Interesting take on gun control.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/com...ent/index.html
Interesting take on gun control.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/com...ent/index.html
heh.
Great article. I can't see anything that there is to argue with in that.
BTW he forgot to mention that Ms. Hupp left her gun in the car because of the "gunfree zone" both of her parents were murdered in the onslaught.
OBAMA= One Big A** Mistake America!
Halarious:
No one was foolish enough to debate Ryder truck regulations or ammonia nitrate restrictions or a "cult of agriculture fertilizer" following the unabashed evil of Timothy McVeigh's heinous crime against America on that fateful day in Oklahoma City. No one faulted kitchen utensils or other hardware of choice after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught drugging, mutilating, raping, murdering and cannibalizing his victims. Nobody wanted "steak knife control" as they autopsied the dead nurses in Chicago, Illinois, as Richard Speck went on trial for mass murder.
Gun Free zones = killing fields.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
Here is another statistic wanna-be
Doug, Houston, Texas
Frankly I got sick in my stomach reading Mr. Nugent's article. According to Mr. Nugent, the solution is very simple: All citizens should be armed and the world would be a much safer place. Let's take a moment to think about the implication of this. The criminals are not dumb. If we average law-abiding citizens were allowed to freely purchase weapons, the criminals would do everything they could to ensure they have the upper hands on their firepower. Of course, we would immediately do the same to regain our upper hands. What then would you think the criminals would do in return?
I have a question for the anti-gunners:
Are you happy that no one else in the VA Tech classroom was armed?
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
Wait, are we seriously having a debate as to whether or not it is a good idea to encourage frat boys to arm themselves?
Boomer Sooner
So, you are glad that no one else in that classroom had a gun?Originally Posted by soonerscuba
okay. I just wanted to see.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
Hey, lookie here! The socialist f***head Kucinich introduced a bill in congress to ban all handguns!
Good luck, you dopey headed schlong-sucking moonbat. I can't wait until 'Deptartment of Peace' agents come knocking on my door. Maybe they'll offer me 1000 flower peddles for my 1911.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-...0&position=all
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
Jerk, I wish someone did.
How do you propose to pick who gets to do so?
Signs of Intelligence?
4/20/2007
Fred Dalton Thompson
(EDIT: Link to text added)
One of the things that's got to be going through a lot of peoples' minds now is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again, could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.
Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms -- and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain.
The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point, incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.
Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus.
In recent years, however, armed Americans -- not on-duty police officers -- have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. Evidence from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and have stopped serious terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting, though contrary, evidence from Great Britain, where strict gun controls have led to violent crime rates far higher than ours, is also common knowledge.
So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's "concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.
The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for protection.
Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled "shoe bomber" Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes annually.
When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.
Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses -- and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.
Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
I don't know...but...I like the old bumper sticker that said...
"people who beat their swords into plows, will plow for those who don't"
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
Gun control isn't the answer
Why one reaction to Virginia Tech shouldn't be tightening firearm laws.
By James Q. Wilson, JAMES Q. WILSON teaches public policy at Pepperdine University and previously taught at UCLA and Harvard University. He is the author of several books, including "Thinking About Crime."
April 20, 2007
THE TRAGEDY at Virginia Tech may tell us something about how a young man could be driven to commit terrible actions, but it does not teach us very much about gun control.
So far, not many prominent Americans have tried to use the college rampage as an argument for gun control. One reason is that we are in the midst of a presidential race in which leading Democratic candidates are aware that endorsing gun control can cost them votes.
This concern has not prevented the New York Times from editorializing in favor of "stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage." Nor has it stopped the European press from beating up on us unmercifully.
Leading British, French, German, Italian and Spanish newspapers have blamed the United States for listening to Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Assn. Many of their claims are a little strange. At least two papers said we should ban semiautomatic assault weapons (even though the killer did not use one); another said that buying a machine gun is easier than getting a driver's license (even though no one can legally buy a machine gun); a third wrote that gun violence is becoming more common (when in fact the U.S. homicide rate has fallen dramatically over the last dozen years).
