You know, I have no stats on this, but I bet more mass murderers are stopped by armed citizens than are stopped by "gun free" zones. But whether its a citizen or a cop, all mass murder sprees only end when another armed person arrives on the scene, even if its because the bastard sees the writing on the wall and takes his own life, like in Lafayette.
Yeah, I know the argument for more people with guns. I just think that the flip side of that coin is that more guns are available to be pulled when they shouldn't. The US has lost 87,000 people to gun violence since 9/11, far more than terror attacks. Mistakes will be made. People will act in anger. Innocents will be shot. Fist fights will turn into gunfights, Accidental discharges will be common. I fear that more people will be shot rather than less if half the people are armed.
Agree 100%. I would only add that there are plenty of people who have concealed carry licenses who have no idea how to use their weapon appropriately, especially in situations where lead is already flying. Case in point: recently a lady at a Home Depot in Auburn Hills, MI witnessed two Home Depot employees following a suspected thief out the door. Without being asked she pulled her 9mm, followed the thief outside and started shooting at him as he drove away, spraying bullets all over the parking lot. Thankfully no one was injured but this is exactly the point I am making: 1) petty theft doesn't warrant that level of force. 2) that lady was far more likely to hit an innocent with a stray bullet than she was to hit a moving target at a distance that exceeds the accuracy distance for a 9mm, which is 25-30 meters. 3) People have watched too many movies and too many of them think they are Clint Eastwood.
Well, we can only speculate as to what might happen if gun free zones were repealed. I don't have the time or patience to do a lot or research, but it did find the following that suggests active school shooter events have increased drastically since gun free zones were enacted. http://www.examiner.com/article/gun...ts-quadrupled-after-gun-free-school-zones-act I also searched "mass shootings since gun free zones enacted" and to no one's surprise, the hits come down along political lines. Right-wing articles cited a report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, which said 92% of all mass shootings since 2009 have taken place in gun free zones. The report also refutes a favorite source for the left-wing articles, a report from a site called Everytown, which put the figure at just 14%. CPRC says the Everytown data includes virtually all incidents of multiple gun deaths, including gang disputes, drug-related crime and even home invasions and burglaries. CPRC only reviewed incidents where there was no extraneous trigger to the killings, solely a pre-planned attack in a public place for the purpose of inflicting as many casualties as possible.
Then you have to weigh the proven data against the hypothetical conclusion. We know bad people keep turning gun free zones into shooting galleries. We can only speculate as to what will happen if people can arm themselves in these situations for self protection. Then we have to decide what scenario works better for saving lives. But notice I emphasize if. I don't really believe repeal of GSZ's will suddenly lead to classrooms full of pistol-packing co-eds. What it will do is send a message to the bad guys that these places might not be the benign target-rich environment you're looking for.
I'm not saying everybody should go everywhere armed but what if the guy who attacked the shooter had had a weapon? He was ex Army and trained in the use of firearms. Was he the first or last person to be shot? Maybe he was the third? The point is that if people like that were allowed to carry firearms anywhere there is more of a chance that an crazy shooter would be stopped than there is that a responsible and trained person with a firearm would shoot an innocent person in such a situation. Maybe a special class of concealed carry license could be created. To obtain a special carry license a person would not only have to undergo a background check but also have to demonstrate proficiency in the use and safe handling of firearms and also to undergo a mental evaluation to make sure he isn't one of the crazies. Places where normally nobody carries a weapon such as schools and now movie theaters are easy targets for a lone wacko and even the wackos know that. It might make one think twice. When you do something like that you know you are going to die. What's the point if you could get killed before you kill as many as possible before you go
Sorry, I've switched computers since the last post. See the chart I posted in the reply to Red just before the reply to you.
So CPRC cherrypicked the deaths to make the number higher? What the hell difference does it make WHY someone kills another person in public with a gun? How do they know why? All that matters is that people were unlawfully shot and killed in a gun-free zone. You should be aware that John Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center is the gun lobby's favorite "academic". http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/28/gun-researcher-john-lott-offers-false-firearm-s/196621 http://www.armedwithreason.com/shooting-down-the-gun-lobbys-favorite-academic-a-lott-of-lies/ "John Lott is, without exception, the most prolific and influential writer on the topic of gun violence and gun control. He has credentials that would make most academics envious—with various stints at Stanford, Rice, UCLA, Wharton, Cornell, the University of Chicago and Yale. The lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, the Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), has spotlighted Lott’s scholarship at least 140 times on their website. After every mass shooting or national gun violence tragedy, Lott is the de facto talking head for the pro-gun community on news programs such as Fox News. He has also testified numerous times in front of Congress and state legislatures, having been a critical voice in the expansion of Right-to-Carry (RTC) laws. Yet his daunting resume fails to tell the entire story. While his initial research was groundbreaking, further examination revealed numerous flaws. Today the “more guns, less crime” hypothesis has been thoroughly repudiated. On closer inspection his impressive credentials reveal an academic nomad, never able to secure a place in academia. His ethical transgressions range from accusations of fabricating an entire survey, to presenting faulty regressions, to creating elaborate online personas to defend his work and bash critics, to trying to revise his online history to deflect arguments. And this doesn’t even begin to cover the whole host of false claims and statistics he has peddled repeatedly in articles and TV appearances." https://publichealthwatch.wordpress...h-debunks-gun-lobbys-favorite-talking-points/
