“The guy just went berserk. The shots just kept coming off, he wouldn’t stop…the door wouldn’t open…there were bodies all over. People shot in the head, It was disgusting…The girl next to my father was blown away.”
WHAT YOU SAW IF YOU were in Chicago or Dallas or Los Angeles were headlines that read something like DERANGED GUNMAN KILLS 5, WOUNDS 19, ON NEW YORK COMMUTER TRAIN. It was just another day in America. This has happened before and will happen again–as it did in Oxnard, Calif, on Dec. 2, when an out-of-work computer engineer allegedly killed three people and wounded six others at a state unemployment office, then killed a cop who pursued him. As always, there are sirens, floodlights, ambulances, body bags, anguished relatives waiting for the news.
This time, however, there is at least some chance the results will be different. The Long Island Rail Road massacre comes at a moment when most Americans are increasingly anxious about crime and sick at heart about the recurrent episodes of random violence, which mock our pretensions to order and civility. Washington is unsettled. Although it is true, as many there say, that the federal government can do relatively little to control crime in the streets, Congress and the Clinton administration are now aware that the issue isn’t going away. What to do? Congress is finishing work on a $22 billion omnibus crime bill that should put 100,000 more police officers on the streets. After seven years of wrangling, it has also passed the Brady bill, which imposes a five-day waiting period so that police can conduct background checks on those who want to purchase handguns.
But none of this, it seems, is enough–and ghastly as it was, the LIRR massacre may have had the beneficial effect of pushing the debate on crime and guns to a deeper level. New York City’s Republican mayor-elect, Rudolph Giuliani, met with Bill Clinton last week and spent much of his time talking about urban crime. (A group of mayors and police chiefs from around the country delivered much the same message later in the week.) Giuliani, alarmed by the rising statistics on handgun crime, advocates a system of federal licensing for all gun owners. The LIRR killings occurred that afternoon–and the next day Clinton said he hoped the “terrible human tragedy” on Long Island “would give some more impetus” to the drive to control gun violence. Clinton also announced he was directing Attorney General Janet Reno to study the idea of requiring licenses for handgun owners. “It is interesting that, you know, we regularly have requirements…for driving cars” but none for gun ownership, the president said. “It’s something I think we ought to look at.”
The LIRR tragedy is a good place to start. The 5:33 is a peak-hour train from Penn Station, Manhattan, to Hicksville, on Long Island, and it was full of commuters last week. Car No. 3, where a 35-year-old Jamaican immigrant named Cohn Ferguson sat, carried about 80 tired suburbanites as the train left New Hyde Park en route to Merillon Avenue, Garden City. Police said Ferguson, who had a 9-millimeter Ruger pistol and more than 100 rounds of ammunition, stood up about a minute after the train left New Hyde Park and began to shoot. Those who saw the gunman said he was cool and methodical as he walked down the center aisle of the car, aiming and firing at point-blank range at his uncomprehending fellow passengers.
“I thought [the shots] were firecrackers or a cap gun,” said David Farrell, 23, who was sitting near the shooter toward the rear of the car. “It was after the fourth or fifth shot that I started hearing the screams. And I said, ‘Holy s—, that is no cap gun’.” Two women dived to the floor at Farrell’s feet. Farrell leaned forward and covered his head with his hands. “After a couple more shots, a man jumped on top of me,” Farrell said. “There was panic in the car. People were jumping every which way to get away from [the shooter], but there just wasn’t too far you could go.”
The shooter emptied his gun and paused to reload. According to police, Ferguson used at least 13 Winchester Black Talon shells, hollow-point bullets expressly designed to cause maximum damage to the victim. He started shooting again. By then the rear half of the car was strewn with severely wounded riders–a rolling abattoir. Panicky commuters pushed their way into the adjacent cars, where other passengers, not realizing what was happening, shouted for calm and pushed back.
