No Living Person Left Behind

I haven't had time to Fisk their new 54 page treatise on "Guns Bad, Victims Good!" called "No Gun Left Behind", but I do have some comments on the website that accompanies it.

Some salient quotes:

"Armed students? Armed teachers? That is the response of the gun lobby to the horrible massacre at Virginia Tech. Let's give everyone a gun and start the crossfire. The gun lobby is pushing legislation modeled after a law in Utah that prohibits colleges and universities from barring possession or use of firearms on campus. As a result of the law, 18-year-old kids could carry handguns to class, and kids even younger than 18 could possess AK-47 assault rifles with high-capacity magazines on campus. The gun lobby also wants to arm K-12 teachers."

Okay, let's tone down the rhetoric here. As it stands currently, there is no crossfire. Teachers and students cannot defend themselves. They're DYING instead!

Yes, let's talk about Utah. How many mass shootings have taken place in a Utah school? Come on, I'm waiting... Times up!

I seriously doubt anyone at the NRA is suggesting that kids younger than 18 carry AK-47's to school. But even if they were, there was a time in this country when school kids did take their guns to school, put them in a locker, and then took them home with them after school was done. Tell me how many school shootings happened back then. I'll give you the answer, none.

I can think of a lot worse things than arming K-12 teachers. Like my kids dying because their teacher wasn't able to protect them.

Take a lesson from the Israeli's. After terrorists began targeting their schools, they armed their teachers and armed guards patrolled the perimeter. The terrorists soon learned that schools were no longer an easy target. And that is all a "Gun-Free Zone" is anyway, a target rich environment.

Sarah Brady, Paul Helmke, et, al. Pull your collective heads out of your butts and smell the coffee!

"Obviously, arming students and teachers is a bad idea.

Here are a few reasons why it would be insane to introduce guns into colleges and schools. The college age years — 18-24 — are the peak years for engaging in gun crimes, abusing drugs and alcohol, attempting suicide, and having other mental health problems. A binge-drinking, drug-using student is dangerous enough; let's not give him or her a gun."

Obvious to whom? But yet at the same time Sarah, you're perfectly fine with heavily arming the same age group to go fight, kill and die for this country. Given your logic, a large portion of the armed forces should be disarmed and given pepper spray and keys to defend themselves with against the terrorists.

Positioned right next to this argument is a disgusting cartoon which includes, Lee Harvey Oswald, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Seung-Hui Cho taking turns reciting parts of the second amendment. I will not post it on my blog on principal, but you can view it here. Any respect I may have had for these idiots evaporated on the spot. Sarah, which of the other rights should we make fun of and denigrate? How about free speech? How about freedom of the press? To peacefully assemble? How about the right against illegal search and seizure? You people disgust me!

"Do We Really Want Guns in K-12 Classrooms?

Even trained police officers, on average, hit their intended targets less than 20% of the time.

Arming teachers would likely make them the first targets in an attack, and could encourage attackers to increase their firepower or wear body armor.

More than 2,000 K-12 students are expelled each year for carrying guns to school. Do we really want armed teachers confronting them? What if a teacher shoots a student?"

Now they trot out the "Police officers are the only ones trained enough to handle a firearm safely and accurately" myth. Police officers are less likely to hit what they aim at simply because most of them only have to qualify once a year, with a limited number of rounds. The gun for them is just a part of the job and they take no interest in honing their skills further. Therefore, it is no surprise they can't hit what they aim at. I personally asked an officer in my town what kind of gun he had and all he knew was that it was a Glock (stamped on the side of the gun) and that the bullets were the kind that expanded and wouldn't pass through, hitting other people. From the small clues he awkwardly gave me, I deduced that it was a Glock in .45 ACP with hollowpoint bullets. I'm not trying to run down cops, merely demonstrating that holding them up as the paragon for weapons handling is goofy at best. I belong to a shooting range, and among the people I see there, 95% of them are very good with a handgun. The simple reason is, they practice. They practice many more times a year than most cops do.

Seriously, aren't teachers usually the first targets of an attack anyway? They're bigger and older and more able to resist than their children. This is a strawman and that's all I'm going to comment.

