What do schools and post offices have in common that would enable such carnage? If you said, "Schools and post offices are gun-free zones," move to the head of the class. I would also like to note that there are no terms like "shooting-range shootings" or "going police-headquarters," even though there are oodles of guns at those places.
Am I suggesting that these places are more dangerous than others by virtue of being "gun-free"? Well, yeah! If that fact is not intuitively obvious to you, you can read up on the subject by getting a copy of More Guns, Less Crime, by John Lott. If you really want to get your head around the idea, get hold of a copy of David T. Hardy's DVD In Search of the Second Amendment, which will explain why the civil-rights workers of the '50s and '60s were not all murdered by the Ku Klux Klan (Hint: They packed pistols!) and why the KKK was able to unmercifully harass and intimidate the black citizenry for so long. (Hint: Black citizens were kept disarmed.)
On Oct. 28, 2002, a murderer entered the UA College of Nursing and shot to death professors Cheryl McGaffic, Barbara Monroe and Robin Rogers before shooting himself. He met with no resistance. It would appear that the banning of guns from the UA campus does not necessarily make that campus any safer.
There are some who insist that "more guns" is not the answer. Well, how many guns would it have taken to save at least one of those lives? Answer: More.
Fortunately, an island of sanity is rising up in this sea of brain-dead irrationality. A nationwide group of more than 8,000 students called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (
concealedcampus.org ) is starting to pressure universities to allow students, with concealed-carry permits, to carry concealed weapons on campus.
Is there any serious objection to this? Should we not ask the same state government that owns the university, and issues concealed-carry permits, to trust its own judgment? The only downside that I see is that universities could expand the permit requirement to other rights, like free speech and free practice of religion.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will soon hear an appeal to a district court decision that struck down Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns. (By the way, I love the acronym "SCOTUS," because it sounds like a disease of the nether regions.) Washington, D.C., has a virtual ban on all functioning privately held firearms. It is also the murder capital of the country ... coincidence?
Hardy, a lawyer who lives in Tucson and who argued before SCOTUS (and who created the aforementioned DVD), predicted that the court would take the case. He also said that the current academic consensus--even in prestigious lefty institutions--is that the Second Amendment is an individual right. That's bad news for the Brady Center types. Fortunately for them, members of SCOTUS put as much weight in their consciences, and their foreign policy goals, as they do in the Constitution itself. It will all boil down to whether or not "Justice" Anthony Kennedy likes the idea.
In the meantime, a mentally ill man earlier this month entered a "gun-free" shopping mall--where even the security guards were unarmed--and murdered as many people as he liked before he killed himself. A week or so later, a man who apparently intended mass murder (four guns and hundreds of rounds) entered a church, killed two people and then--oops! An armed security guard stopped the attack, and dozens of lives were saved. No "gun-free zone" there.
The fact is that "gun-free zones" do not deter violence; rather, they invite it. They provide a safe place to murder.
