Sunday, February 17, 2008

Will The Last Liberal Dumb Enough To Defend "Gun-Free Zones" Please Shoot Yourself?

The emails are pouring in from angry gunhaters about our conversation Friday pointing out the Left's culpability in the bloodshed at NIU. Interestingly, the "Guns Are Icky!" liberals aren't arguing that so-called "gun-free zones" work. (Kind of hard to with all those shot and bleeding students lying at your feet, isn't it?)

Instead, they're left to argue that allowing college students to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights would be worse. It has to be, otherwise, legal gun ownership would be a good thing--and that is simple impossible.

Unfortunately for these gutless "It's not my job to defend myself or my family" liberals, the impossible just happens to be true. Here's Dr. John R. Lott:

A three-year prison term for violating a gun-free zone represents a real penalty for a law-abiding citizen. Adding three years to a criminal’s sentence when he is probably already going to face multiple death penalties or life sentences for a murderous rampage is probably not going to be the penalty that stops the criminal from committing his crime...

Bill Landes and I have examined all the multiple-victim public schooings with two or more victims in the United States from 1977 to 1999 and found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, these attacks fell by 60 percent. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 percent.

No other gun-control law had any beneficial effect. Indeed, right-to-carry laws were the only policy that consistently reduced these attacks. [emphasis added]

I realize that facts have little or no interest to the anti-gun loonies. What they are really arguing against isn't guns, but rather the notion that citizens have any responsibility for their own security. As hard as it is for normal people to believe, a good Cambridge liberal would rather find himself lying defenseless on the floor of a classroom waiting for a shooter to re-load and shoot him, then be burdened with the responsibility of legal gun ownership.

The sad irony is that, right now, there are responsibile citizens carrying guns who are prepared to use them to stop loonies like the NIU guy from killing these irrational, gun-fearing liberals. Meanwhile, those same liberals are pushing for laws to strip their would-be saviors of their weapons and force them onto the floor beside the cowering cowards of the Left.