“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
– James Madison
by R. Lee Wrights, Vice Chair, National Libertarian Party
Beware the person who says to you, “You don’t need a gun.” That kind of person will get you killed. Nothing proves this more than the terrible event of Friday last at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut. Children and adults alike had their lives tragically cut short by a shooter in a gun-free zone. While it is appropriate to properly mourn those who have, once again, fallen victim to senseless violence, it is imperative that we act to ensure a tragedy such as this is never repeated.
My own sadness quickly turns to anger as the realization sets in that this is actually a problem we can do something about. We can stop this madness tomorrow. When will America learn? How many innocent children must die before we admit the madness of gun-free killing fields populated by our precious sons and daughters? Why are we not doing everything we can to protect our children? We obviously need more guns in the gun-free zones!
I can’t believe we put armed guards in armored vehicles to safeguard and transport our money; however, we put our children on buses with no seatbelts and take them to schools where only video cameras and defenseless adults guard them. We plaster big bright signs proclaiming every school a Gun Free Zone, strategically place video surveillance equipment everywhere, and then pretend we have done all we can do to protect our precious children.
Government has created these killing fields and conveniently labeled them “gun-free zones.” It all began in 1990 when the Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) was enacted as section 1702 of the Crime Control Act of 1990. Oddly enough the GFSZA was subsequently declared to be an unconstitutional exercise of Congressional authority under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution by the United States Supreme Court, and was therefore voided.
Chalk on up for the good guys, right? Not so fast. You see the case, United States v. Lopez (1995), was the first time in over half a century that the Supreme Court limited Congressional authority to legislate under the Commerce Clause.
Following the Lopez decision, Congress made minor changes requiring that the firearm in question “has moved in or otherwise affects interstate commerce,” and reenacted the law with President Bill Clinton’s signature. As nearly all firearms have moved in Interstate Commerce at some point in their lives, this was merely a legislative tactic to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling. Although the amended GFSZA has yet to be challenged in the United States Supreme Court, it has been reviewed and upheld by several United States Circuit Courts.
A law has been ruled unconstitutional and voided, yet reworked by Congress it somehow has been fixed and implemented anyway? And, it is yet to be challenged? Why? Where is the National Rifle Association on this? How about my favorite Gun Owners of America? Speak up Second Amendment Foundation and Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms! I urge all these organizations to join the Libertarian Party and myself in calling for an end to gun-free zones. Help us honor the innocent victims of Sandy Hook by memorializing them as the last time a thing like this ever happens.
Gun control allowed this to happen. More gun control is not going to fix it. Gun control laws tell the criminals right where to go to make their crime as spectacular as possible. Criminals are smart enough to know better than to walk into a gun show and start shooting. These “sick” individuals are not so sick as to walk into a police station and just start shooting either. They go where the victims have been herded together for them and left virtually unprotected. Sadly, they just go to school.
Children are dying! Gun control only gives sick people a place to go to kill people where they know no one will stop them. Newtown proves having no weapons is fatal! Take down all gun-free zone signs, arm the teachers and administrators, and train them to save young lives. We have to give our teachers and children a fighting chance.
You never hear about an Israeli school being shot up by some madman. Why? Because it never happens, that’s why! The teachers and administrators are armed and train to protect their young charges. Whatever happened to the wise old adage, “Better safe than sorry”? Our children certainly deserve at least the same amount of protection we give our money, don’t they?
Let’s honor the young victims of Sandy Hook Elementary. Let’s memorialize them by making them known as the last victims of a failed attempt by government to protect our most valuable resource… our children. Stop pretending you are protecting our children by putting up more signs and cameras. Bring back the Second Amendment thereby allowing responsible people to defend themselves and our children unimpeded by government interference. May Newtown Connecticut be forever known as the last town where children died in a gun-free zone.
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.”
– William S. Burroughs
See
http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/halt-the-massacre-of-innocent-children-by-ending-prohibition-on-self-defense-in
Soon to be its own article here.
See also http://www.facebook.com/libertarians …lots of posts with facts and news reports there. Go back and read the posts for the last two or three weeks.
Very unfortunate. On the other hand, there have been millions of cases where crimes have been prevented by guns, usually without shots being fired in the vast majority of cases.
This might shock you, but there were plenty of teachers who had guns in schools before the gun free school zones act and even some that have it now even though it’s illegal. In fact, there was a time when students often brought guns to school for target shooting classes. Teachers in Israel carry guns to protect their students, legally and openly, right now.
No. Illegal guns abound in nations like Mexico. There have been school shootings in countries like Germany and Norway, even though the guns were illegal. Crime went up in countries like the UK and Australia after they banned civilian gun ownership.
