SPEAKERS SQUARE OFF IN GUN CONTROL DEBATE; UNIVERSITY EVENT VIEWS BOTH SIDES OF NATIONAL ISSUE

People can do whatever they want with their own constitutional rights, National Rifle Association member Bob Daniels says. "When you start treading on mine we're going to lock horns."

Josh Sugarmann, author of "The National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower and Fear," portrays the NRA as a gun-manufacturers' association that poses as a gun-owner's lobby in order to achieve its ends the unrestricted production and sale of guns.

"They have a primary concern, and that's dollars," he says.

About 100 people attended a gun control debate between the two men Tuesday night in the meeting rooms on the lower level of the Show Me Center. The debate was sponsored by the Student Activities Council at Southeast Missouri State University.

Daniels, who lives in St. Louis County and is a self-employed legal affairs specialist, served in the military for 22 years and was a policeman for six years. He does not represent the NRA officially.

He said the purpose of the Second Amendment was always to protect the citizenry from its own government.

"It never was about hunting, never was about self-defense, it never was about defending our shores."

Sugarmann, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center, attacked both the NRA and "the myth of the Second Amendment," the guarantee of rights often cited as the bulwark of the anti-gun control argument.

"No court has ever turned down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds," he said.

Daniels defended the Second Amendment's vitality, and the erosion of rights Sugarmann's contention could lead to. "Which (of the Bill of Rights) will next become a myth if the Second Amendment becomes a myth?" he asked.

Sugarmann contended that crime is the straw man the NRA uses to instill fear. Most deaths and injuries caused by guns are not crime-related, he said.

He credited the NRA with helping to create the culture of violent young street criminals that terrorize America's urban centers.

"They're the NRA's kids," Sugarmann said. "They're the natural result of an unfettered gun industry ..."

Daniels blamed the culture of urban street crime on movies and television, and said, "I want to go on the record as being patently offended at the characterization of this violence being `the NRA's kids.'"

America has a crime problem, not a gun problem, he said.

"Teaching firearms safety is a far better solution than legislation."

If the post-debate questioners all pro-gun were an indication, Sugarmann's point of view was outnumbered Tuesday night. But when one man tested his knowledge of guns and the gun control debate, Sugarmann accurately answered the technical questions.

Sugarmann said he does not favor a disarmed citizenry. But he wants restrictions placed on certain types of weapons, in the same way the Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency impose controls.

Both Daniels and Sugarmann agreed that America has a violence problem.

"It's ugly, it's messy and it's bloody," Sugarmann said.

With the new weapons technologies being introduced, "things are only going to get worse," he said.