The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 12

B2' The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, April 2, 1994 OBSERVER ode VIEW FROM THE U.S. Guns 'R' Us mentality thrives on worn logic il r. jL 1 I ft If. ti i ir mr "mm. blood Wayne Cuddington, Citizen BIG HELP: Billie Jo Decarie helps step-sister Catherine prepare dinner.

Billie Jo got AIDS from mother Johanne who was infected by HIV-contaminated blood during a transfusion FIRING BACK: Despite a shocking number of firearms-related deaths, U.S. gun enthusiasts are staunchly opposed to gun control DENVER, Colorado The elderly man in a baseball cap levels the Beretta 92 handgun and points it toward my chest. A tiny, blood-red laser dot appears over my heart, which has begun pumping at a noticeably quicker rate. The dot jumps a little as he begins to chuckle: "With this," he drawls, "ya don't even have to know how to shoot. Ya just can't miss." Welcome to the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in the sprawling convention hall of the Holiday Inn.

Entrance fee $5. No cameras, no recording equipment and no loaded guns allowed. About 38,000 Americans died from gunshot wounds in 1991. This is one of the largest gun shows around these parts. You can buy itty-bitty Derringer handguns for "ladies in danger," or perhaps a grenade launcher for the man who likes that touch of extra power on the rabbit hunt.

Or maybe a combat shotgun "street-sweepers" they are called. People come to buy and sell. Dozens walk around with rifles over their shoulders. 'For Sale' signs on sticks protrude from the guns' barrels like those joke "BANG" flags. One in 20 American children carries a gun to school.

Guns are the fifth leading cause of accidental death among U.S. children under 14. There are all types of new and used handguns and rifles, and enough automatic and semi-automatic weapons to send your average Rambo into a frenzy. There are bullets, grenades, pepper sprays, books, bulletproof vests, T-shirts, bumper stickers and non-lethal high-voltage stun guns that attack the nervous system. The old man in the baseball cap is selling a new laser system that fits simply onto any handgun and makes missing a target virtually impossible.

The indoor model sells for $319, the outdoor for $439. 5,356 youngsters under the age of 19 died in gun-related incidents in the U.S. in 1991. Of those, 2,233 were murdered. At a military weapons stall, a fortyish man wearing army fatigues and long straggly hair is engrossed in tinkering with his 64-inch, bolt action, grenade launcher.

Cost: $2,249. "What," I inquire, "would a person normally shoot with one ofthose?" "Squirrels," he replies, without looking up. "Especially if ya don't wanna eat the squirrels." "Or if ya wanna a real colorful show," pipes up his partner. They laugh together, each amused at the other's quick wit. The original question goes unanswered but there's a peculiar tension in the air that suggests further discussion would be fruitless and perhaps unwise.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." from the Constitution of the United States of America. At another stall, there's a collection of women's purses, all adapted to conceal easily-accessible handguns. There are lots of women at the show. Their fears of assault translate into some nice profit for the self-defence industry. "Go on, pull it." A salesman is urging a woman to play tug-of-war with what appears to be an ordinary hairbrush.

She separates the brush from the handle and the handle transforms into a lethal-looking dagger made from Stories by Sharon Kirkey Citizen health writer Except for her "bad blood," Bil-lie Jo Decarie never really thought of herself as different. She likes her Barney doll and television and Winston, the Dalma tion next door. She knows she's special, because of the trips to the hospital to see the doctor. Because of the needles they put in her arm to take out her blood, and the medicine she has to swallow four times a day. But she never thought anyone would ever be afraid of her.

Until she started kindergarten last fall. Until her best friend was pulled from her class when her parents found out Billie Jo has AIDS. Johanne Decarie pauses, looks down at the hands clenched in her lap and struggles to keep froir "I sat Billie Jo down that night and used this little book the hr. pi-tal gave me about a little buy vho has AIDS. "Billie Jo turned to me ana said: 'That little boy had bad blood too, right mommy? Does that mean I'm going to Johanne swallows hard.

When she speaks again, her voice is barely above a whisper. "It was awful. I just held hu jc tight and so hard. I nevei talked about death with her, just that xz have bad blood and we have to make sure that we take our medicine and go to our appointments or we're going to get sick and then something bad can happen. "But I never said to her directly that she can die from this." Dark-haired and bright-eyed, four-year-old Billie Jo Decarie shatters in an instant any stereotypes of the face of AIDS.

She looks healthy and, aside from tiring easily, she pretty much is. Her home is a comfortable, middle-class house in a small rural community outside of Rockland. The shelves in her bedroom are overflowing with stuffed animals and dolls. A child's vanity table sits in one corner, traces of pink lipstick on the mirror. Billie Jo lifts a purple dinosaur from one of the shelves.

This is the doll, she explains, that helps her with her "blood work." Once a month, Billie Jo visits the HIVAIDS clinic at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario for a blood test to measure her white blood cells the primary target of the AIDS virus. She also has a 20-minute treatment of aerosol pentamidine every visit to prevent lung infections. Billie Jo got AIDS from her mother. Johanne became infected after receiving HIV-contaminated blood during a transfusion in 1985. The Red Cross began screening blood products for HIV in November, 198f three months after Johanne was transfused.

