by Don Swearingen

Created on: November 25, 2009   Last Updated: November 27, 2009

Gun free zones are the result of shabby thinking. This is easily proven by answering two simple questions.

1. Who will obey a gun law? Of any kind?

The law abiding.

2. Will the criminal or insane person pay any attention to any law?

No.

It really is as simple as that. Columbine would not have happened, or perhaps would have been less horrible had there been two trained and determined teachers who had weapons.

Virginia Tech was a travesty for one simple reason. No one was there with a gun who could shoot back.

Every mass shooting in schools in the last ten years has taken place in a "gun free" zone. The good guys are disarmed, and the bad guys take advantage of it.

This isn't safety, it's surrender. Fatal surrender. It should not happen.

Consider. Where are you more safe?

In the midst of a heavily armed squad of trained Infantrymen?

Or on the "gun free" campus of an American college or high school?

A camp ground full of elk hunters?

Or on the "gun free" campus of an American college or high school?

The local rifle and pistol club during a Thanksgiving week Turkey Shoot?

Or on the "gun free" campus of an American college or high school?

The local Trap and Skeet club during the same kind of Turkey Shoot?

Or on the "gun free" campus of an American college or high school?

The empirical evidence says you're in a lot more danger on a "gun free" campus, or any other place that has been designated "gun free."

Those places are gun free only in the minds of those who make those rules. They mean nothing to the criminal or the deranged.

The only way you can make any place gun free and make it stick, is to have only specific ways in and out, and control those points with armed guards. Not metal detectors, armed guards. Metal detectors can't stop a person who is determined to get a gun into a building. Armed guards are better.

You can't do that with a campus. Unless you put a very big fence system around it, and patrol that fence. Even that can be breached, though it is difficult. As the Communist guards who manned the borders of Czechoslovakia and East Germany can tell you. While many died attempting to escape, there were still those who did make it. People who weren't armed.

The only defense a campus has is properly armed, and trained personnel wearing weapons. Concealed or not. Concealed would be better, because the perpetrators of the kind we have seen would not know whether it would be safe to shoot helpless people or not. And they would, we hope, be assured of swift and effective action by those who are designated to protect that campus.

A person who has a concealed carry license has been proven a safe, law-abiding citizen. If they are on campus with a gun, they are not as dangerous as the person speeding through campus with a sports car. And in fact, they are at once a deterrent and retaliation against the horrors of campus shootings.

The test of any law, or any policy, or anything is whether it works. Gun free zones haven't. They don't. They should be abolished.

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