Topic: Gun Control
Just One Gun Another day, another campus shooting. George Bush frets over the risk of terrorism.by EJ Moosa
(Libertarian)
Friday, February 15, 2008
In Dekalb, Illinois a gunman kills five in a lecture hall before he takes his own life. Last week there was a shooting at a school in Louisiana. Last year it happened on the campus of Virginia Tech, where 23 were killed.
George Bush had a press conference this morning, February 15th, 2008. After a few brief remarks on the shooting in Illinois, he moves right to his diatribe on the War on Terror and that we still face the threat and we need Congress to act.
Mr. President, I am not sure if you are counting the losses. But the body count is climbing higher by the week on our college campuses. I wish you were willing to act decisively and act now to help turn this around.
Mr. President, law abiding citizens are not allowed to carry weapons on college campuses. They are "gun-free" zones. Penalties for having a gun are higher if you are caught violating gun laws in "gun-free" zones. The only problem is that suicidal maniacs do not worry themeselves about such details. They will not be around to suffer the consequences.
Just one student or teacher with just one gun could have changed the outcome in Dekalb. Instead of having a shooter with no opposition and three minutes or more to shoot at will, he might have been stopped prior to taking six lives and then his own life. In any case shooting while being shot at is a different game, and one or more of the victims could still be alive.
Mr. President, it is time to start being more concerned about real lives being lost here in the United States rather than worry about potential terrorism risks.
Mr. President, it is time to restore full Second Amendment Rights so that our citizens can protect themselves and so that suicidal maniacs do not know the ideal places to go to attack us without reisistance. If we do not act soon, certainly the terrorists will realize these are also the locations to attack us with minimal resistance.
How many more real deaths will we have before you decide to lead on this issue? I know your ATF guys are working full speed on finding out where the weapons came from. But unless they have access to a time machine, it will not restore life to any of the victims. Mr. President, it is time to allow law abiding citizens the chance to protect themselves. It's the Constitutional thing to do.
There are 54 colleges and universities in the state of Georgia alone. No government can protect all of these gun-free zones. Responsible citizens would at least have a chance to protect themselves. Without that chance they are being denied their right to life.
If you live in Georgia, I encourage you to check out Georgiacarry.org
They are dligently working to restore our rights at the state and national levels. If you live outside of Georgia, find the group that is working in your state. We must be willing to protect ourselves first. I have applied for my carry permit in Georgia. Total cost:$46.41
Rights are there to be exercised. Even if you do not own a gun, you should send a message to your government and apply for a carry permit.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 30 thumbs so far
2008 EJ Moosa, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008
Last modified: Monday, February 18, 2008
The views expressed in this
article are those of EJ Moosa only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. EJ Moosa is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Scott from Oregon
Date: 2008-02-15 18:19:02
The argument for allowing guns on campuses isn't nearly so cut and dry...
The problem is a statistical, mathematical one.
There is a basic equation in guns that says, the more guns you have available and in the public sphere, the more gun related deaths, by accident or anger, you have.
Combine this with the statistical certainty that college students are the highest rated abusers of drugs and alcohol in the nation, and you get a volatile mix.
In order to "prevent" these types of shooting from occuring, you would have to have at least one gun in every classroom and cafeteria and library and lecture hall and locker room... etc... at every hour of the day that the college is in operation. Then you have to multiply this already huge figure by the number of universities and state colleges and junior colleges and specialty colleges...
Suddenly, in order to "attempt" to reduce the number of casualties (I say attempt, because there is a 50/50 chance that the gunman will shoot the innocent gun toting citizen) you have to add millions of guns to be circulating around college campuses. Once that happens, you create the statistical certainty that accidents and anger related shootings (he kissed my girl!) would increase and actually dwarf the casualty rate of crazy gunman shootings...
I would like to challenge some of your assumptions. First, there is not a need for millions of guns. Look at the airlines. We think there might be armed air marshalls on every flight. But we are not certain. Yet the possiblity is enough to get most people to behave most of the time. Were people on planes to know that there was absolutely no chance of an armed person on plane, I wager things would be different.
Second, there are hundreds of thousands of police officers who carry guns and interact everyday with each other. They have alcohol issues, anger issues, and relationship issues. Yet we do not read of cops going on rampages. Why? Because were they to start, there is an armed individual likely nearby to intervene.
Third, despite the potential risk we know this to be true: College students are being killed while being denied the right to defend themselves. No matter how you slice it, you have sacrificed their lives for the "potential" risk. You cannot get their lives back.
