Thank My Sweet Lord for Gun Laws

On June 7, 1982, a heroin addict in his early 30s named Michael Fagan--later diagnosed by British doctors as schizophrenic and having suicidal tendencies--scaled a railing at Buckingham Palace, climbed up a drainpipe and entered a third-floor window.

Fagan found a bottle of Australian wine given as a gift to the Prince of Wales. He drank half of it. A maid suddenly spotted him in a hallway and called security guards. By the time they got there, Fagan was gone.

A month and two days later, Fagan did it again. He broke in the same way. He even triggered a silent alarm when he set foot in a room that housed the royal stamp collection, but security never did respond. Because an inner door was locked, Fagan went back out the window and clambered up the drainpipe again.

This time, he entered the bedroom of the Queen.

It was 7:18 a.m. when Queen Elizabeth II heard the rustle of a curtain parting in her bedroom suite. The exact time is known because it was officially logged as the moment that the Queen phoned for help. She had already pressed an emergency alarm button near her bed, but once again, security did not respond.

Her personal footman was out walking the palace dogs. She told a palace operator that there had been a strange noise in her room.

Fagan by this time had picked up an ashtray. He broke it, cutting a finger. That was what gave him the inspiration, he later told authorities, to slash his wrists while the Queen watched. With a shard of glass menacingly in his grip, Fagan began to drip blood on her bed linen.

Her Majesty spoke to him. A maid appeared and, together, the two women spoke soothingly to Fagan and steered him gently toward a pantry, saying that they would try to find him a cigarette.

By 7:24, a full six minutes later, security had still not responded to her call. Cigarettes might have saved the Queen of England’s life.

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What saved George Harrison’s life last week? We will never know for sure, but you can bet your bottom pound that one of Britain’s most prominent subjects is alive today because the intruder who broke into Harrison’s mansion and stabbed him Thursday was--like the Queen’s uninvited guest--not carrying a more lethal weapon.

Be grateful for Great Britain’s stricter gun laws, because without them there is a good chance that we would have christened the year 2000 in a period of mourning.

John Lennon never stood a chance in 1980 when he was ambushed by a gun-wielding Mark David Chapman outside a New York apartment building and assassinated. Had his brother Beatle been living here in America rather than on a 34-acre compound near London, it is entirely possible that a candlelight vigil would be carrying on this morning just outside the gates of that estate.

Rejoice in the news that Harrison is recuperating from stab wounds, because happiness--a Beatles’ lyric to the contrary notwithstanding--is not a warm gun.

The world is a loony bin, but at least not all of the loons are armed. Michael Fagan brandished nothing worse than that ashtray on July 9, 1982, or else England could have lost its Queen in a way unimaginable and unforgivable.

As it was, a formal inquiry cited an “appalling lack of security” at Buckingham Palace. An officer in charge of protecting the royal family was asked for his resignation, at a time when an embarrassing investigation also revealed that he had been involved in a longtime relationship with a male prostitute.

Fagan was eventually sentenced to an indefinite stay in a psychiatric hospital. A doctor who examined him told a court of law that if Fagan “were allowed a free run, he would be dangerous.”

“Dangerous to whom?” asked the defendant’s attorney.

“Certainly to one person in particular,” replied the doctor.

Fifteen years later, after being caught dealing in heroin, Fagan received a four-year jail term. On his way out of Winchester Crown Court, he called out to the judge: “Have a nice Christmas.”

Imagine what might have happened, had Fagan owned a gun. Imagine the worst. It’s easy, if you try.

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Michael Abram--a name with the same ring to it as the Queen’s trespasser--has been arrested in the stabbing of George Harrison. He too is a man in his early 30s. He too allegedly slipped through state-of-the-art security.

Because the attacker carried nothing worse than a knife, Harrison’s wife, Olivia, apparently was able to save her husband by picking up a lamp and striking Abram with it.

A lamp would have done him little good against a gun.

My sweet Lord, what a way this would have been to begin 2000. A world that still hums some of Harrison’s music can be quite thankful for a society wherein guns are not more readily available.

It may be time, alas, for more of England’s mansions to begin electrifying their fences. They were lucky in 1982. They were lucky last Thursday. They’d better fix the holes in their security, before somebody else has a hard day’s night.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail:

mike.downey@latimes.com.