GUN ENABLES 79-YEAR OLD TO CONFRONT MANIAC

Trouble came crawling through Henrietta McCormick's bedroom window Tuesday morning. After calling 911 to report a man breaking into her northeast Sarasota home, McCormick, 82, screamed for her 79-year-old brother, Julian Scott. Minutes later, George T. Jackson was in McCormick's cramped living room nursing a head injury after Scott hit him with a handgun. Jackson, a 24-year-old resident with a lengthy criminal history, died hours later at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota County Sheriff's deputies reported. "I don't feel good about it at all, and I'm sorry it had to happen, but I'm glad I was here to protect my sister," said Scott, shaken from the episode.

It was after 2 a.m. when McCormick told a dispatcher she heard a man pounding on the front door then checking the windows. Deputies headed out to McCormick's single-story, cinder block duplex in the 2600 block of 24th Street. By then Jackson was climbing through McCormick's bedroom window. "He had a rage in him something fierce," she said. McCormick screamed for her brother in the next room. Groggy, he reached for his handgun and confronted Jackson, who lunged at him. The two men struggled for the gun. A shot fired into the ceiling, deputies reported. "The brother overpowered him and hit him on the top of the head with the butt of the gun," said sheriff's office spokesman Chuck Lesaltato.

When deputies arrived, Jackson was conscious but incoherent. Deputies arrested Jackson on charges of residential burglary, possession of rock cocaine and possession of marijuana, and then took him to Sarasota Memorial Hospital at about 3 a.m., where he died at 7:36 a.m., deputies reported. "We don't believe he died from the head injury," Lesaltato said. The medical examiner's office and detectives continue to investigate the case and Jackson's cause of death, he added. Scott isn't expected to be charged, Lesaltato said.

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New York: Moron Mayor: "For the first time in the nation, gun makers and dealers are now liable for injuries or deaths caused by the criminal use of their weapons, under a landmark law signed yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg. The law -- one of four bills signed regulating gun sales and possession -- goes further than any other city's effort to hold the gun industry financially responsible for crimes involving their weapons. 'We need to do everything we can to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and out of the hands of children,' said Bloomberg. 'There's just no argument here. Guns kill people, it's time to get them off the street.'"