Well, what if a teacher shoots a student? What if a wack-job storms into the school with a 9mm and a .22lr pistol and kills 32 people? Is one better than the other? Are the victims more righteous if they can't or won't fight back? Would a teacher be better off confronting the attacker or cowering in fear beneath their desk?

As soon as I have the time and a large supply of antiacid, I'll peruse their little booklet and post the results.

Anyway, I've got some kids to feed...

CCW & Gun-Free Zones

-by Yuri

The facts are that CCW permit holders are among the most law abiding citizens in our nation. For example, in Florida, with perhaps the most liberal CCW permit laws anywhere, only .02% of CCW permit holders were involved in a crime. When you add into this the fact that their crime rates fell to 4% below the national average from a high of 36% above, it is clear that CCW permit holders are not the problem. In addition, in every state where shall issue permit laws have been enacted, incidents of mass murder have gone down.
When I look at the facts in the Virginia Tech Massacre, I too am struck with the inevitable conclusion that, if only one of his potential victims had been armed, he could have been stopped. If only the teachers had been armed, he could have been stopped.

For example reference the Appalachian School of Law shooting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting) where two students with legally owned firearms subdued the suspect before he could take anymore lives. In addition, lawfully armed citizens prevent a crime to themselves or others an estimated 2.5 Million times a year. This hardly indicates a need to increase the over 20,000+ gun control laws already on the books with another piece of useless "feel good" legislation. None of the estimated 80+ Million law abiding gun owners killed anyone that horrible day, nor did they commit an act of mass murder.

Gun-free Zones do nothing to stop homicidal criminals bent on mass murder. All they do is provide a fertile hunting ground with no means for the victims to fight back.

Gun-free zones should be scrapped as the failure they have proven to be. Law abiding CCW permit holders should be allowed to carry in schools and the teachers should be allowed to arm themselves, just like airline pilots. In Utah, it is legal for CCW permit holders to carry a concealed weapon into schools. There has never been an incidence of mass murder perpetrated in a Utah school, least of all by a CCW permit holder. Israeli teachers are armed, and now so are the teachers Thailand in response to terroristic attacks. Why then aren't our teachers similarly prepared? It's time we pulled our collective heads out of the sand.

I have one child in 1st grade and another to start kindergarten later this year. I would feel a whole lot better knowing that my childs teachers were equipped to protect my childs life with something other than pleading with the maniac to "please spare their lives".

Fred Thompson on "Gun-Free Zones"

Signs of Intelligence?

By Fred Thompson

One of the things that's got to be going through a lot of peoples' minds now is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again, could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms — and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain.

The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point, incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.

Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus.

In recent years, however, armed Americans — not on-duty police officers — have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. Evidence from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and have stopped serious terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting, though contrary, evidence from Great Britain, where strict gun controls have led to violent crime rates far higher than ours, is also common knowledge.

So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's "concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.

The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for protection.

Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled "shoe bomber" Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes annually.

When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

— Fred Thompson is an actor and former United States senator from Tennessee.

Gun-Free Zones

By DAVID B. KOPEL, April 18, 2007

...clicky...

"The bucolic campus of Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va., would seem to have little in common with the Trolley Square shopping mall in Salt Lake City. Yet both share an important characteristic, common to the site of almost every other notorious mass murder in recent years: They are "gun-free zones."

Forty American states now have "shall issue" or similar laws, by which officials issue a pistol carry permit upon request to any adult who passes a background check and (in most states) a safety class. Research by Carlisle Moody of the College of William and Mary, and others, suggests that these laws provide law-abiding citizens some protection against violent crime. But in many states there are certain places, especially schools, set aside as off-limits for guns. In Virginia, universities aren't "gun-free zones" by statute, but college officials are allowed to impose anti-gun rules. The result is that mass murderers know where they can commit their crimes.

Private property owners also have the right to prohibit lawful gun possession. And some shopping malls have adopted anti-gun rules. Trolley Square was one, as announced by an unequivocal sign, "No weapons allowed on Trolley Square property."

