Guns kill people!
Guns can save people by killing, wounding, and/or deterring attackers.
The author of that article is a graduate student at VA Tech. He's licensed to carry a concealed weapon, but isn't allowed to carry it on campus. If he had been involved in the situation he would have been disarmed by the university's rules while anyone willing to violate a much bigger rule (the law against murder) would not.
Other school shootings have been halted with much lower death tolls because there was someone armed to stop the killer. This killer had two and a half hours to do his work. That shows how you can't rely on the police.
I don't own a gun, and I probably won't buy one, but this incident is making me rethink the issue. Probably won't buy one anyway, the odds of being attacked are low, but I'm considering it.
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2002 Virginia School Shooting (flashback: only 2 killed before armed citizen acts)
freerepublic.com
Virginia Tech Students Doomed by Gun Ban
The Cost of Hysteria Mounts
I just found out about the massacre at Virginia Tech.
The thing that makes me most angry is that the dead students were penned up like sheep for the slaughter, in a ridiculous "gun-free zone." A better phrase would be "self-defense-free zone," or maybe "danger-free zone for armed criminals."
Anyone who knew about Virginia Tech's deadly, stupid policy knew he could pick up a gun, walk into any dorm, and shoot freely until the police showed up. The amazing thing isn't that it happened; the amazing thing is that it doesn't happen once a month.
Here is what spokesman Larry Hinckman said in 2005, about Virginia Tech's ill-fated policy: "I think it's fair to say that we believe guns don't belong in the classroom. In an academic environment, we believe you should be free from fear."
I think we can see how well that policy worked out.
That quote came from a 2005 article about campus police disarming a student who had a carry permit. Too bad that student wasn't around today. Or maybe he was. Maybe he's among the dead, thanks to political correctness.
I've had to deal with stupid firearm policies. When I attended the University of Texas, my apartment lease said I couldn't have a gun in my home. Naturally, I paid no attention, keeping a Glock by the bed and going shooting whenever I felt like it. When I attended the University of Miami Law School, it was my understanding that guns were forbidden on campus. I don't know if I ever confirmed that, but I do know I didn't care. I had a gun in my glove compartment every time I parked in the law school lot.
If a nut had opened fire at my apartment complex or while I was within reach of my gun at UM, I would have had a chance of plugging him and ending a massacre. Unfortunately, there was nobody like me around at Virginia Tech this morning. No law-abiding, sane armed citizen in sight. Just a deranged criminal; the kind of person dumb policies and laws can never disarm.
We're already hearing the usual irrational, hysterical voices. "If only we had sensible gun control, this would never have happened. George Bush killed these students." In reality, gun control is what sealed their doom. This lunatic knew he could shoot until the police arrived. In a rational world, he would only have been able to shoot until a student or university employee produced a firearm.
You have to wonder how many people died before the first 911 call was placed. The beauty of privately owned guns is that they work while the cops are still across town. Government guns respond to shootings; privately owned guns prevent them.
Pray for the survivors. And pray that the public draws the right conclusion, rises up, and demands an end to reckless gun bans. The cost has already been too high; we shouldn't continue making payments.
hogonice.com
"...The truth is the polar opposite of what the gun control advocates will conclude. For what we have at Virginia Tech is just one more example of gun control and government protection failing miserably at their advertised goals, and in fact making such a massacre more likely to begin with.
Back in early 2006, a plan in the Virginia legislature to allow for concealed carry on the state’s college campuses failed in subcommittee. A representative of Virginia Tech said that the bill’s defeat would make “parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
Perhaps it did make a lot of people feel safer. But the indisputable fact, which everyone should recognize by now, is that criminals don’t follow the law. Someone who is not going to obey laws against murder is not going to flinch at a law forbidding the carrying of weapons. And the notion that a gun law can eliminate weapons is just a fantasy, as any liberal who understands the failure of the drug war should by now see. Indeed, all these weapons prohibitions ever do is disarm those who are willing to follow the law, leaving them defenseless against criminals willing to break the law. Gun control rendered these students helpless, even as it did nothing to stop the killer.
The mentality of dependence that the leviathan state encourages with its wars, welfare state, gun control and public schools has also made would-be victims feel helpless whenever confronted by an actual threat. Today, Americans generally trust the state to protect them. But this trust is completely misplaced. In 1999, when two students slaughtered a dozen of their schoolmates and a teacher at Columbine, the Swat Team hesitated for a crucial period of time before storming the building – even as a student held a sign in the window declaring that a victim was bleeding to death within. On 9/11, the hijacked victims who heroically fought back stopped one plane from causing much more damage than it did, but on all four planes the passengers and pilots had been disarmed and thus were at a disadvantage against a handful of fanatics with boxcutters. There were also individual heroes at Virginia Tech, who worked to save lives despite being at the disadvantage of a criminal willing to break the law.
Now let me be clear. I do not wish to understate the horror of what any victim of such savage violent crimes go through. But the startling common thread throughout these massacres is the degree to which the government has claimed total control and promised total security. Public high schools and many colleges have long been deemed gun-free zones, as if this actually protects anyone. Airline security has long been the domain of the state, yet the state could do absolutely nothing to protect Americans on 9/11. And at Virginia Tech, the students had the false sense of security that because the government had greatly restricted their own right to bear arms at a public facility, they would be safe. Yet for two full hours, the police failed to stop the assailant between the time he began shooting and the time he killed many others and then himself. And, again, we have no reason to necessarily expect it to have gone any better..."
lewrockwell.com |
