The Bottom Line
Posted by Mingobird on April 19, 2007
One line says it all — there is a difference between feeling safe and being safe.
My Driver’s Ed teacher, eons ago, made an excellent point about driving laws. He said that the purpose of driving laws was so that when there was a wreck and you had two drivers lying there dead, a policeman could come and point to one and declare that one at fault. It’s pretty much the same with gun laws. They only restrain law-abiders , their only other use is to assign guilt after the fact. Since Cho Seung-Hui was already committed to murder, who would be foolish enough to assume a “gun safe zone” would hinder him — in hindsight it is obvious that it enabled him. It is also pointless to rail against the legality of the weapon…..crack cocaine is illegal and you can buy it practically everywhere.
The smartest [and safest] option would be to allow people to defend themselves. A common denominator in most mass shootings is that the perpetrator with the gun shoots his gun until someone else with a gun shows up. If that means waiting for the police to arrive, a lot of people can die. The study done by Lott & Lande found that states that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.Last year, Virginia Tech disciplined a student for carrying a gun on campus, despite his lawful concealed-carry permit. If just such a student had been in Norris Hall on Monday, the massacre could have been ended a lot sooner.
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Virginia Tech’s Gun-Free Zone Left Cho Seung-Hui’s Victims Defenseless
