Monday, September 10, 2007

Wouldn't you feel safer with a gun?

The title of this article is evocative of the recent dialogue between the "ASBO-Monger" in England and myself. Unfortunately, I had not the wit nor the wisdom to put the question so succinctly.

Fortunately, someone else did. And surprisingly, that person was a British contributer to the Times Online, in an article by the same name.

Author Richard Munday, in making his case that "British Attitudes are Supercilious and Misguided", writes:

Despite the recent spate of shootings on our streets, we pride ourselves on our strict gun laws. Every time an American gunman goes on a killing spree, we shake our heads in righteous disbelief at our poor benighted colonial cousins. Why is it, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, that Americans still resist calls for more gun controls?

The short answer is that “gun controls” do not work: they are indeed generally perverse in their effects. Virginia Tech, where 32 students were shot in April, had a strict gun ban policy and only last year successfully resisted a legal challenge that would have allowed the carrying of licensed defensive weapons on campus. It is with a measure of bitter irony that we recall Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, recording the words of Cesare Beccaria: “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.”

After a rousing condemnation of British confiscatory gun laws, backed by both statistics and anecdotal evidence, he concludes:

As late as 1951, self-defence was the justification of three quarters of all applications for pistol licences. And in the years 1946-51 armed robbery, the most significant measure of gun crime, ran at less than two dozen incidents a year in London; today, in our disarmed society, we suffer as many every week.

Gun controls disarm only the law-abiding, and leave predators with a freer hand. Nearly two and a half million people now fall victim to crimes of violence in Britain every year, more than four every minute: crimes that may devastate lives. It is perhaps a privilege of those who have never had to confront violence to disparage the power to resist.

I know, you're thinking "Hey, we're in America -- home of the Second Amendment. We are SOOOOoooo superior to those Socialist Wimps in Britain.

Not so.

Remember, Virginia Tech was recent history.

At least one Lady in Oregon is taking on the Gun Control Crowd with all the verve and energy of a Hollywood Action film ... but with the discretion of a hothouse flower:

High School Teacher Acquires Lawyer to Challenge Gun Policy

(Medford, Oregon - September 10, 2007 on OregonLive.com)

MEDFORD -- A high school teacher in southern Oregon plans to challenge a school district policy that prevents her from carrying a gun on school grounds.

Portland lawyer Jim Leuenberger said in an e-mail message to the Mail Tribune newspaper that he will ask a Jackson County judge to declare the Medford School District's policy "illegal and void" for holders of concealed handgun licenses.

"There is a state statute that prohibits local governments -- including school boards -- from restricting possession of firearms by concealed firearm permit holders," Leuenberger said.

Leuenberger said the teacher wishes to remain anonymous, and he will list her name as "Jane Doe" in the complaint. When contacted by the Mail Tribune, the teacher said she wants anonymity because she fears for her and her daughter's safety.

Leuenberger said the woman has divorced her husband and obtained a restraining order against him.


What's the difference between the Brit who postulates that gun control leads to more, not fewer victims as a result of causing the average citizen to protect himself with a firearm, and an Oregon woman who demands the right to carry a gun for self-protection even on the school grounds?

There is effectively no difference. Both recognize that an unarmed citizen is a victim, when the society in which they live is violent.

Both recognize that the right to self-protection is not an issue which can legitimately be restricted by the government ... local, regional or national.

But there is one significant difference.

In Britain, nobody is legally allowed to carry a firearm anywhere, at any time, for any reason.

In America, any law-abiding, sane adult is allowed to carry a firearm almost anywhere at almost anytime, except .... sometimes.

The 'sometimes' clause is the kernel of the difference, and we have only recently seen a national disaster in the case of the Virginia Tech massacre.

This tragic event may yet prove to be the touchstone which defines the consequences of "gun-free zones" in America. We saw it in 1999, at the Columbine school shooting, but we effectively dismissed it as an aberration rather than as a trend. As the years passed, we saw more similar situations characterized by "Gun Free Zone" schools where many innocents were murdered in a shooting spree by a "deranged person". Yet we still declined to address the problem.

We either rid our society of "Gun Free Zones", or we learned to identify and control madmen.

Both solutions were either unappealing or impossible, so we chose a third alternative: rid ourselves of guns. Britain did this to a greater degree, but our American politicians (see: California) took whatever surreptitious measures they could to accomplish the same effect.

The result: no protection to the huge pool of victims, because it is STILL illegal to carry a defensive firearm in an American schoolyard, no matter who you are or how thoroughly you have been vetted.

And children are still being murdered in schoolyards by madmen.

This dreadful trend will continue until our political leaders recognize and acknowledge that armed, responsible individuals are the only means of defense in this kind of situation.

Given the overwhelming evidence that our political leaders are loath to accept this solution, we will continue to lose our "best and brightest" to random violent acts by madmen, and we will continue to blame inanimate objects.

How stupid can we be?

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