Criminals don’t care if high capacity magazines are illegal. They will get them, just like they get drugs and all sorts of other things which are illegal.
Only because you haven’t followed links that were already provided in this thread.
Very unfortunate, but there are a lot more cases when killings have been stopped because there were armed civilians there.
We can be sure that a lot more people will die if they don’t.
“It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense to you. There have been lots of cases where armed civilians have stopped these kinds of accidents and zero cases of anyone being killed unintentionally in the crossfire.”
Facts? News reports? Anything other than your pronouncements?
There were two instances here in western WA state of people unintentionally shot by an unguarded firearm. One, a cop left a pistol under a car seat and a small child got to it and accidentally shot his kid sister to death. And that was a cop. What is to stop pne of these armed teachers or admins from accidentally allowing a student to find their pistol? Or, if this is a high school, what is to stop some clever lads from figuring out which teacher is meant to be GI Joe and stealing their weapon? Or over powering them to get it?
Wouldn’t a simpilar, more direct method be to restrict high capacity magazines?
And I am not opposed to firearms, at all. But in the case of these sorts of mass killings I have seen no evidence that civilians carrying firearms has topped any such mass killing?
And what of the fellow in Oregon who accidentally dropped his loaded and chambered pistol in a movie theater.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/12/tillamook_gun_owner_apologizes.html
The point of mentioning the fellow in Oregon is that mistakes can and are made. How can we be sure mistakes will not be made if teachers carried firearms in the school?
It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense to you. There have been lots of cases where armed civilians have stopped these kinds of accidents and zero cases of anyone being killed unintentionally in the crossfire. They reduced fatalities in these kinds of cases to a fraction of what they were when police had to be waited on and that’s a fact. So their training was good enough. There are plenty of teachers and school staff (many people work in schools besides teachers as well) who are ex-military, ex-police or otherwise combat trained, too. And you don’t necessarily have to be combat trained to stop a killer.
So, just because a person has a firearm or a license to carry they are automatically combat competent? So, a teacher who is trying to keep 30 kids safe and these kids and other teachers and such are in a blind panic and this teacher with a firearm will be competent to act tactically and take care of their legal charges? Makes no sense to me.
But I guess to some people actual facts make “no difference” as long as we can rely on propaganda from the media and education establishments.
http://libertarianstandard.com/2010/04/07/how-wild-was-the-wild-west-in-fact/
How wild was the “Wild West”, in fact?
by JUAN FERNANDO CARPIO
Excerpt:
In Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 total homicides. This equates to a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year.
In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870.
Zooming forward over a century to 2007, a quick look at Uniform Crime Report statistics shows us the following regarding the aforementioned gun control “paradise” cities of the east:
DC – 183 Murders (31 per 100,000 residents)
New York – 494 Murders (6 per 100,000 residents)
Baltimore – 281 Murders (45 per 100,000 residents)
Newark – 104 Murders (37 per 100,000 residents)
I’ll add a State vs. Liberty figure myself, for further debunking of classroom and media propaganda: the city of New York, with a worldwide reputation as a partly chaotic and violent city during most of the 1970?s and 80?s, has recently had less than half the per capita criminality than the country of Sweden, with roughly the same population.
@5 Have you been fooled into thinking that the old West was actually like the westerns you see in the movies?
Soon everyone, man, woman, and child, will be walking around packing a gun, just like they did in the Old, Wild West. Won’t that be a sight to behold!
No one ever got killed back then, no sirree.
Actually, pretty much every school has teachers or staff that have experience with firearms, firearms licenses and own firearms. Nothing in would require anyone to carry weapons, just allow them to.
Minutes are a very long time in this type of situation. When seconds count, the police are minutes away.
In shooting spree situations when an armed person was on the premises the average number killed has been two and change. When they had to wait for police to arrive, 18 and change.
More stats at the LP press release which I’ll also post if no one beats me to it
http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/halt-the-massacre-of-innocent-children-by-ending-prohibition-on-self-defense-in
Of course, this – Comuone massacre – should read as “Columbine massacre”
I know numerous school teachers, and none of them are really qualified to take on a paramilitary or armed tactical role in school. Is combat training now going to be a part of getting teaching credentials?
And I am not anti-fire arms, at all. But I just don’t think armed teachers is an effective strategy.
Within 5 minutyes of the start of the Comuone massacre there was a police officer exchanging gun fire with the killers. That didn’t stop the killings that did occur. I don’t see how an armed principal or teacher could have responded much quicker?
Good article. I don’t know about forcing the teachers and principles to be armed, but if they want to carry a firearm they should certainly have the right to. We trust policemen with guns, why not teachers?