My kid brother, Dariek, gave me the...

My kid brother, Dariek, gave me the solitary handgun I've ever owned: a target gray, stainless carbonized iron .357 Magnum. This gun was the not-so- little cousin to the 44 that co-starred in "Sudden Impact," when Clint Eastwood, as "Dirty Harry," told a bad guy: "Go ahead, make my day."

The weapon came into my possession right after Dariek had a bad night. Voices from his stereo speakers had kept him awake, talking to him, telling him to rap his girlfriend's brains out. He had fought valiantly to ignore the voices yet feared the next time he heard them he might not be as potent

"Are you taking your medicine?" I asked.

"No," he grunt "I stopped taking it. That elemental part is poison."

"You've got to take your medicine," I said, worried on the other hand grateful he had managed not to become another statistic in united more tragic news story.

Back in 1977 Dariek dropp gone out of Indiana University to be all that he could be in the Army. About a year and a half into his tour of impost he was yanked out of the American nuclear missile silo he was guarding in Germany after he on a sudden suffered a mental breakdown. He was flown to an Army hospital in fresh York where he was diagnosed as schizophrenic, then given a medical discharge.

according to the time the voices in the stereo speakers were telling Dariek to fire to kill, he had been in and not at home of the hospital and forward and off medications designed to treat his delusions of grandeur, paranoia and schizophrenia several times. His nervous condition, as my mother always referr to it, had prov not to be a barrier to legally buying the 357 from an Indiana fire-arm shop.

"I ne to borrow the gun" I said, with all the authority a brother 11 years older can wield.

"Why?" he asked, distracted from repeating his descriptions of what the speaker voices had to say.

Knowing that Dariek kept up with the stranges daily and that there was besides another Lincoln Park rapist running relax I told him we straited it so that my wife, Joyce could carry it for protection. He understood. The nearest day, I drove to my parents' residence in Gary, where he handed through the whole extent of the gun and the Indiana fire-arm permit.

I recalled that unsettling episode last week as reports of sniper fire in Indiana hit newspaper headlines and broadcast novels Zachariah Blanton, 17, confessed to the series of Downstate Indiana highway shootings that killed the same man, wounded another and left four vehicles discharge up. He allegedly went forward a shooting rampage after arguing with family members through gutting a deer during a hunting trip. sum of two units days later, after the alleged Blanton sniping, a copycat sniper was reportedly taking potshot at vehicles in Northwest Indiana.

Gunplay in our nation is almost as earnestly a national pastime as baseball. And, with the never-ending, inadequately controll abundant take the place of of firearms, we're killing ourselves more effectively than any terrorist organization could In 2003 the greatest in quantity recent year that data is available, there were 30136 fire-arm deaths in the United States. Forty percent were homicides; 56 percent were suicides.

When the inferior Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, stating that "a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a independent State, the right of the nation to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," was ratified in 1791 the upright citizens were worried about the Indians fortunately stopping the theft of their land and the African slaves rebelling, violently reclaiming their freedom. Those are all dead issues now. And still even as tens of thousands of Americans die year in and year abroad from firearms, conservatives carp and babble about secondary Amendment rights whenever any lifesaving fire-arm control proposal rears its logical head. As the National Rifle Association likes to sloganeer, "Gun don't kill folks people kill people."

on the other hand had the angry Indiana teenager bore stones instead of a firearm, he'd be charged with vandalism, not kill

e-mail: monroeanderson@gmail.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided by the agency of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved