It is completely predictable that government officials and their compliant media would use the tragedy of a mass killing to promote governmental tyranny in the form of gun control for law-abiding citizens.
Such an approach will increase mass shootings because those with evil intent will still be able to obtain firearms, and even the most efficient police force alerted immediately cannot get to the scene in the few minutes it takes for a perpetrator to murder defenseless people.
Two females at the Newtown School (principal and a teacher) were killed trying to physically stop the killer. There is data that supports a contention obvious to many of us: If individuals with that level of courage had firearms and knew how to use them, many lives would have been saved that day.
William Landes (University of Chicago) and John Lott (Yale) studied multiple-victim shootings in the U.S. between 1977 and 1995 to see how various legal changes affected their frequency and death toll. Increased gun control and increased penalties for the perpetrators had no effect. Only one public policy has been shown to reduce the numbers of deaths from such crimes: concealed-carry laws.
Think about it: Sociopaths show their cowardice and need to dominate by preying upon the defenseless.
The Newtown murderer killed himself when he heard police sirens. The recent Portland mall killer shot himself when an armed citizen, not realizing malls were gun-free zones, pointed his gun at the murderer.
A criminal planning to commit murder in a public place has to worry that anyone in the area might have a gun. That’s why most mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones” – even within states that have concealed-carry laws: schools (even in Montana, teachers can’t have guns in schools), places of worship, malls, post offices and movie theaters.
President Barack Obama, other government spokesmen and their compliant media don’t inform you about the stories of armed citizens stopping mass shootings or limiting the number killed. Recent examples include two killed at the Portland mall during this recent Christmas season, and zero killed at the Mayan Palace Theater in San Antonio, Texas, both cases the intention was mass murder.
Since there is no way disarming law-abiding citizens will stop mass murders, and in fact it will most assuredly make such incidents more common, there must be another reason or reasons for the government to want to disarm us.
The founders of this nation knew the risk of disarming citizens went further than protection from a lone gunman. One wrote: “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Annie Bukacek lives in Kalispell.