The Los Angeles Times reports:

A man armed with a bow and arrow who commandeered a Union Pacific freight train stopped in Montclair on Sunday night was shot and wounded by police, authorities said. Juventino Vallejo-Camerena, 43, of Pomona climbed onto one of the train’s two locomotives about 10:45 p.m. and threatened the two crew members with a bow and arrow, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said.

The engineer and conductor fled the train, which was stopped at a signal, and cut off fuel to the engine with an emergency button outside the cab. They were not harmed, Davis said. Vallejo-Camerena nocked and pointed the arrow at officers on the scene, near Monte Vista Avenue in western San Bernardino County, and threatened to take over the train, Capt. Keith Jones said. Police then shot Vallejo-Camerena in the wrist and upper arm, according to a Montclair Police report.

The attempted train-jacking was “the first time I remember in 25 years something like this ever happening,” Davis said. “How many times does somebody come and take over a train with a bow and arrow?”

This crime represents a 100% increase in bow/arrow crimes and is sure to add fuel to bow/arrow control activists and their desire to limit the sale of bows & arrows. Activists point to the following bow/arrow “incident” just last year in the UK on why this is a major issue:

A drunk (Marcus O’Hara, 33, formerly of Southend, UK) staggered along Southend seafront firing arrows from a bow and arrow on November 8, 2004. Fortunately no one was hurt and he was apprehended but the thought on what damage those arrows could have done is cited as to how close we are to seeing an actual injury from a bow & arrow armed criminal.

Independent Sources wonders if we have to see yet another bow/arrow crime before something is done about banning them in this country. The fact is that someone can walk right out of prison and over to a sporting goods store and buy a bow & arrow and there is nothing that we can legally do about it. Even worse, bow & arrow buyers don’t even have to register them so that if we find an arrow at the scene of a crime there is no way to track down its owner or to match the bow that it came from. And what defense is there for assault bows?

I expect some flack from people like Alphecca who will tell us all of the legal uses of bows & arrows (name one!) but even they have to understand that we need to take back our streets from bow & arrow armed criminals. Plus it is the bow/arrow owners who are giving gun owners a bad name.

technorati: crime bow and arrow gun control

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 at 5:05 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.