And sadly you know what the political result of this will be.
Increased gun controls.
Great post. I agree 100% and linked to your rather than write my own post about it.
I hate to say it but... I told you so.
http://fvci.blogspot.com/2007/04...ginia-
tech.html
"If only 10% of the people at Virginia Tech had concealed weapon permits it is unlikely that this man could have continued on two hours later to execute another huddled batch of unarmed victims." I don't know how you could assume to know this.
People would've been killed in the 2nd attack (engineering students), but conceivably one or more would've had a gun to shoot back.
However, arming college students could just as easily lead to more frequent shootings, as it could to preventing shootings like today from being as big as they were.
Him: the statistical evidence from many countries shows that as victims are disarmed gun crime increases. Dangerous crimes are often stopped before they escalate merely because a victim is armed or someone standing near them is armed.
If one in 10 people on campus were armed that would have meant the gunman would have faced numerous armed victims. Now it is possible, but unlikely, that all of them would be unable to fire back and all of them would miss. In addition to the 32 people he killed he shot in buildings containing hundreds of people. At any one moment, if 10% had been armed, he would have been within yards of a dozen or so people who had the ability to stop him. Instead the students could only try to block the doors and hide.
“If guns cause crime, all mine are defective.” - Ted Nugent
How many kids at NZ schools and universities have been shot and killed in the last 10 years? None?But hang on a minute, kids at schools here don't carry guns. Something must be wrong with your fucked-up logic! Can you guess what?
Your article contains a logical fallacy: the assumption that people won't use guns for other purposes than for murdering or defending. It is very likely that some, if only very few, college students would use their guns, at some point, to sort out their differences. It doesn't have to take more than a few and the death tolls are already much higher than they are now.
Has it ever occurred to you why so many European countries, just for example, have so much fewer gun related crimes? Could it be because of the regulation of guns? That you actually need to have a licence for it, to be qualified for the licence, and are not allowed to carry it around but just keep it home or at a shooting range/hunting trip.
Get guns out of people's everyday life and educate about them. It would be catastrophic if people would start sorting out their differences with guns instead of fists...you must realize that. Then again, looking at the article, I'm not so sure you do.
Jugi
Het Ross and Jugi....and everyone else for that matter. Go and read this and then try to keep spouting the anti gun bulldust...
"A Principal and his gun"
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OthW...incipal&
gun.htm
Jugi: My assumption is that sometimes people do use guns for purposes that are not nice hence the need to have potential victims able to defend themselves and not having to rely upon incompetent and unavailable police.
Second, I have considered Europe and posted a major article on the blog about the escalation of gun crime in England after the gun bans of a decade ago. The law abiding turned in their weapons and the criminals smuggled in even more guns for themselves. Gun crime escalated. In the US, a few high profile incidents not withstanding, the violent crime rate has been steadily dropping. Twenty years ago guns were more heavily regulated in the US and violent crime was much higher than today. The main change has been the wholesale legalization of concealed carry laws which allow people to carry their weapons with them. (except in gun free zones). And everywhere where concealed carry was permitted the crime rate went down not up even though more people were now carrying regularly. So the facts of the last 20 years do not support your claims.
As a VT alum (and current grad student) it's more than a little obnoxious to see all these people on both sides posting their gun control arguments less than a day later. But I guess I won't single you out.
I will argue about your criticism of the campus police for not going into full lockdown after the first shooting report. As you say, the rumor was that it was domestic violence. Maybe my crystal ball is just cloudier than yours, but I just can't see myself saying "ok, obviously this guy is going to somewhere else and shoot more people" when on any normal day someone who just murdered his romantic interest would be halfway to Mexico. It was a judgment call, and it's just plain bad luck that it turned out to be the wrong one.
Please wait until the facts are in before slotting this into a political interpretation.
"...shall not be infringed" does not equate to requiring one to have a concealed carry permit.
If, as you and I disagree on, these "rights" already exist and are not being "granted" by and unsigned piece of paper called the Constitution, then the idea of a permit simply is an acknowledgement of your ass being wrapped firmly around my face.
Perhaps we are simply observing Darwin in action, weeding out those too spineless or stupid to observe reality. In which case, maybe this is an advancement for humanity.
(I LOVE the Ted Nugent quote above!)
