Is the entire state of Vermont a gated community?
—further comment on Chapman’s article from a different source—
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3330594/posts
Testimony Senate Bills 347 and 699
A World Magazine article listed the supposed worst mass shootings in the United States since 1999. This article chronicled 25 instances with 220 dead, 242 injured, and 17 predator suicides. The shootings occurred at schools, churches, retail malls, and businesses, and in 19 to 24 cases at locations that would have prohibited firearms. In every case the police arrived for body counts and paperwork. In every case no one except the assailant had a gun.
The most recent citation involved Adam Lanza who stole his mother’s guns (which was against the law), and then killed her with them (which was against the law). Next he transported these loaded guns onto school property and inside the building (which was against the law). He discharged the weapons within the city limits (which was against the law), and murdered 26 people (which was against the law). Finally, Mr. Lanza committed suicide (which was against the law).
Evidently psychopaths follow this pattern of lawlessness and gun control legislation has no effect. The Clinton Administration commissioned a National Science Foundation (NSF) study that could not find a positive correlation between gun control laws and other measures for controlling murders after consulting 400 sources and doing its own research. The only dissent was detailed in Appendix A saying John Lott’s conclusion from his studies that concealed carry laws do drive down murder rates in public places had survived all attempts at reanalysis.
Here the dissenter referred to a twenty-year study by John Lott and William Landes from the University of Chicago Law School. That and subsequent Lott studies the NSF reviewed correlated passage of concealed carry laws with large decreases in multiple victim shootings, and reduced harm from shootings when they did occur.
Yet Senate Bills 347 and 699 can rely upon emotion to preclude consideration of such information. The passionate, contra-factual, asymmetrical marketing of the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy and other events provides the emotional cover necessary for driving these bills forward.
Legislation excluding permitted concealed carry firearms from school campuses and public buildings targets a cohort of people vitally concerned with handgun safety, and the legal restrictions on use of deadly force. They have taken a course to confirm their safe handling of firearms, and received sobering instructions on when it is improper to use a handgun in a violent situation. They have also opened themselves to a continuous scrutiny by law enforcement agencies from which most are exempt. We could expect them to obey the law, because undergoing the permit process demonstrates their serious attitude.
I wonder about the rationality of focusing on this group of law abiding individuals, when the safety of school campuses and public buildings would not be enhanced, but would be degraded? In all the gun control statistics, where is the citation for the overwhelming numbers of psychopaths who routinely cower before administrative rules and laws forbidding the presence of guns? How about the statistics proving concealed carry permit holders promiscuously kill innocent bystanders while defending their own lives? What advantage accrues from touting the protocols of a “gun free zone” for evacuating, witnessing, communicating, containing, coordinating, notifying, and counseling? What is the rationality for criminalizing certified capable people from acting for their own self-protection?
If there is armed security for these various sites, why would these individuals routinely eclipse the five to ten minute police response that time guarantees psychopaths ample time to play out their malevolent fantasies? For them the few moments to relish the screams and explosions from innocent slaughter creates intimate, visual stimuli of human terror, bloody mists, and broken bodies culminating in splendid, convulsive suicides.
Senate Bills 347 and 699 have the effect of not only confiscating an individual’s inherent right of self-defense and creating islands of contentment for lethal predators, but promises felony prosecution to those individuals for actions certified to be responsible by county sheriffs.
Respectfully Submitted,
Nolan Nelson
3497 Westward Ho
Eugene, OR 97401
541-344-7853
Senate Bill 699
http://www.leg.state.or.us/13reg/measpdf/sb0600.dir/sb0699.intro.pdf
Senate Bill 347
http://www.leg.state.or.us/13reg/measpdf/sb0300.dir/sb0347.intro.pdf
A Town Clothed in Misery
http://www.worldmag.com/2012/12/a_town_clothed_in_misery/page3
National Science Foundation: Firearms and Violence, A Critical Review
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309091241
Study by John Lott and William Landes from the University of Chicago Law School
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272929
Harvard Law School Gun Study
http://illinoiscarry.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6297
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pd
Liberals love to try to solve specific problems by taking away everyone's rights.
If you eliminate murders committed by blacks, the US goes toward the bottom of the list of violent crimes.