In February of this year a young man walked past the sign prohibiting him from carrying a gun on the premises and began shooting people who moments earlier were leisurely shopping at Trolley Square. He killed five.

Fortunately, someone else -- off-duty Ogden, Utah, police officer Kenneth Hammond -- also did not comply with the mall's rules. After hearing "popping" sounds, Mr. Hammond investigated and immediately opened fire on the gunman. With his aggressive response, Mr. Hammond prevented other innocent bystanders from getting hurt. He bought time for the local police to respond, while stopping the gunman from hunting down other victims.

At Virginia Tech's sprawling campus in southwestern Va., the local police arrived at the engineering building a few minutes after the start of the murder spree, and after a few critical minutes, broke through the doors that Cho Seung-Hui had apparently chained shut. From what we know now, Cho committed suicide when he realized he'd soon be confronted by the police. But by then, 30 people had been murdered.

But let's take a step back in time. Last year the Virginia legislature defeated a bill that would have ended the "gun-free zones" in Virginia's public universities. At the time, a Virginia Tech associate vice president praised the General Assembly's action "because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." In an August 2006 editorial for the Roanoke Times, he declared: "Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."

Actually, Virginia Tech's policy only made the killer safer, for it was only the law-abiding victims, and not the criminal, who were prevented from having guns. Virginia Tech's policy bans all guns on campus (except for police and the university's own security guards); even faculty members are prohibited from keeping guns in their cars.

Virginia Tech thus went out of its way to prevent what happened at a Pearl, Miss., high school in 1997, where assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a handgun from his car and apprehended a school shooter. Or what happened at Appalachian Law School, in Grundy, Va., in 2002, when a mass murder was stopped by two students with law-enforcement experience, one of whom retrieved his own gun from his vehicle. Or in Edinboro, Pa., a few days after the Pearl event, when a school attack ended after a nearby merchant used a shotgun to force the attacker to desist. Law-abiding citizens routinely defend themselves with firearms. Annually, Americans drive-off home invaders a half-million times, according to a 1997 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Utah, there is no "gun-free schools" exception to the licensed carry law. In K-12 schools and in universities, teachers and other adults can and do legally carry concealed guns. In Utah, there has never been a Columbine-style attack on a school. Nor has there been any of the incidents predicted by self-defense opponents -- such as a teacher drawing a gun on a disrespectful student, or a student stealing a teacher's gun.

Israel uses armed teachers as part of a successful program to deter terrorist attacks on schools. Buddhist teachers in southern Thailand are following the Israeli example, because of Islamist terrorism.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., long-time gun control advocates, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), agreed that making airplane cockpits into "gun-free zones" had made airplanes much more dangerous for everyone except hijackers. Corrective legislation, supported by large bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, allowed pilots to carry firearms, while imposing rigorous gun-safety training on pilots who want to carry.

In many states, "gun-free schools" legislation was enacted hastily in the late 1980s or early 1990s due to concerns about juvenile crime. Aimed at juvenile gangsters, the poorly written and overbroad statutes had the disastrous consequence of rendering teachers unable to protect their students.

Reasonable advocates of gun control can still press for a wide variety of items on their agenda, while helping to reform the "gun-free zones" that have become attractive havens for mass killers. If legislators or administrators want to require extensive additional training for armed faculty and other adults, that's fine. Better that some victims be armed than none at all.

The founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, understood the harms resulting from the type of policy created at Virginia Tech. In his "Commonplace Book," Jefferson copied a passage from Cesare Beccaria, the founder of criminology, which was as true on Monday as it always has been:

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

Mr. Kopel is research director of the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., and co-author of the law school textbook, "Gun Control and Gun Rights" (NYU Press)."

SAF SAYS VIRGINIA TECH CASE UNDERSCORES IMPORTANCE OF SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT

...clicky...

"BELLEVUE, WA – Alarming new details about Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui underscore the importance of a citizen’s individual right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

“There were abundant warning signs that Cho posed a serious threat to the campus community,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “yet here he was running loose and committing mayhem. And all that seems to be on the minds of many in the media and at the offices of gun control extremists is figuring out how to exploit this horrible tragedy to erode and eventually destroy the right, and the means, of self-defense.