By the way, I agree with and support almost the entire article, CLS, I'm just bristling a bit at your implied support of the police state (a probably unintentional slip of the keyboard.)
- NonE
Well, it turns out that the gunman was a South Korean student attending the university.
Unless I'm mistaken, only U.S. citizens can legally purchase firearms in the U.S. I don't believe legal residents like that guy can even purchase them legally. If that's the case, then we have another example of how well gun control works.
Here in Mexico only Mexican citizens can purchase and possess firearms, and the three major political parties that make and uphold the firearms laws here only allow adult citizens to own 12 makes and models.
Permits for them are very expensive,and vary in cost depending on the model. They can only be purchased at a military base, or, you can import them by land crossing from the U.S., but you first have to declare them for export with U.S. Customs, and then declare them with Mexican Customs and pay a hefty importation fee on top of the federal possession of a firearm permit later.
Now anyone who follows the news of Mexico knows that gun control down here doesn't work either. There are plenty of black market firearms dealers and they aren't difficult to find. It is estimated that an average of one out of every three homes in Mexico has an unregistered firearm.
The drug cartels are better armed than the police and military.
Some other countries with strict gun control nevertheless have black market arms dealers as well, yet crimes with firearms remain very low. That's mainly due to common cultural norms where there is less violence, especially among nationalities that have more in common than not.
"The drug cartels are better armed than the police and military."
Ain't entrepreuership great!!!
Stacy: Apologies for not responding sooner as I’ve been busy researching issues for an update. First, I did not mention campus police at all but the city police. The issue was quite clear I think. A gunman was on campus. He shot and killed two people. As far as everyone knew he was still on the campus (as was proven correct). There was no rumour just the police manufacturing a theory. And too often the police assume that once they have a theory it must be correct and go with that ignoring other evidence to the contrary -- one reason for innocent people being arrested for crimes they did not commit. My critique of the school officials and the local police is not a political one. I wouldn’t know their politics even nor do I care. Incompetency is incompentency whether committed by the local police or George Bush -- to give two glaring examples.
If a gunman was on campus at 7:15 it is just foolish to assume he is not on campus at 8:00 or 8:30. Yes, many run away and many don’t. Many hunker down and hide. That is also common. And that the police never even considered that possibility is incompetency. That the school took over 2 hours to warn students by email is incompetency. Those are facts and the more information that comes out the worse these people look.
As for commenting at this time, do you really suggest one not comment until interest has died down and no one is thinking about the issue? If we followed that policy there are some issues we could never talk about. It is precisely at times like this, tragic as they are, that people want to understand and are willing to consider the issues involved.
Well, as an foreigner I think that the argument against letting, QUALIFIED students and faculty carry guns is oviously flawed. 1. Guns are so common un the USA that preventing crimminal acces to them is very difficuld. That is the main problem to the gun control utopia. 2. The sad events of yesterday demostrate that the police cannot be everywere. For Twenty minutes the shooter and his victims were on their own. 3. The gun used is the most common 9mm pistol, the assault weapons ban would not have stopped the killer of the purchasing one. 4. A 9mm pistol is not a especially lethal gun as the troops in Iraq know, to kill someone usually you have to shot a person multiple times or in the head excecution style. The 22 even less 5. The killer must have reloaded the gun several times and the students must have been in a pasive state when they were shot. Enough time for an armed couterattack or a tackle and disarm for more proactive nonvictims 6. The same people who rally against concealed weapons carry say that you must comply to an armed attacher. They have not learned anything from 9/11 and the Holocaust. You cannot comply when the purpose of your enemy is killing you. 7. Armed defence by selected, qualified civilians and basic training in self defence like rushing your attacker. Yes some would die but most will survive. The Israelis have used these tactics with success to control suicide mass shooters with AK-47 over the years. The brave Iraeli-rumanian profesor who died yesterday probably was familiar with those tactics, sadly he could not carry a gun to use then fully. 7 I bet than AL Quaeda must be taking notes. Suicide mass shooters with guns smuggled over international borders could be the wave of the future. Imagine several active shooters with automatic rifles and had grenades doing something like that. The solution is the israeli one. Trained civilians carrying concealed, better security and basic unarmed self defense trainig.
Its seems the killer was a South Korean student whos family had lived in the US for 12 years...
