Here's another:
Posted on 04/18/2007 4:15:13 PM PDT by goldstategop
From the attacks of 9-11 to Monday's school shooting, after every mass murder there is an overwhelming urge to "do something" to prevent a similar attack.
But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed.
Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy – in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.
It's certainly not against the law to be an unsociable loner. If it were, Ralph Nader would be behind bars right now, where he belongs. Mass murder is often the first serious crime unbalanced individuals are caught committing – as appears to be in the case of the Virginia Tech shooting.
The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.
Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.
And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.
Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws.
From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?
It isn't the angst of adolescence. Plenty of school shootings have been committed by adults with absolutely no reason to be at the school, such as Laurie Dann, who shot up the Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, Ill., in 1988; Patrick Purdy, who opened fire on children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif., in 1989; and Charles Carl Roberts, who murdered five schoolgirls at an Amish school in Lancaster County, Pa., last year.
Oh, by the way, the other major "Gun-Free Zone" in America is the post office.
But instantly, on the day of the shooting at Virginia Tech, the media were already promoting gun control and pre-emptively denouncing right-wingers who point out that gun control enables murderers rather than stopping them. Liberals get to lobby for gun control, but we're disallowed from arguing back. That's how good their arguments are. They're that good.
Needless to say, Virginia Tech is a Gun-Free School Zone – at least until last Monday. The gunman must not have known. Imagine his embarrassment! Perhaps there should be signs.
Virginia Tech even prohibits students with concealed-carry permits from carrying their guns on campus. Last year, the school disciplined a student for carrying a gun on campus, despite his lawful concealed-carry permit. If only someone like that had been in Norris Hall on Monday, this massacre could have been ended a lot sooner.
But last January, the Virginia General Assembly shot down a bill that would have prevented universities like Virginia Tech from giving sanctuary to mass murderers on college campuses in Virginia by disarming students with concealed-carry permits valid in the rest of the state.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker praised the legislature for allowing the school to disarm lawful gun owners on the faculty and student body, thereby surrendering every college campus in the state to deranged mass murderers, saying: "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
Others disagreed. Writing last year about another dangerous killer who had been loose on the Virginia Tech campus, graduate student Jonathan McGlumphy wrote: "Is it not obvious that all students, faculty and staff would have been safer if (concealed handgun permit) holders were not banned from carrying their weapons on campus?"
If it wasn't obvious then, it is now.
That’s not a bad idea. I’d even go for severe penalties in the red zones for people who took guns from red to blue. Like they are permanently expelled from the red. The blue zones can do what they want with them. Counseling, donuts, talk shows, whatever.
The legislature can be argued to be as an accessory to these deaths.
When the illiterati of the ivory tower run the show, people die.
“The reporters are still treating him as a “sad and lonely individual”. A victim.”
You must be watching different stuff. I’ve seen him treated as the nutcase he was. “Alone” yes, by choice, but not lonely.
“So much for the “quiet individual with no arrests to speak of”.”
Please show us where he was arrested. He was indeed evaluated for possible mental problems, including depression, but where was he arrested?
“We need media control more than any stupid gun control.”
I think the Constitution has something to say about both. Media control is called censorship.
“What you have to love is this Psycho had a prof who threatened to resign if he wasn’t rmeoved from her class. The Tutor he was then assigned refered him to Psychological Services. Another class of seventy students only had seven who would attend fo rfear we was going to shoot the class up”
I hadn’t seen this. Can you point to a source for me? Thanks.
You know, you can flood these e-mails all you want, but your targets aren’t reading them. In situations like this, e-mails are so numerous that they’re being screened and deleted by somebody else. The same is happening to e-mails from gun control advocates, folks who think we should do more for the mentally ill, and people who claim aliens made him do it.
I don’t say this because I have inside information — I don’t. It’s just common sense.
I’m hoping this massacre will cause ALL the signs which are in ALL schools (well, most) across this nation that say “GUN FREE ZONE” to be removed. Let the crazies and jihadists try and guess where the guns are.
That’s what I’ve often thought (Coulter on the View), but, then I think about the level of “intelligence” she’d have to be sparring with and realize she’d never do it.
You might be right but my post informs readers of more than the e-mail addie. Besides someone has to look at those e-mails before deleting them and they may be keeping a tally of pro and con.
And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.
BINGO
Great comment.
If and until that day comes, there will be more and more of these shootings. They will never stop. We are doomed to have even more of this.
Also, either the NUTS are going to have to go, or the GUNS are going to have to go. It is a matter of time, it will happen, Constitution or no Constitution. The two are incompatible and cannot be allowed to co-exist for very long in any society under these conditions.
I don't have all the solutions, but I do see the problem continuing and maybe even gaining in intensity. We are, at least as a society, on the verge of losing a great many of our freedoms if things are not brought under control somehow. We have lost freedom to do a lot of other things in the last 50 years, there is no sanctuary or sacred terrority left that will be untouched.
Now THAT would be something the media would like to cover up.
Not really. "massacre could have been ended" implies some external entity could have done the ending. "massacre could have ended" implies that the massacre could have ended itself. The way Ann wrote it "massacre" is the object of the verb "been ended", the way you wrote it "massacre" is the subject.
Diagram the sentence, both ways, and see for yourself.
Try some prozac. There is no wall between inanimate objects and freaking nutcases (or anyone else) anywhere in the world.
Source - Bureau of Justice Statistics
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