TUCSON, Ariz. \u2014 A campaign promising free shotguns for people to protect themselves in Tucson\u2019s most troubled neighborhoods has divided some residents in a community still reeling from a shooting rampage in 2011that killed six people, left a congresswoman and several others wounded, and made the city a symbol of gun violence in America.<\/p>\n
The Armed Citizen Project is part of a national campaign to give shotguns to single women and homeowners in the nation\u2019s crime-ridden neighborhoods, an effort that comes amid a national debate on gun control after mass shootings in Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut.<\/p>\n
While towns in Idaho, Utah, Virginia and Pennsylvania have debated ordinances recommending gun ownership, the gun giveaway effort appears to be the first of its kind.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are not willing to protect the citizens of Tucson, someone is going to do it, why not me? Why not have armed citizens protecting themselves,\u201d said Shaun McClusky, a real estate agent who plans to start handing out shotguns by May.<\/p>\n
Arizona gun proponents have donated about $12,500 to fund the gun giveaway and McClusky, a former mayoral and city council candidate, hopes to collect enough to eventually arm entire neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
Participants will receive training on how to properly use, handle and store their weapon, as well as trigger locks. It costs about $400 per participant for the weapon and training.<\/p>\n
Tucson police officials declined to discuss the gun program or public safety concerns, but statistics published by the department show violent crime was at a 13-year low in 2010, with 3,332 incidents. That compares with 5,116 violent crimes \u2014 including homicides, sexual assaults, and robberies \u2014 in 1997. Tucson averages about 50 homicides a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TUCSON, Ariz. \u2014 A campaign promising free shotguns for people to protect themselves in Tucson\u2019s most troubled neighborhoods has divided some residents in a community still reeling from a shooting rampage in 2011that killed six people, left a congresswoman and several others wounded, and made the city a symbol of gun violence in America. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-important-news-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}