I appreciate your response. But if we were merely interested in saving students from risk of death, we would ban driving and swimming. They kill more college students than guns.
No one should sacrifice the potential to protect themselves because of the risk someone else might use something inappropriately. We must all accept responsibility for our own safety AND our own actions. Even a cop in every classroom might not stop this. Even if it could, we could not afford it.
Posted By: Scott from Oregon
Date: 2008-02-15 19:41:22
EJ- The one thing you overlook is that these are "suicide" shootings. The people commiting these acts know they are going to die. The only way to stop them is to kill them before they kill others. The only way to statistically solve the problem (since you cannot predict who they are going to be or where they are going to strike) is to flood the system with guns from morning until night.
If you do that, you increase the probability that other shootings, more common shootings, will occur.
You lose either way, and the problem will not go away because America is a gun nation with a gun heritage...
I can understand your position but I will respectfully disagree. I believe that he first selected a location where there would be the least potential for resistance. While I may not take the position that he should be killed before killing others, once it was clear that was his intention, then he should be stopped by force.
He knew there would be no force there to stop him. Yet if one person...just one...who had a concealed carry permit and fired back at him, more than one life may have been saved. And if that one life were significant to you, then that would be sufficient.
The evidence and records are clear that individuals that apply for and carry concealed weapons are law abiding citizens who are not committing crimes. I am no more likely to commit a crime once I receive my license than I was before I received it. In fact, I am even more aware of the responsibility and the consequences if I misuse that responsibility.
And if an individual with a carry permit commits a crime, their fingerprints are already in the system. They will not be hard to locate. By applying for a permit I have in essence said I am going to be following the law. Otherwise I would not have given the government my finger and palm prints.
I would encourage you to consider it would be better to arm law abiding citizens than to leave suicidal murderers the run of the campus.
We aren't talking about handing out guns like condoms in the campus health offices. Anyone who chooses to accept a permit to legally carry a firearm is very much aware of their responsibilities, and they act accordingly. Statistically concealed carry permit holders are safer than police officers when it comes to accidental or wrongful shootings.
There is also very much a deterence factor involved in mass shootings. However deranged, these criminal individuals obviously walk into these situations with some form of plan. They seek out locations where they will be able to make the biggest "splash" possible. While it is presumed that they are acting suicidally in most cases, they are in most cases still trying to inflict maximum damage. The potential for armed resistance will have the tendency of deterring them from choosing such a location, like terrorists they prefer soft-targets. When they are confronted with resistance they typically take their own life, or surrender. Therefore the sooner they are confronted the less damage they are likely to inflict.
The nature of the crime makes it a diffuse and unlikely threat. We could try hiring massive numbers of police officers but they will be ineffective at preventing mass shootings because there will always be soft targets; further if we could or did want such a thing to happen unless they were undercover officers they would just become the first targets (as was seen last week in the city council shooting). Technology cannot defeat this problem either, because even the most cursory inclusion of metal detectors on a massive scale would make education unaffordable. The most feasible way of meeting a diffuse threat is with a diffuse defense, anything else is unlikely to create the needed answer.
The fact remains, the crime targets people. Therefore the only feasible way to deter or mitigate the crime is to turn the sheep in the sheep dogs. Metaphorically speaking of course.
You all have made valid points. Those that wish to carry weapons should. Not everyone wishes to or has the stomach for killing. The main problem is not that we are a gun culture, but a violent one. We glorify violence beyond reason. Our society is skewed towards the spilling of blood, yet opposes expressions of sexuality. Nobody seems to mind that every minute of every day violence pervades our entertainment, but the sight of a penis or vagina causes convulsions of moral outrage, especially if - God forbid! - a child might see one. But pass the popcorn as we witness the bloodfest on the screens. What more evidence do you need of a culture in decay? I'm surprised more video-game-playing, sexually-frustrated, angst-ridden boy-men-losers don't flip-out.
Posted By: Scott from Oregon
Date: 2008-02-15 23:10:04
Just so y'all know, I got my first BB gun at six, and my first .22 at eight (which I still have). I have NRA shooting awards running up and down the sleeve of an old souvenir jacket I still keep.
But you have to do the mind experiment for yourself, and you will see, that you would have to add millions of guns in the hands of eighteen to twenty two year olds to stop these "events" from occuring. When you do that, you increase the occurence of accidental shootings, guns being stolen and used in crimes, anger shootings etc...
Your plan doesn't resolve the issue of death by firearms, it simply mutates it into something else.
The more guns you have available, the more death by firearms you will have. It is really a simple statistical fact.
