Obama on the Spike in Gun Sales

According to the Chicago Sun-Times:

As gun sales shoot up around the country, President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that gun-owning Americans do not need to rush out and stock up before he is sworn in next month.

"I believe in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the second amendment," Obama said at a news conference. "Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven't indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word."

Of course, during the campaign, Mr. Obama never said what he considers "common sense gun regulation." I doubt that he and I would agree, or even come close. Common sense gun regulation does not include banning all handguns and requiring safety locks on guns at all times (as the District of Columbia required). That was a "common sense" regulation that Mr. Obama supported before he opposed it. (Pre-Heller versus post-Heller.) That was common nonsense regulation that Attorney General nominee Eric Holder supported in a written brief in the Heller case.

Common sense regulation is not the banning of firearms less powerful than fully automatic assault rifles. (Gun banners have improperly labeled semi-automatic rifles to be assault files -- they aren't. With a fully automatic gun, the gun keeps firing as long as the trigger remains pulled. With a semi-automatic, the trigger must be pulled again for each round fired.)

In my view, common sense regulation is the Castle doctrine by which homeowners are privileged to use deadly force against home invaders. Even better common sense gun regulation can be found in Kennesaw, Georgia.

The Rocky Mountain News reports soaring applications for concealed carry permits. I don't suppose that the recent mass murders in a Colorado Springs church stopped by a CCP holder have anything to do with the increased applications.

Maketa said he's not concerned about the county's growing number of legally armed people. In fact, he said he believes law-abiding citizens make the region safer by getting the permits.

"Actually, I wish it was a higher number, because I know from experience that offenders in the jail system tell me they avoid crimes against people because they know there is a very high concealed-carry rate," Maketa said.

Thanks to John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime and Freedomnomics for this lead.

Obama Partly Responsible for Murders on Campus

As an Illinois state legislator, Barack Obama voted consistently for every gun control measure brought before the legislature.

Northern Illinois campus is a gun free zone, meaning that the law abiding will have no guns. Illinois has never passed legislation permitting widespread concealed carry.

So, what happened Thursday at Northern Illinois University? A homicidal maniac with a gun entered a classroom, killed 6 and wounded 22. The dead and wounded had no chance. The strict Illinois anti-gun laws prevented them from having a chance to defend themselves.

I will no go so far as to call Barack Obama a murderer over the incident. I think the gun free zone law preexisted his term as state senator. However, he certainly did nothing to change it. And to hear him talk, he thinks it was a good idea. A triumph of audacious hope over experience.

Why "Gun Free" School Zones Endanger Children

Lifted from Christian Action Network's news site:

Counselor’s personal firearm foils terror attack

If guns kill people, then a high school counselor’s personal firearm foiled a terror attack at an Israeli kibbutz Thursday

Israel Insider staff reported Friday, Jan. 25, on a two-man Islamic jihad death squad taken out by armed counselors at a kibbutz high school library in Gush Etzion, southeast of Jerusalem.

The men were dressed to appear like Israeli Defense Force security protectors, and succeeded in infiltrating the yeshiva high school with guns and knives - one gun was found to be a fake after the take-down.

Credit the gun? Or credit the heroic counselor? It all depends on your philosophy of gun rights - and wrongs. Either way, credit Israeli preparedness against terrorism targeting schools.

Wielding guns and knives, they lightly injured two Israeli counselors before being shot dead.

The terrorists infiltrated Makor Haim, a kibbutz [Israeli community], sneaking into the main building of its high school seminary, run by world-renowned Talmudist, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.

The terrorists entered a library room where seven of the boarding school's counselors were meeting…[and] ordered the seven to line up on one side of the room.

A counselor, realizing they were terrorists, drew his personal firearm and opened fire.
Another grabbed the fake gun from the other terrorist, wrestled him to the floor, while the first counselor shot him. The terrorists managed to stab two of the counselors before falling dead.

At the same time, the Beit Medrash (study hall) -- adjacent to the library -- was packed with students taking part in the weekly Thursday night "mishmar" all-night Torah study session, Israel National News reported.

An army official praised the quick response of the students and their counselors. "This could have ended much worse," a source in the Central Command said.

Note to school board: if we care about our kids, we will be likewise prepared - one day we will care, one day we will prepare this way; it’s just a matter of if terrorist attacks in America will precede our rising to the occasion.

