Posted on 10/04/2006 10:06:44 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a remarkable moment of candor, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell today acknowledged what the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has been saying for years: Stronger gun laws could not have prevented the horrible shooting yesterday at the Amish school in Lancaster County.
Rendell, a staunch gun control advocate, admitted, "I believe with all my heart that we need more gun control" during a live press conference. But he also acknowledged that tougher gun laws would not have prevented gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV from carrying out his deadly attack, noting, "You can make all the changes you want, but you can never stop a random act of violence by someone intent on taking his own life."
"Welcome to the party, Gov. Rendell," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb. "While the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has been wringing its hands and declaring that 'somebody has got to do something,' we have consistently maintained that such crimes are impossible to predict, and equally impossible to prevent with passage of yet another gun law. And finally, Gov. Rendell agrees with us."
"The gunman had no criminal or mental health background," Gottlieb said, "so he would pass any criminal background check. His family and friends described him as a loving family man. Nobody saw this coming."
"This shooting, and the ones last week in Colorado and Wisconsin, and every school shooting in the past 10 years all had one thing in common," he observed. "They all happened in so- called 'gun-free school zones,' where students and adult staff are essentially helpless."
"Gun control extremism has disarmed the wrong people and created risk-free environments for those who would commit murder and mayhem," Gottlieb said. "It is time to re-consider gun-free school zone laws and the zero-tolerance mentality such laws foster. We can no longer afford the empty-headed Utopian illusion that gun control and gun-free zones will keep children safe. Like all other gun control laws, this one has been a monumental failure, and it is literally killing our children."
"If it saves the life of just one child," Gottlieb concluded, "abolishing such laws will be worth the effort."
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With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms -- http://www.ccrkba.org -- is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
Do like the Thais: arm the teachers, and give them handgun training.
How about if you shoot him before he shoots you, Governor?
He'll probably get in trouble for this too.
I withdraw my statement about He!!
I'm not warm and fuzzy about Rendell at all. But at least he is exercising restraint here, rather than the ghouls who wish to push gun control over the bodies of the victims, even though their proposals would have done nothing to prevent what happened to them.
Geez Louise! How could ANY news agency leave out the BIG thing that Fast Eddie said (re Rush's 10/3 show, 1:08pm EDT and repeated today)...?
That being (paraphrasing) "you could put 50 Secret Service agents around the President and that won't keep someone who would take his own life from killing the President."
That was the line that everyone should have read from any wire service, not some anti-NRA interpretation. I think what ER said bordered on a threat, or maybe a (Daily Kos) dream.
Please. It was not a threat, it was a basic observation to those idiots who demand that SOMETHING BE DONE BY THE GOVERNMENT when government could have done nothing to stop this.
Aren't all acts of violence "random"? At least in the sense in their campaign for more gun control?
Hey Ed, how about protecting the rights of the families of the little girls murdered to bury their children in peace without having wackos from Kansas protesting you at the funeral? I know it would be hard, but be a man for once Ed...do the right thing.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Please ... Rendell has already said he will examine all legal options to prevent Phelps and his ilk from bothering the Amish mourners.
Irrelevant in this case.
Rendell may have said he'd examine all the legal options, but actions speak louder than words. Frankly, I'd take whatever Rendell says with a grain of salt.
I am no fan of Fast Eddie's, but he has handled this tragedy very well.
Mike Gallagher offered them an hour on his show if they would call off the Amish funeral protest, and they agreed to that.
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