Waco Leaves Unanswered Questions

I guess I'm glad there's going to be an independent inquiry into the Waco debacle.

Of course most everybody remembers David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. After all, their fiery demise was streamed live into our living rooms by CNN.

That was in 1993. Ever since there has been a lot of talk about conspiracies and coverups. There are Internet sites devoted to it and there are books, pamphlets, newsletters and videos that purport to have the truth on the issue.

Most of them say the government started the fire that leveled the compound and killed Koresh and his 80 followers.

Of course the government denied all that for years.

Official government sources assured us that there were no incendiary devices used in the assault on the compound.

They said Koresh and his people started the fire that killed them.

And for the most part, I believe them.

But now the government says that, well, maybe agents did lob a few incendiary tear gas canisters, but that's not what caused the fire.

They're still sticking to the story that Koresh and his people burned themselves up.

I guess I still kind of believe that. I mean, Koresh certainly was wacko enough to pull it off. And my understanding is that the tear gas canisters were tossed quite awhile before the fire started.

So I will give the government the benefit of the doubt - again. I really don't think the guys throwing tear gas intended to torch the place.

Even if they did play a role in the fire, I would have to guess it was accidental.

But anyway, now we will have an official inquiry into the whole mess to find out.

The key question for the investigators is whether the government or the Davidians started the fire.

But that's not the key question in my mind.

My question is (and we'll never get an answer to this one), what in the world was the government doing there in the first place?

I remember quite well the news reports when the thing first started.

Reporters were cruising around Waco asking the local folks questions.

Most of them said they knew who Koresh was. Most of them said he fairly routinely came to town to get supplies for the compound. Most of them also said the Davidians posed no threat to anybody, although they heard they might have some weapons out at the compound.

OK, so the government hears there is this charismatic guy with a bunch of followers who might have some weapons.

There is also somebody who went through a nasty custody fight who claims his kid is being abused out there.

Koresh is allegedly having sex with most of the female Branch Davidians.

Apparently there isn't a whole lot of concrete evidence of any of this stuff. Just a lot of hearsay.

So the government sends a batch of federal agents out to arrest Koresh. There's a confrontation. Things don't go well. After 51-days of standoff, everybody dies.

Let me rephrase my earlier question. Why didn't the government just nab Koresh at the local Wal-Mart? He wasn't all that reclusive.

We may find out - to the best abilities of the government, anyway - who started the fire. But we'll never know why our government deemed it prudent to confront Koresh at his compound when they suspected he had a bunch of weapons.

And as long as we don't have the answer to that question, the conspiracy and cover-up theories will continue to thrive.

*****

Comes now President Bill Clinton with $15 million of the taxpayers' money in hand to buy guns.

He's proposing that amount be given to mayors across the land to buy guns from residents of their towns.

The deal is, if you turn in a gun, you get some cash or a gift certificate or something.

OK, this is a dumb idea.

First of all, there are probably around 240 million guns in America. If the president thinks he will somehow lower that number with buybacks, he probably also thinks he could empty the ocean by sucking it through a soda straw and spitting it on the beach.

Second, the only people who sell guns for a fraction of their worth at a buyback are law-abiding people who are careful with them anyway.

I suppose a criminal might sell his gun to the mayor - if it was broken and couldn't be repaired. Then he'd take the cash and put it against the price of a fresh gun.

I guess the president knows that, so he cites the statistic that the number of kids accidentally hurt by guns in the United States is nine times higher than in any other industrialized nation. That alone is justification for his federal buyback program.

I will concede to him that his statistic is accurate.

But I am sure he also knows the following statistics are accurate - he just chooses not to tell us about them.

In 1996:

There were 138 fatal firearms accidents among children. That is 2 percent of all child fatalities. That also is a 75 percent decrease from the all-time worst year of 1975, during which 550 kids died.

The fatal firearm rate among all residents of the United States was 0.4 percent per 100,000, an 88 percent decrease from the all-time high in 1904. That compares to 16.3 for car wrecks; falls, 5.6; poisonings, 3.6; fires, 1.4; drownings, 1.3; chokings, 1.2; and medical mistakes, 1.1.

What if the president had said there were almost three times as many people killed by medical accidents than by firearms accidents?

Kind of puts it in perspective, doesn't it?

The annual number of fatal firearm accidents fell to an all-time low in 1996, cut by more than half since 1930. And this during a time when the population nearly doubled and the number of firearms quadrupled.

Gun buybacks are worthless political scams that serve no useful purpose. But the media love them and guns are the current target of the political correctness police. The president knows he can get some great PR and earn some popularity points.

And in the end, that's all that really matters, isn't it?