Once again the "Asians" are responsible for killings!There are billions of them, outnumbering even guns, so now we now the real cause and threat.Ban Asians for the sake of our children.
Yes I am stirring in case anyone's a trifle slow 
James: I know you don't mean it and that by "stirring" you are joking just rile people up. I wouldn't suggest doing that in a case as serious as this one.
I have discussed four mass shootings that ended when victims were able to shoot back. Read that.
Good article. One correction: The Salt Lake City mall shooting you referred to did not take place in a "gun free zone."
As far as I know, anyone can carry a concealed weapon -- with a permit -- onto the property known as Trolley Square Mall.
Arguably, one can "open carry" a weapon without a permit in Utah (outside of restricted areas such as courts, jails/prisons, and airports), although this has yet to be tested in Utah courts.
Well, I just saw the sign posted by the Trolley Square Mall (follow Homepage link) declaring "No weapons allowed on Trolley Square property." So, I stand corrected.
That said, a concealed carry permit holder is free to carry a firearm onto commercial properties -- despite the signage -- under Utah law.
StriketheRoot: The important thing to note, and I realize you now stand corrected, was the term I used. I said they were a "self-declared" no gun zone. I used "self-declared" intentionally to show that they did so by their own choice. And I happen to disagree with the policy but agree with their right to set the terms for admittance to their property. Commercial or not it is still private property and I happen to think that Utah law shouldn't over ride the property owner in this case. That said I'm still glad someone ignored those signs that day.
I said they were a "self-declared" no gun zone. I used "self-declared" intentionally to show that they did so by their own choice.
Not to nitpick, but I searched in the comments above for the term "self-declared" and did not find it, other than in your previous comment. Nor in the original post.
This was also the language used in the original post attached to these comments:
The tragic shooting at the mall in Salt Lake City, another “gun free zone” ended because one patron, an off duty cop, of the mall was actually armed.
I concur with you on the right of a property owner to exclude anyone from the owner's property, even those carrying weapons. The majority of the local RKBA activists in Utah seem to embrace the opposite view ... a sort of "concealed weapon welfare" if you will.
James: I know you don't mean it and that by "stirring" you are joking just rile people up. I wouldn't suggest doing that in a case as serious as this one."
I was attemping to make the sly point to the anti's that if we must blame something why not the race of the killer....or his sex? As none of the antis would do so as it would be very un-PC to do so that comparison would "hang in the air" to maybe make them think...
oh well....next time.
Very good US gun fact site here...
http://www.gunfacts.info/pdfs/gu...s4-0-
Screen.pdf
Gun control controls people - not guns.
Anonymous: You write: "
Not to nitpick, but I searched in the comments above for the term "self-declared" and did not find it, other than in your previous comment. Nor in the original post." When I said that I had called them a self-declared no gun zone I was referring to the article, which I assume people read before commenting upon it. The exact quoate in the article was: "It was February 12th of this year that a young man entered the Trolley Square Shopping Mall, in Salt Lake City. The mall was a self-declared “gun free zone” forbidding patrons from carrying weapons."
James: it is often good to make "sly" points but you need to be clearer especially when writing since they can be misinterpreted. I am waiting myself for some lunatics on the Right to blame immigrants as a class the way the anti-gun Left blames guns.
The term “Useful Idiots” has been used to describe the wrong-headedness of liberals during the cold war. The term could also be applied to the useful idiots at Virginia Tech who declared the campus a “Gun Free Zone.” The only people who were gun free yesterday during the massacre were the sheepish unarmed citizens being gunned down on campus. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a Concealed Carry law that permits the carrying of handguns by citizens. Virginia Tech, however, abrogated that right by declaring the campus “Gun Free.” Such wisdom by the useful gun ban idiots! Think about it; one, only one, armed citizen could have stopped the carnage. The gun ban liberals have the blood of 32 people on their hands.
Larry Jones
Torrance, CA
“Is not my word like fire?” says the Lord, "and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" - Jeremiah 23:29
You wrote: "It seems that most the 'mass shootings' we have witnessed in the United States take place within gun free zones. I know people say guns are the problem. But oddly these mass shootings don’t occur at gun shows”
The mass shootings don't occur at gun shows, the murder weapons are just purchased there by people who then sell them to high school students and the mentally insane.
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