NIU - "GUN FREE ZONE"

Another horribly successful school shooting because the school was a “gun free zone.”

A gunman fires at least 54 rounds into a crowd at Northern Illinois University, pausing to reload his guns, as pandemonium engulfs a lecture hall.

At what point do our country and its 513,000 elected officials wise up to the fact that slogans do not a safe country make? Time and time and time again, students and other citizens are forced to watch, panic-stricken, as some disturbed whack-job systematically – often randomly – picks off victim after victim after victim.

Once again, our shooter was apparently the only one in the room who did not read the “gun free zone” sign.

At what point do we stop making law-abiding, licensed citizens check their guns at the door when entering public arenas; be they schools, stadiums, post offices.

Consider this:

In Michigan, as well as 20 other states where gun restrictions have been eased in favor of a “right to carry”, violent crime has actually fallen.

Crime statistics show violent crime in Michigan has decreased since a law was passed in 2001 allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns. The number of people licensed to carry concealed weapons has increased by six fold since the law was passed.

Yet the al-Qaeda-Needs-a-Hug crowd will use this most recent heart-wrenching incident as a rallying point to tighten gun control and to try and lead the lesser informed among us into thinking that this is just another instance of gun owners gone wild.

More guns, more violence?

In an article appearing in the Detroit Free Press in January, John Lott, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland who has done extensive research on the role of firearms in American society, said academic studies of concealed weapons laws that generally allow citizens to obtain permits have shown different results. About two-thirds of the studies suggest the laws reduce crime; the rest show no net effect, he said.

But facts never stymie the anti-gun rhetoric typically spewed from the left.

Shikha Hamilton of Grosse Pointe, president of the Michigan chapter of the anti-gun group Million Moms March, said she believes overall gun violence (including suicide and accidental shootings) is up in Michigan since 2001. Wow! Hey, if that’s what she says, it must be true!

So, I guess, if the facts don’t support your position, you just refute them and make up your own facts. Oy!

Another fact is, if some in the unfortunate crowd in Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University were allowed to carry their firearms, or if faculty were armed, this shooting like so many others, could have been severely limited.

Yet no one was armed. After all, it’s a “gun free zone.”


JD