“If this case demonstrates anything,” he continued, “it is the ineptitude of a system that is damaged if not broken beyond repair. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation in December 2005 by the police, and a Montgomery County district court ruled him a danger to himself or others. But a state doctor found his ‘insight and judgment’ to be ‘normal,’ and he was only given outpatient treatment.

“How many other people like Cho are out there,” Gottlieb questioned. “Nobody knows, and it is because of that clear and present danger that Americans should not be browbeaten or bullied into surrendering their civil right to have a firearm for personal protection.

“In the past few days, I’ve lost count of the number of times people have asked me why Americans should have a right to buy a gun,” Gottlieb noted. “The answer is simple. It’s because there are monsters like Cho Seung-Hui among us who are willing to kill without provocation or remorse. Police can’t always be there when they are needed, and people like Cho do not commit carnage by appointment.

“Attempts by the state legislature to allow legally-licensed citizens to carry on campus were stymied, with the approval of a Virginia Tech spokesman,” Gottlieb recalled. “Nobody can say for sure whether an armed student or teacher could have intervened in time to save lives, but we do know what happens when they can’t.

“This kind of thing should never happen, but it does when people are denied the means to fight back,” Gottlieb concluded. “If we learn anything from this tragedy, it is the value of the Second Amendment and self-defense, for those who value their lives and the lives of others.”"

NOW IS TIME FOR DEEP REFLECTION, NOT DANCING IN BLOOD

--from the SAF

BELLEVUE, WA - Today, as the nation is mourning Monday's horrible loss at Virginia Tech, this should be a time of deep reflection and offering our prayers for the victims and their heartbroken families.

Sadly, noted Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, some groups and individuals are using this terrible crime to further their own political cause: the continued erosion of
firearm civil rights and the abolition of firearm ownership in the United States.

"Almost from the moment the first news broke about this monstrous crime," Gottlieb said, "we at SAF have been forced to respond to staccato attacks from gun control organizations whose goal is to
destroy the Second Amendment. Perhaps we should be astonished, but in fact, we are once again simply disappointed in the morbid exploitation of this event. We are grateful, however, that the media
has given us an opportunity to respond to these attacks. There was a time in the past when that did not happen.

"These groups, that so quickly have tried to politicize Virginia Tech's sorrow and loss, have a well-documented history of shamelessly dancing in the blood of crime victims to advance their agenda," he continued. "Such deplorable behavior should not be forgotten by the American public. Eighty million law-abiding gun owners in this country did not go to Virginia Tech or some other college campus yesterday to unleash carnage. They have harmed no one, and their civil rights should not be erased in response.

"Today, we should all stand together as Americans with broken hearts," Gottlieb added. "Today, we are all Virginia Tech students and alumni. Today, we are all diminished by this great loss.

"There will be plenty of time in the days and weeks ahead to analyze what happened, to try and make some sense of such a senseless act, and to examine what may have gone wrong and learn from it," Gottlieb stated. "For now, let us direct our emotions toward where they will do the most good. Let us offer our prayers and support to the families of the victims, and to the thousands of students whose lives will be forever changed by this despicable, cowardly act."

LawDog on the Virginia Tech Shootings

Often I run across someone who says something better than I could ever do. This is such a time. Read what the LawDog has to say about todays horrible events. -Yuri

--by LawDog (click to read the whole thing)

"Oh, Christ, here we go again.

Some maladjusted little bugsnipe gets his mental panties into a bunch and goes flat boiling nutters with a gun in one of the few places where he knows someone isn't going to put him down like a rabid dog during his first magazine.

And -- as usual -- the Mainstream Media is bleating about needing more Gun Control.

Gun Control is a failure. You simply can not expect those who would do murder -- those who would violate the highest law -- you can not expect them to obey a lesser law."

Here Come The Gun Banners

--by Tom Gresham, host of Gun Talk

"April 16, 2007, just might be a turning point in the battle to restore gun rights to Americans. The tragedy at Virginia Tech today, with more than 30 people being killed in a premeditated murder spree, will be the fulcrum upon which the anti-gun rights forces leverage their efforts to restrict (destroy, if possible) your right to not only own guns, but to protect yourself and your family.

