Says He’s Pawn in Debate on Controls : Rowan Pleads Not Guilty on Charge of Owning Gun

WASHINGTON — Syndicated columnist Carl T. Rowan, calling himself a pawn in the national debate over gun control, pleaded not guilty Monday to owning an unregistered handgun used to wound a young intruder in his back yard.

The liberal columnist, an ardent gun control advocate, entered pleas to two misdemeanor counts of possessing an unregistered gun and ammunition in District of Columbia Superior Court and was released without bond.

A Sept. 22 jury trial was scheduled; if convicted, Rowan, 62, could face a year in jail and a $1,000 fine on each charge.

Wounded in Wrist

The charges were lodged last Wednesday, six weeks after Rowan shot Ben Smith, 18, of Chevy Chase, Md., in the wrist June 14 with a .22-caliber pistol. Smith and a companion, Laura Bachman, 19, of Bethesda, Md., were using the pool in the back yard of Rowan’s Washington home at about 2 a.m.

Prosecutors chose not to charge Rowan with assault but with violating the city’s gun control ordinance--one of the strictest in the nation.

Smith and Bachman have been performing community service in exchange for having unlawful entry charges against them dropped.

After the hearing, Rowan, who once called for the jailing of any civilian caught with a handgun, said: “I am aware that I am the pawn in a brutal game between those who favor and those who oppose handgun control.”

Cites ‘Boundaries’

“I want to make it clear that I still favor a strict national law to control the availability of handguns to those who are not law enforcement officers,” he said. “But we do not have such a national law and, therefore, we must live within the boundaries that exist.”

“There is no hypocrisy in advocating a national policy, which no one seems able to get through Congress, and then living according to the policies and the laws that exist,” he said.

Rowan said his son, a former FBI agent, gave him the weapon several years ago after the columnist received death threats.