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Monday, December 17, 2012

New gun restrictions will not prevent tragedies like the Connecticut school shooting

by Ed Farnan 


The tragic mass shooting of 20 children & 6 adults, has brought out the inevitable calls from around the country to make laws restricting gun ownership.
Many Europeans & Australians decry Americas violence and say we must restrict guns. But America is not a tiny country, just one state, California, has a population bigger and more diverse than most of of these small countries. Australia has less population than the state of Texas.
America is a huge melting pot of cultures, races and religions. We are very diverse geographically as well; with intensely populated urban areas, to sparsely populated rural areas and everything in between.
When you read the statistics, America is a violent country… but 99.9% of the legal gun owners in our country are law abiding peaceful people and never use their firearms for violence. Sometimes Americans have used the firearms to protect their families, see Brave Mom. Yet we have a small segment of our population that skew our statistics.
If you took the city of Chicago out of Americas gun crime statistics, it would change the perception. Chicago has the strictest gun laws, yet they are besieged with violence.


As far as laws go, last time I checked, it is illegal to discharge a firearm in many urban areas, it is illegal for a felon to be in possession of a firearm and it is illegal to murder someone.
But idealistic lawmakers might use this latest tragedy to try to pass a law to restrict gun ownership….i.e.: Never waste a crisis
Even if they outlawed them, guns would still be readily available. Our borders are like sieves; guns drugs, terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants easily pass through, even though there are strict laws against them.So sadly and tragically, mass shootings will occur in spite of laws passed by well meaning lawmakers.
The Aurora Colorado theater, site of a mass shooting where 12 people died and 58 were wounded, advertised itself as a gun free zone…The only theater in the area to advertise that fact. Did that play a role in the shooters decision to pick that location for his killing spree? You bet, he knew no one would shoot back.
Colonel Hassan, the American jihadist, who methodically gunned down his fellow soldiers at Fort Bliss Texas, killed 13 and wounded 32, before he was stopped. He opened fire confidently, because he was a coward and knew they were unarmed and could not fire back.

The killer at yesterdays tragic shooting at the Connecticut school, most assuredly knew no one would be armed among the school personnel, it is not allowed, he was safe. If there was a possibility of a legally armed employee on those school grounds yesterday, would that killer have picked this school for a target?
Israel was beset with mass shootings for a time in its past. That little country tried beefing up its security forces to prevent them from happening. They stationed more soldiers and police … but were not able to station enough everywhere. It wasn’t until Israel loosened its gun laws and encouraged its law abiding citizens to carry concealed and unconcealed firearms; did the mass shooting end.
If the demented loners, who go on killing sprees, knew there was a possibility that someone amongst their targets would fire back, it would prevent these mass shootings.
Because at heart, these killers are cowards and want total control of the script for their final 15 minutes of fame…Just the knowledge that one legally armed citizen may be among the planned victims…would disrupt the plan.

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