Quite simply, this is the mass shooting the anti-self defense forces have been waiting for, as we will see over the coming days and weeks. The papers are already drawn up; the proposed restrictions were penned long ago; they have merely been waiting for this moment.

Lost in the coming cacophony will be the utter failure of the "perfect" gun law -- a total gun ban. You see, on that university campus, no one is allowed to have a gun for self protection in dorms or classrooms. It is the latest in a long string of murderous failures of "gun free" zones, or as they are better called, "victim-rich environments."

According to the school's "Campus and Workplace Violence Prevention Policy":

"The university's employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual's job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies.

Any such individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, or an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest."
(Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Policy 5616, Campus and Workplace Violence Prevention Policy, http://www.policies.vt.edu/5616.pdf)

A similar situation to the one that happened at Virginia Tech occurred on January 16th, 2002 at Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia. A disgruntled former student began a similar shooting spree. The difference in this case was that the attack was stopped by three individuals, two of whom were legally armed with handguns. Unfortunately, the attack was not stopped until three people had been killed and three more wounded. Why did it take so long to stop the attack? The good guys had to retrieve their guns from their parked cars before they could confront the gunman. ALS was a gun-free zone, you know.

Barely more than a year ago House Bill 1572 couldn't even make it out of committee in the Virginia General Assembly. The bill would have made it legal for students and staff at Virginia universities to have guns for their own protection. Today's shooter did not wait for such a law, and took advantage of the government-mandated victim-state.

When House Bill 1572 was defeated, state newspapers reported: "Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. 'I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.'"

Once again, the desire to "feel safe" prompts decisions which actually make people less safe.

What does it mean to America's gun owners? It certainly sounds the battle cry for those who enacted, then lost, the ability to ban full-capacity magazines for defensive firearms. Expect a quick call for limiting magazine capacity--and thus, the ability to fully protect yourself and your family. There may well be calls for the banning of all autoloading (semi-automatic) firearms, even though those have been in use for more than 100 years.

Fortunately, the political landscape is much different than it was when the Brady Bill and the Clinton Gun Ban were passed in the early 1990s. Those acts helped pull together a fragmented firearms industry which, until then, had kept out of politics, leaving that to the NRA. The firearms industry now understands the threat, as do individual gun owners who use guns for recreation, but especially for self-protection. Passage of the so-called "assault weapon" ban resulted in the Republican Party taking control of Congress, according to President Bill Clinton. The gun issue is largely credited with keeping a Republican in the White House since then. Elected officials of all stripes know that any proposal to infringe on gun rights is a third rail, capable of cutting short almost any political career.

Certainly, some closet gun banners will be emboldened by this tragedy and will come forward, counting on a groundswell of public outrage to carry the day for repressive gun control laws, much as it did in England and Australia after those countries experienced similar shootings. The disturbing fact that the violent crime rate skyrocketed in both countries following the confiscation of guns from honest people will not quell the zeal of those who dream of a country where the criminals are free to prey on the defenseless.

They long for the day when they can bring the failed experiment of "gun free" zones to every town, neighborhood, and home in America.

Until Monday, April 16, it was thought that gun control would be an issue politicians would try to duck over the next 18 months. That may have changed. What has not changed, though, is the awareness of the American public that they need firearms for personal protection. The vivid images of helpless people during Hurricane Katrina being victimized by thugs, with no police to help, crystallized the understanding that each of us is responsible for our own safety,. Today, we all know we can certainly take advantage of help from official sources, but we also are clear that we should never give up our ability to help ourselves.

Today's shootings are terrible. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families. We don't want to inject politics into this, but to ignore this is to pretend the sun doesn't rise each day. The assault on our rights surely will come.

Whether we gun owners get swept away by a tsunami of gun restrictions, or swim to the top with logic and organized persuasion depends, I think, on the intensity and the quality of our reaction. One thing is for sure. This is the fight which will determine the future of gun rights, the firearms industry, our ability to protect our families, and the strength of our Constitutional protections."