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Originally Posted by willravel
I do have to wonder how much more difficult it would be to get guns in a country where guns were banned. Gun crimes in the UK dropped off after the gun ban was put in place. Yes, some other violent crimes did rise, but I doubt you'd see someone go into a school with a knife or an airgun and kill 33 people. That says a lot.
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Guns are banned in Mexico. Sarin gas was used in Japan. That says a lot, too.
From time to time, in discussions like this, the topic arises that the police will protect us, or that the US laws must be altered to accommodate the UN position on firearms. Here is a quote that touches on both at once:
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We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money," warned Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the July/August 1995 issue of Foreign Affairs. Schlesinger had taken to the pages of the flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations to vindicate the dubious proposition that the United Nations military represents the thin blue line dividing peaceful civilization from savagery — in short, our planetary police. But what happens when the planetary police run amok and become the agents of bloodshed? When local police abuse their power, the abused have avenues of redress. From what body can those abused by the planetary police seek justice? The escalating scandal of unpunished atrocities committed by UN "peacekeepers" illustrates that the planetary police are beyond accountability.
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This is an example of UN troops in Somalia, communicating with an unarmed civilian.
It does not make me trust the police, or make me desire a life in which others can be armed, but I can not.
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Originally Posted by willravel
Speaking momentarily to the right to bear arms:
I see nothing in here about non-militia civilians having the right to bear arms. I read this as saying that a well regulated militia has a right to arm itself. I can think of one well regulated militia in the US: the National Guard. I agree that the National Guard has the right to bear arms in order to protect our country. I do not agree that every Tom, Dick, and Harry has the right to walk down the street packing. That's where gun related fatalities come from. That's where involuntary manslaughter comes from. Not only that, but the escalation means that when the populace is armed, the criminal must arm better. Call it mutually assured destruction.
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Prof. Akil Reed Amar of the Yale Law School and Alan Hirsch, like Amar a former Yale Law Journal editor, write:
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We recall that the Framers' militia was not an elite fighting force but the entire citizenry of the time: all able-bodied adult white males. Since the Second Amendment explicitly declares that its purpose is to preserve a well-regulated militia, the right to bear arms was universal in scope.
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In other words, if it was not a universal right to bear arms when the Constitution was written, it is the best-kept secret of US History. This approach to banning guns has been disproved so many times that almost no one tries it anymore.
Now back to Virginia Tech, specifically:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/04/va...ised_defea.php
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A Virginia Tech official in 2006 praised the defeat of a proposal to allow students with state-issued concealed handgun permits to carry their handguns on college campuses in Virginia. At least 20 unarmed students were killed on the VA Tech campus Monday morning by a single gunman.
Virginia House Bill 1572 was proposed in 2005 by Shenandoah County, Va., Republican Del. Todd Gilbert after a VA Tech student with a state-issued concealed handgun permit was arrested and charged only with "unlawfully" carrying a handgun on campus. The bill would have prohibited state universities in Virginia from enacting "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit ... from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."
After the proposal died in the state's House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety, The Roanoke Times quoted VA Tech spokesman Larry Hincker as celebrating the defeat of the bill.
"I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions," Hincker said on Jan. 31, 2006, "because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
Following Monday's multiple-victim shooting at VA Tech, Erich Pratt with Virginia-based Gun Owners of America called that philosophy "idiocy."
"I think gun control advocates will say, 'See, we need more gun control,' even though this is exactly the product of gun control," Pratt said.
Currently, only Utah and Oregon have statutes specifically authorizing law-abiding individuals with concealed handgun permits to possess their firearms on state university property. Most other states have explicit or implied prohibitions.
"Every [other] school campus in this nation is a 'gun free zone,' supposedly," Pratt bemoaned. "But, isn't it amazing that criminals, bad guys never obey those laws."
Regarding Utah, Pratt adds, "Isn't it interesting that that's the one state where we haven't heard of any school shootings."
At least two school shootings have been stopped by armed civilians before police arrived:
· January 9, 2002, Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Va. - 43 year old Peter Odighizuwa, who had flunked out of the small law school earlier in the week killed three people and wounded three others. Two law students - Tracy Bridges and Ted Besen - retreived a handgun from Bridges' vehicle and held Odighizuwa at gun point for several minutes before police arrived. (Bridges was a reserve deputy sheriff, but was not on duty at the time of the incident.)
· October 1, 1997, Pearl High School, Pearl, Ms. - 16 year old Luke Woodham carried a rifle onto the school campus, killed his ex-girlfriend and one of her friends and wounded seven other people. Assisstant Principal Joel Myrick retreived a handgun from his truck and held Woodham for police. It was later learned that the teeneager had beaten and stabbed his own mother to death before the attack at the school.
Pratt is not optimistic, however, that lawmakers will allow public university students and faculty members to protect themselves from mass murderers like the one who struck VA Tech Monday.
"The only schools and universities where these tragedies have been stopped abruptly were the places where law-abiding citizens had a gun that was accessible to them and they were able to stop the shooter," Pratt noted. "The schools and universities that had to wait for the police to arrive, those are the ones that find these high death tolls.
"It's just a real shame," he concluded, "that these guys never get it."
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Sadly, even after these murders, people will still not "get it."