Well you know the opponents of gun rights promised us a blood bath and shoot outs in the streets when right to carry laws started gettting passed...it never materialized...just didn't happen.
Those same opponents glorrified the advancement of peace that would result from both Britain and Australia's effective bans on private ownership...again the crime rate went up, just not among the criminals.
We also aren't talking about handing guns to 18-22 year olds, that would require changing more unconstitutional laws. It's currently illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase a handgun by Federal Statutes. Typically you're also not going to find a whole lot of permit carriers living in the high risk dorms on campus, they will largely be the ever increasing number of adults attending school who otherwise carry day in and day out.
Allowing law abiding citizens who carry everywhere else to also carry on campuses is not going to sky rocket gun crime on campus. I would imagine that it would do exactly what it does elsewhere deter all criminals who prefer the easy prey of the disarmed.
Hell simply allowing permit carriers to "register their intent" to carry on campuses and then sharing that number with the public would act as a deterent in its own right to these shootings. Student Paper: "In the first day of registration 300 students presented their permits to campus officials to show their intent to carry on the premises. This paper has also learned that 1/3rd of applicants were women." Suddenly wrong doers are looking nervously at everyone trying to figure out who might be packing and are becoming a lot more reticent in their desire to carry out the abominable.
You are correct. No amount of concealed carry can prevent someone from initiating a senseless violent act. But what you ignore is the simple truth that in just about every case of public shooting on record, the shooter was stopped by opposing force. Sometimes that was law enforcement, sometimes it was a private citizen. By your own arguement we would have to place an officer in every classroom in the country to eliminate the threat of school violence, and even then one might speculate that someone bent on evil would simply target the officer first, not only eliminating the closest protector, but probably gaining an additional firearm to boot.
What we in the gun culture are proposing is simply to allow those who have taken the time and trouble to become licensed for concealed carry to do so on campus. This would include older students, faculty, and staff, not the younger less mature "party hearty"kids being objected to. I boils down to a question of response time, how long does an attack go on before some viable response can occur. The latest catch phrase making the rounds these days is: "Remember, when seconds count the police are only minutes away!"
Seeing that the statutes of limitations place me beyond prosecution (persecution) at this point, I can matter of factly state that I carried a pistol to school nearly every day, in two different states, until I graduated from college.
I didn't go to school to be mugged, assaulted, kidnapped, or randomly shot by some unstable tool on a nihilist rampage; neither should you or your children.
The state has no obligation to protect you against private actors; and even if liable for the actions of state actors, what good does that do you if you are already dead? See Supreme Court ruling:
Posted By: John Armstrong
Date: 2008-02-18 04:37:31
When we change the Constitution we can start to have a debate on this issue. Until then, the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed upon.
To compare us to other countries is ludicrous. They don't have the same Contract with their government we do. Using the government (especially the federal government) to deal with these issues is cutting of your nose to spite your face.
I think gun rights are irrelevant to this arguement and these unfortunate situations. Crazed gunmen do not pick universities for their policy on weapons. They are typically students who attend that school and have a grudge against other students, teachers, or that particular system. There are many examples of gun toting crazies shooting people outside of universities - it is just a matter of time until you see someone go crazy at a football game or other large venue. It is almost impossible to stop someone of that mindset - they have no regard for laws - they do not value thier lives. Fear of being shot in retaliation for their actions would consequently not likely affect their decision.
Feel free to promote the cause of gun rights, I think you have a good case, just please do not dishonor the victims or their families by using this loss for your arguments benefit. It will not provide the disencentive you suggest and belittles your cause in my opinion.
How can affording individuals the right to protect themselves dishonor the victims?
You are absolutely right. It is just a matter of time before someone tries something at a major venue. Even if it is not a deterrent to some attackers, the fact that there might at least be someone there that can either stop the attack, or delay the attack would seem to be a good thing. Maybe one or more lives would have been saved.
Under what circumstances is it ever inappropriate to defend oneself? It's not just about the gun. It is about the right to not live in fear. It is about the right not to be threatened by crazies. It is about having a choice besides running and waiting for someone else to protect you.
The dishonor to the victims and families comes from those that use this as a chance to seek even greater gun control, making us even more prone to being a victim in the future. We are all the victims because we all have another layer of fear added to our lives.
I have had a gun pulled on me when I was in a park where guns are illegal even with a carry permit. Following the law put my life at risk. Everyone should have the right to defend themselves if they choose to. You do not have to exercise that right. But it should not be denied.
I do not want an * next to my name in the obituary column:
* murdered while following the laws against guns in parks.
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
2008 EJ Moosa, all rights reserved.