The Ohio legislature and various school administrator (think Virginia Tech) do not intentionally endanger our children, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. That facts are that the defensive use of guns is what gun free zones really prohibit.

Gun Control Kills

How can United States citizens be safer from gun crimes? Any legislator that actually researches the statistics must conclude that the right of citizens to carry arms for their defense discourages crime.

The economist John Lott is the foremost economist that has compiled, studied and analyzed the statistic. His methods have never been successfully criticized. He is the author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns.

The bottom line conclusions are quite clear: gun control kills people. The right to carry guns protects them from injury and death.

In the United Kingdom, 53% of burglaries occur while the homeowner is home. The statistic in the US: 16%. Why? The UK bans all gun ownership, including in the home. In the US, criminals worry about getting killed in an occupied dwelling, so they do a better job of making sure their target is empty.

The pointy headed administrators at Virginia Tech have the blood of 36 professors and students on their hands by making Virginia Tech safe for nut case gun men, that is, designating the campus a so-called "gun free" zone.

Ohio enacted concealed carry laws in 2004. Ohio has a way to go, though. Ohio's law makes churches dangerous places to be, because they are presumptive gun free zones. Anyone carrying a concealed gun to church needs permission from the church. Are churches safe? Ask the folks at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs where a parishioner/voluntary fired her concealed handgun to stop a not case gun man from killing more people (he had already killed four). Ohio needs to fix this dangerous situation by deleting the presumptive gun free zones in churches.

Gun control kills. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend and protect themselves and others.

Roanoke Times Campaigns Against Gun Rights

Congratulations to the Roanoke Times for officially joining the looney left. (I deliberately provide no link to that paper.)

First the Times on its web site published a database of all holders of Virginia concealed carry permits (subsequently removed after a firestorm of protest). Then, the Times has instituted a policy of refusing advertising for gun shows.

Read about it here.

The link above contains an email to which you may sen your protest.

Why is it that the vigorous defenders of the First Amendment are so weak on and even against the Second?

Virginia Tech

The massacre at Virginia Tech has evoked the expected calls for more gun control. But does that make any sense?

How many students lives would have been saved if the professors or some of the students who were attacked or the student victims had been carrying guns? If the campus had not been an official “gun free area,” with the shooter had been stopped by someone else's gun before killing 32 people? We will never know.

The argument in favor of gun control goes like this. If gun control were effective, the shooter would not have been able to obtain the guns that he obtained. It was too easy for him to obtain the guns and the ammunition.

Gun control advocates presume that the shooter would not have been able to obtain the guns and ammunition by illegal means. If the shooter were determined to go on his rampage, what makes us think that he would not be able to get around the law. Just because a law bans some contraband, that doesn't mean that it's not obtainable. Oh yes, usually raises the price. It makes money for black marketeers. But that doesn't mean that the contraband is unobtainable.

On the other hand, the Second Amendment crowd, points out that if one of the students had had a gun, perhaps the shooter would have been stopped earlier. Perhaps fewer people would have died.

How likely is it that there would have been any guns in the classroom even if the school had not been a gun free zone? I suggest that it is pretty unlikely. Unless we were to force a professor to have guns, most people, professors and otherwise, would not carry them as a matter of course. I can't imagine a campus full of people walk around with guns and holsters at their sides. How likely is it that there would have been a student with a concealed-carry permit carrying a weapon to happen to be in one of the question classrooms attacked by the shooter? But, without the "gun free zone" designation, who knows?

One thing is for sure. The gun-free students and gun-free professors had no chance against a well armed and cold-blooded gunmen. How does that balance against the possibility of an irresponsible gun toting student who gets drunk or high on drugs and pulls out his firearm and begins shooting? I suppose that is the purpose of a "gun free zone," isn't it.

I do not think that restricting the sale of guns or requiring registration of guns would have mattered one way or the other to a determined shooter planning to go on a rampage. By all accounts, this was a long-planned rampage. The guns were purchased in March. The rampage occurred in mid April. A determined nutcase had plenty of opportunity to obtain a black-market guns if he wanted them.

The old saying is, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. How true in the Virginia Tech case!

Update: From Glenn Reynolds writing in the NY Daily News:

In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 fromhis truck and ran to the scene. In February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun.

Police can't be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it's usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. Only if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.

"Gun-free zones" are premised on a fantasy: That murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That's an insult. Sometimes, it's a deadly one.