Let's take a deep breath and think about what we know about gun violence and gun control.
First: There is no doubt that the existence of some 260 million guns (of which perhaps 60 million are handguns) increases the death rate in this country. We do not have drive-by poisonings or drive-by knifings, but we do have drive-by shootings. Easy access to guns makes deadly violence more common in drug deals, gang fights and street corner brawls.
However, there is no way to extinguish this supply of guns. It would be constitutionally suspect and politically impossible to confiscate hundreds of millions of weapons. You can declare a place gun-free, as Virginia Tech had done, and guns will still be brought there.
If we want to guess by how much the U.S. murder rate would fall if civilians had no guns, we should begin by realizing — as criminologists Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins have shown — that the non-gun homicide rate in this country is three times higher than the non-gun homicide rate in England. For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can't use a gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won't be reduced even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free.
There are federally required background checks on purchasing weapons; many states (including Virginia) limit gun purchases to one a month, and juveniles may not buy them at all. But even if there were even tougher limits, access to guns would remain relatively easy. Not the least because, as is true today, many would be stolen and others would be obtained through straw purchases made by a willing confederate. It is virtually impossible to use new background check or waiting-period laws to prevent dangerous people from getting guns. Those that they cannot buy, they will steal or borrow.
It's also important to note that guns play an important role in selfdefense. Estimates differ as to how common this is, but the numbers are not trivial. Somewhere between 100,000 and more than 2 million cases of self-defense occur every year.
There are many compelling cases. In one Mississippi high school, an armed administrator apprehended a school shooter. In a Pennsylvania high school, an armed merchant prevented further deaths. Would an armed teacher have prevented some of the deaths at Virginia Tech? We cannot know, but it is not unlikely.
AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.
Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.
The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.
It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there are no easy solutions — such as passing more gun control laws.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
you know... it seems me, you and just about everyone else has issue with the person that was armed. that says somethin', don't it.
let's say there was one person with a gun, and that person got shot first. then what? it seems to me all should be armed if you really want to play the "what if" game... and then, with all the chaos there would have been plenty killed with more hands at the trigger.
it'd be like the wild west. only wilder... and to me, it seems sad enough already.
It's an easy question, yet you can't answer it.you know... it seems me, you and just about everyone else has issue with the person that was armed. that says somethin', don't it.
(and no, i'm not one who says "GUNS SHOULD BE BANNED"). i think bullets should.
i'll ask you again...ARE YOU GLAD THAT NO ONE ELSE IN THE CLASSROOM HAD A GUN?
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
Yes
No
Circle one, please
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
are you glad the shooter had a gun?
see? stupid questions don't deserve answers.
Aw, come on Jerk, you know that's a trick question, like "have you stopped beating your wife?"
I don't own a gun, I'm not anti-gun, but I am disappointed that a nutjob was able to get a gun so easily. If other students had been armed, I don't know if more or fewer people would have been killed. A shoot-em-up in a classroom wouldn't have had a great outcome in any case.
There's a place for guns and there's places where guns don't make sense. A college campus isn't a place for weaponry. And oh yeah, it should be harder for psychos (except for you) to get hold of them.
... that "except for you" part was a joke... don't shoot me.
To LeavingTheZoo:
No, I'm not glad. And according to Federal law, he was disqualified. It was a failure of his mental adjucation being reported to NICS.
I guess my 'stupid question' is a little too tough for you.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
if you read the edit you'd see why your "one random gun would have saved the day" theory has holes.
i'm not upset no one else had a gun. even that would not have guarenteed a different outcome despite your gun is God mentality. i'm upset the killer did though. we have something in common after all. yay!
Well, if someone else did have a gun, like a legit CCW permit holder, it would not have guaranteed that the tragedy occured. Like you said, this is all hypothetical and it could have ended with things even worse than what happened. But if history could be re-done, and one of those kids could have been able to defend himself, maybe things would be much different. Virginia passed a law to allow concealed carry on campus, but VA Tech threatened anyone who did so with expulsion..
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Fred Bastiat
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