From: [c d t] at [sw.stratus.com] (C. D. Tavares)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: People with CCW in New York City
Date: 19 Nov 1993 19:37:02 GMT

                            BOSTON GLOBE
                       BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
                           JANUARY 8, 1993

                    ELITE IN NYC ARE PACKING HEAT
Celebrities vie to get on coveted list: police roster of approved gun
carriers
--------------------
By Colum Lynch
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE
--------------------
NEW YORK - Bill Cosby is on the list.  Joan Rivers, too.  And Donald
Trump, William F. Buckley, Jr., Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and Howard
Stern.  There's even a Rockefeller on it - Laurence.
   Harry Connick Jr. is not on the list and it cost him a night in
jail.
   The list is of a select group of New Yorkers who have been granted
the privilege of firepower: a permit from the New York Police
Department to carry a concealed weapon when stepping out onto the
streets of New York City.
   The militarization of the city's cultural elite comes at a time
when the perception of violence is on the increase in America's cities,
said Dr. Gary Kleck, a specialist on American gun culture and author
of the book "Point Blank."  Never mind that figures show that violent
crime - except against young black men- has decreased somewhat since
the 1970s; gun lust appears to be on the rise in New York's cultural
constellation.
   Sylvia Heisel, a designer for Barneys New York, recently created a
low-cut, full-length bullet-proof evening gown for the terminally
fearful set.  Crooner Connick got a pistol from his sister for
Christmas.  He was arrested when he tried to take the unlicensed
weapon with him on a recent trip to New Orleans.  Politicians,
entertainers, doctors and businessmen pay up to $1,500 a year for
the opportunity of letting off some high-caliber steam at the
exclusive Downtown Rifle and Pistol Club, according to Bill Messick,
the director.  Who are they?  "We don't give out names," Messick
said.
   Porn mogul Al Goldstein, the editor and publisher of Screw Magazine
and producer of the late-night cable show "Midnight Blue," has been
trying to get on the "gun carry" list since 1978, the year Hustler
Magazine publisher Larry Flint was crippled by an assailant's bullet.
Following a string of rejected applications, he has taken his case
all the way to the New York State Appeals Court.
   "If the crooks and crazies are packing Uzis or Mac-10s, at least
let me carry a Beretta," said the card-carrying member of the
American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.
   Goldstein insists that his case reflects the special perks
available to those at the top of the heap in New York.  Indeed, the
process has been kind to those with fame, power and influence.
   Sulzberger, the retired publisher of The New York Times, said he
needed to carry a gun to safeguard the wads of money he carries
around town.  He got one.  Photographer Irving Elkin requested and
received a permit on the grounds that he carries "money and expensive
cameras."  Bill Cosby was issued a permit in 1988 after stating that
he and members of his family had been the object of unspecified
death threats.  Donald Trump and radio host Howard Stern also cited
death threats.  "Threats, as ever," wrote the conservative journalist
William F. Buckley Jr. on this application for renewal of his permit.
   Goldstein said he has more reason to fear than any of the others.
The permit the police granted him to keep a .38-caliber revolver in
his apartment isn't enough, he said.  The 42nd Street massage
parlors and downtown sex clubs he frequents in the wee hours to review
for his magazine are not only unsavory, he said, the are unsafe.
   Furthermore, the incendiary tenor of his editorials attract a
degree of crackpot hostility that is potentially lethal.  Goldstein
said he was pistol-whipped by two thugs in his midtown office more
than 10 years ago for writing an "unfavorable review" of what he
believes is a Mafia-controlled massage parlor.
   A lewd attack in the pages of Screw Magazine on the late Ayatollah
Khomeini after he sentenced the writer Salman Rushdie to death
occasioned a battery of death threats.  The reaction was serious
enough to prompt an investigation by the FBI and the New York Police
Department.  And if that weren't enough, an article in a South African
Islamic publication called al-Balaagh raised the specter of god-drunk
"hit squads" enroute from Africa and the Middle East to New York City
on a mission to "blast the dirty godless editor off the face of the
earth."
-- 

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