{"id":732,"date":"2007-04-17T12:37:35","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T18:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/04\/17\/less-than-clear-on-the-concept\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T17:52:44","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T22:52:44","slug":"less-than-clear-on-the-concept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=732","title":{"rendered":"Less Than Clear On The Concept"},"content":{"rendered":"

My NARN colleague Captain Ed has had his usual excellent commentary in re the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday.<\/p>\n

But in his piece on the shootings this morning<\/a>, he betrays a key misunderstanding (too much hobnobbing with Bill Buckley, perhaps?)\u00a0of one of the issues:<\/p>\n

\n

However, concealed=carry permits would not necessarily have prevented this, either. As my cousin Mike pointed out in the comments yesterday, such permits require the holder to be 21 years of age or older. That would have disqualified at least three-quarters of the students on campus. It would have only taken one or two to confront the shooter in this case, and at Appalachian Law<\/font><\/strong><\/a> (also in Virginia), armed students successfully ended a rampage.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, Ed is right – all it would have taken was one.<\/p>\n

Or none.<\/p>\n

The key reason to have “shall-issue” laws in place is not just to kill criminals; it is to deter violent crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And where have the highest-profile mass-shootings taken place?\u00a0 Schools – which, by federal law, are “gun-free”.\u00a0 Colleges, which have the option to follow the same route.\u00a0 The New York subway, where Colin Ferguson murdered five people, knowing he’d have no resistance without a cop present (getting a carry permit in New York City is mainly a function of political connections<\/a>).\u00a0 Luby’s Cafeteria, in Lubbock Texas, long before Texas adopted a “shall issue” law (and where, famously, one woman watched her mother die of a gunshot wound, regretting having left her own gun in the car), an incident which helped lead Texas to adopt “Shall Issue”.\u00a0 The McDonalds in San Ysidro, California, where 21 died; it’s as difficult for a civilian to get a permit in California as it was in 1981.<\/p>\n

You don’t see many mass-murders at NRA conventions or NASCAR races.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The possibility that a would-be killer might face armed civilians doesn’t guarantee safety, of course\u00a0– but the legal guarantee that a would-be killer will not<\/em> face such a threat (as was the case at Virginia Tech, Columbine, Red Lake, Cold Spring-Rokori, Pearl Mississippi and dozens of smaller shootings) certainly doesn’t make anyone safer.\u00a0 A hard target is always safer than a soft target.<\/p>\n

Back to Ed:<\/p>\n

\n

However, that student was a former law-enforcement officer who retrieved his service pistol from his car, not just a student with a carry permit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

True, and irrelevant.\u00a0 Virginia had a “shall-issue” law in 2002; while former cops are more likely to have <\/em>guns than the general public (thankfully, in that case), it wouldn’t have mattered if it were an ex-cop or “just” a student, a staffer or a passerby who shot or deterred the killer.\u00a0 Statistically, armed citizens are every bit as effective as law-enforcment when it comes to face-to-face cases of self-defense.<\/p>\n

The story is so old it hardly bears re-telling – but several decades ago, Israeli schools and their children were among Palestinian terrorists’ favorite targets.\u00a0 Israel started allowing teachers to carry pistols – requiring it, in some instances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do <\/em>they know that we don’t?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My NARN colleague Captain Ed has had his usual excellent commentary in re the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday. But in his piece on the shootings this morning, he betrays a key misunderstanding (too much hobnobbing with Bill Buckley, perhaps?)\u00a0of one of the issues: However, concealed=carry permits would not necessarily have prevented this, either. As my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,45,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-gun-free-zones","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}