That year marked the beginning of unimaginable suffering for the Decaries. Johanne was six months p.eg-nant with twins when her first husband left her. Six weeks later, she was admitted to Ottawa General Hospital with complications she was suffering from a liver disorder and had jaundice. Her twin girls were delivered the next day, seven weeks premature. Two days later, Johanne suffered a stroke; she would spend the next week in a coma, during which tim she received several blood transfusions.

Seven months after she recovered, just as she was pulling her life back together. Johanne's doctor called to tell her that one of the donors of the blood lot she had received had died of AIDS-related complications. "There I was. My life was starting to get back to normal. I was raising my twin daughters as best I could as a hard plastic compound.

"It's a serious thing," confirms the salesman as the woman grins wide-eyed at the weapon in her hand. "And ya know the best thing? The best thing is that no- Chris Cobb CITIZEN STAFF body am gonna stop yer at the metal detector when yer at the airport." People who keep guns at home are 43 times more likely to kill themselves, friends or relatives than kill intruders. Over at a book table they're selling Armed Female by Paxton Quigley. And there's Deal the First Deadly Blow; The Advanced Bounty Hunter; Silencing Sentries; Bazookas: How to Build Your Own; Expedient Hand Grenades; The Ultimate Sniper. On it goes.

And there are the T-shirts and bumper stickers: "Buy a gun, piss off a Liberal;" "Abolish criminals, not guns;" "1992 LA. Triatholon: Sliaot, Loot, Scout;" "Politicians prefer unarmed peasants." As the man gathering names on the impeach Bill Clinton petition at the show will tell you, gun people don't like their president. He should be tried for fraud and, even worse, he supported the Brady Bill. The Brady Bill, law since last November, demands relatively modest background checks into a person before he or she can purchase a hand gun. It's supposed to take several days but salespeople at the gun show carry cellular phones.

A buyer hands over a driver's licence and the check is made, often in minutes. If the buyer is cleared, he or she can take the weapon home. There are about 200 million firearms circulating in the U.S. The country has 280,000 licenced gun dealers. Gun people see the Brady Law as the start of a slippery slope, the beginning of a government push to take away their weapons.

Jeff Templeton, organizer of the Denver show and about 40 other gun shows throughout the year, says guns in America are no longer politically correct. But the anti-gun lobby, supported by a liberal media, is misguided. "There is no evidence that restricting gun ownership reduces crime," says Templeton, a pleasant man in his mid-30s. "In fact, crime keeps going up because criminals know people don't have guns. Look at Florida where there are few restrictions: all the hoods start attacking European tourists." Sales of guns have been "skyrocketing" says Templeton because people are afraid the next piece of legislation might take away their weapons or make it difficult to buy a weapon legally.

Gun-shots are the leading cause of death among America's black youth. The United States is Guns 'R' Us for criminals worldwide. According to a recent report from Associated Press, firearms are often finding their way to countries such as Colombia, Northern Ireland, Croatia, Japan and the Philippines. Authorities believe that legitimate export permits are being used by traders to get weapons out of the U.S. The weapons are then diverted elsewhere.

The customers at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show don't look like international gun runners. It's true you wouldn't want to meet some of them in a dark alley but mostly they are ordinary, decent family people with a passion for guns and a constitutional right to own them. They buy and collect legally. If weapons get into the wrong hands, that's not their problem. There's another bumper sticker that says guns cause crime matches cause arson." The well-worn logic makes perfect sense to gun enthusiasts.

They are, after all, the good guys defending themselves and their rights against the bad guys. It's that simple. dents about the disease, how it's spread, how they can protect themselves. Because of her public exposure, Johanne decided to tell the principal of Billie Jo's small rural school that her daughter has AIDS. The school didn't tell the parents of Billie Jo's classmates.

They didn't have to it's confidential medical information. And a social worker from CHEO assured the principal and Billie Jo's teacher that there was no reason to fear that she could infect another child. Her best friend's mother found out when she saw Johanne and Bill on television, discussing a provincial government compensation package for victims of Canada's tainted blood scandal. The next day, she pulled her daughter out of Billie Jo's class. Billie Jo was so distraught, she refused to return to school.

On the mornings she was supposed to go, she'd come out of her room, crying, complaining of a sore stomach or headache. She refused to get on the school bus; Bill or Johanne had to drive her. "On the days that we would finally get her to school, the teacher would call three hours later, pleading with us to come and get her because she had been crying all morning," Bill says. Billie Jo eventually got over it. Today, she can't wait to go to school, to see her friends, to play and draw.

This past Christmas, Billie Jo received a card from the little girl who had been taken out of her class. Inside, in an adult's handwriting, the card is signed "with love," followed by lots of X's and O's. "To me, that's an apology. It's enough," her father says. At that moment, Billie Jo bounds, giggling, up to her mother, proudly showing off the hearts and doodles she's drawn.

