mcarter@seattletimes.com