“I scrambled over into a five-seat section, but there was nothing between him and me,” said Kevin Zaleskie, 39. “I pulled my briefcase up over my head and shoulders, hoping it would shield me from the bullets. As I sat there, I could feel him walk past me as he was shooting, but I wasn’t hit. I think that if I had run up the aisle I would have been gone. I just lay very still and didn’t draw attention to myself.”
THE SHOOTER EMPTIED THE second clip and turned to walk back to his seat, apparently to get more ammunition. Zaleskie heard someone say, “Grab him, grab him!” Three men huddling among the crowd of terrified passengers at the far end of the car saw their chance, and one of them, Kevin Blum, 42, tackled the shooter. Michael O’Connor, 32, and Mark McEntee, 34, piled on and forced the gunman down on a seat. Somebody grabbed his feet; David Farrell grabbed an arm. The gunman “was saying, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? Whatever happens, I deserve what I get’,” Farrell said. Then, Farrell said, the gunman added, “Just don’t break my arms.” “Shut up! Shut up!” someone said–and somebody else said, “You son of a bitch, you do deserve what ever you get.”
The tentative quality of Clinton’s support for further gun-control legislation almost certainly reflects the continuing power of the National Rifle Association. The NRA bitterly opposes any form of gun control as an infringement on the constitutional right to bear arms, and it has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to punish politicians who differ. “The Brady bill’s supporters are looking in a mirror and seeing a shift, but all they’re seeing is themselves,” the organization’s legislative counsel, Richard Gardiner, said last week, “If you want to do something to make sure that crime will increase…and turn the rest of the country into New York, [licensing gun owners] is the way to do it.” The gun lobby, in fact, thinks the best solution for appalling crimes like the LIRR massacre is still more guns. “Had even one licensed pistol holder been on that railroad car, this predator could have been stopped,” said Gerald Preiser, president of the Federation of New York State Rifle and Pistol Clubs.
Possibly. But the shooting spree had lasted no more than three minutes from start to finish, and pandemonium reigned inside the car as some passengers tried to get out. As a result, it is hard to see how anyone, even a well-trained marksman with a pistol at the ready, would have been able to stop the carnage altogether. Phil Volz, a former New York City cop who was in the death car, said the frustrating part was “not having a gun and knowing that this guy was shooting other people. " Still, Volz was just as confused as everyone else when the incident began. In 15 years on the police force, he said, he had never been “in a situation where somebody was actually shooting at or around me directly.” Even assuming that Volz or someone else had been carrying a gun, there is little likelihood that the LIRR incident would have ended with a single well-aimed shot to stop the killer in his tracks. That kind of thing only happens in the movies.
The facts of this case are equally daunting to those who hope the Brady bill will somehow reduce handgun violence. Investigators discovered that Ferguson bought his pistol at a gun shop near Long Beach, Calif. The sale was entirely legal, and the transaction included both a national background check and a 15-day waiting period. Ferguson went to California sometime in the spring, and he made an $82 down payment on the gun on April 23. He presented a California driver’s license as proof of residence, and the dealer properly notified state officials of his application to buy a gun. The state checked its computer files and found no information on Ferguson: he was neither a convicted felon, nor did he have any documented history of mental disorder. Ferguson waited out the 15 days, picked up his gun on May 9 and returned to New York. His local address was a motel in Long Beach, which could have suggested he was not really a California resident. No one checked that, and the Brady bill is no more likely than California’s current law to produce closer scrutiny of would-be gun buyers.
Where does this leave us? Last week Handgun Control, Inc., the lobbying group that backed the Brady bill, unveiled an ambitious agenda for further gun-control legislation that included licensing, safety training and fingerprint checks for all handgun owners. Clinton seems willing to raise the political ante and some in Congress, like Rep. Charles Schumer of New York and Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, seem ready to confront the NRA. But not even licensing handgun owners will stop the violence quickly or completely, and no one thinks the NRA will be easy to beat. Enacting effective gun control could take years–and in the meantime the killing will continue.