"I don't know how long I'm going to have her," says Johanne, stroking Billie Jo's dark braid. "I'm just trying my best to hold on to her as long as I can. I pray to God every night that he doesn't take her away from me." ing baby down while the drug seeped from a mask held over her face. "She cried through the whole treatment. And if the mask didn't fit properly, and she didn't get enough medicine into her lungs, they had to do it all over again." Johanne would return home physically and emotionally drained.

At the same time, her own health was beginning to be affected by the virus she was becoming tired and listless. But Billie Jo is a fighter. After a trying first year, she rebounded, and she has since developed and grown like any normal child. Johanne's own health has improved, thanks, she says, to AZT. Bill eventually agreed to be tested in August, 1992, when he took much longer than expected to recover from surgery to remove a tumor on his throat.

"Don't you ever blame yourself," he told Johanne when the test came back positive. "Don't you ever feel guilty." He too is on AZT, but unlike Johanne, isn't tolerating it well. He has bouts of nausea and diarrhea and frequent headaches. It was only this past summer that the couple told the twins, Krystle and Ashley, now 8, and Bill's three older children from a previous marriage that their parents and Billie Jo were infected with the AIDS virus. "They were devastated, especially the older children," Johanne says.

"But they're dealing with it. They're wonderful children." Johanne hasn't made legal arrangements for the twins yet. "We've talked a little bit about it. That was one of our New Year's resolutions." She pauses. "I never thought I would ever have to do this." How does the family cope? "We try not to dwell on it," says Johanne.

"We try to lead a normal life, just like everyone else." Johanne speaks out whenever she can about AIDS. She travels around the region, giving frank talks to high school stu "I pray to God every night that he doesn 't take her away from me JOHANNE DECARIE Billie Jo's mother a single parent. I had a new man in my life (her current husband Bill) who was treating me like gold. I was in love. I was terrified of losing him." Bill didn't leave.

He also refused to get himself tested. "I didn't want to know," he says. "It was enough to worry about Johanne." Johanne and Bill were advised to use latex condoms for birth control. But the doctor didn't tell them not to use lubricants containing Proleum jelly, which weakens doms. (Only water-based lubri-c should be used with concerns).

In the fall of 1988, Johanne became pregnant. She remembers sitting, devastated, in her doctor's office as he gave her the odds of her infecting the baby growing inside her: 50-50. He offered her an immediate abortion. She refused. "I had had so much tragedy in my ufe that I thought, finally, I'm going to beat the odds," Johanne says.

She didn't. Six months after she was born, Billie Jo Decarie devel- ied pneumocystitis, the first symp-t of AIDS. She almost died. rier first year of life was the dest for Billie Jo. The virus affected her ability to digest foods.

She couldn't keep anything down. "She'd finish her bottle, and I'd have to pick her up and run to the sink before she threw it all up. I was so worried that she was going to choke on her own vomit," Johanne says. Every few weeks, Billie Jo underwent the aerosol treatments at CHEO to protect her lungs from infection. Johanne had to hold her scream is thought to have spread when blood from one entered the other through a cut or skin abrasion.

"The risk of transmission is in-finitesimally small," says Dr. Nancy Haley, a pediatrician and public health consultant at Montreal's Ste. Justine Hospital. "If proper hygiene is followed in a day care, that risk is eliminated." The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that is linked to AIDS is transmitted through body fluids, generally blood and semen. It can't generally be transmitted through casual contact in day care or school settings.

Here is how HIV spread: by anal or vaginal intercourse with an infected partner; through unsteril-ized, contaminated hypodermic What you should do when AIDS hits close to home instruments that could cause injuries should be kept in a safe place; personal objects such as toothbrushes should not be shared; use paper towels to clean up blood (if there is a large amount of blood, gloves should be worn); whenever there is a blood spill, it should be cleaned up immediately and the area should be disinfected with a diluted household bleach. Haley says parents should teach their children basic hygiene and should begin now to discuss healthy sexuality as well as substance abuse. "That way, when children are confronted with the real risks of HIV transmission unprotected sex and IV drug use they'll be ready to adopt safe behavior." Should you worry if there is a HIV-infected child in your child's classroom or day care? No one can provide a lOO-per-cent guarantee that HIV transiuis sion in a day care or school can never take place, says Dr. Stanley Read, director of the HIVAIDS Comprehensive Care Clinic at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. "But knowing what we do know about transmission, it's hard to imagine a situation or scenario in which it would occur," Read says.

Scientists in the U.S., however, have documented two cases of HIV transmission in children through casual contact. In each case involving two teenage boys, and two boys, aged two and five infection needles used for injecting drugs; through transfusion of infected blood or blood products; from an infected mother to her infant before or during childbirth. Here is how HIV is not spread: by the shared used of household objects, such as toilet seats or drinking glasses; by coughs and sneezes; by touching, kissing or hugging, or by biting. If anyone is at risk in a day care or school, Haley says, it's the child who is infected, since he or she is so susceptible to germs or infections because of a weakened immune system. Every day care should be using universal health precautions, Haley says: hand washing should be thorough and frequent; bleeding or oozing sores should be covered; sharp.