[Drtop]

I wrote the Senator on the National Parks Issue and mentioned that she had once been issues a CCW. Although she did not respond to the Natl Parks issues, she did say the following with my response to her post script:

Dear Dr. TOP:

Thank you for writing to me about my permit to carry a concealed weapon. I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

I possessed a concealed weapon permit for a short time beginning in 1976. In the mid‑1970s, a terrorist organization ‑‑ the New World Liberation Front ‑‑ carried out two attacks against me and my family. In the first, a bomb was placed outside the window of my daughter's bedroom. It detonated but did not explode. We were lucky: the weather was particularly (and unusually) cold, and the explosive they used didn't explode in below‑freezing temperatures. In the second, they shot out the windows of our beach home. My husband was terminally ill with cancer at the time.

Later, some of the members of the New World Liberation Front were arrested, and the threat abated. At that point, I had the gun -- and several other weapons that were turned into the police -- melted into a cross, which I presented to Pope John Paul II when I visited Rome in 1982. Currently, I do not possess a gun, nor do I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

I hope this addresses what you may have heard on the subject. If I can be of additional assistance, please do not hesitate to call my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224‑3841.



Senator:

Thank you very much for your personal response. I respect you for your public service and sacrifice. Your story is chilling and heart warming in the fact that you and your family were spared by an act of weather. I also respect your right to bare arms when you felt you and your family where threatened, it is our right as Americans to do so.

Again, thank you for sharing your personal story with me.

Respectfully,

John A. TOP, Ph.D