Dr. John Lott has a new piece at Fox News discussing how gun control advocates viciously attack their opponents and yet they are the ones who push gun control regulations that have nothing to do with stopping these attacks. The piece starts this way:
It’s no longer just activists such as Chelsea Handler who are spewing such vitriol. Even mainstream liberals such as political scientist Norm Ornstein use the phrase.
Gun control advocates’ new hot number is that there have been 18 school shootings so far this year, but this is a gross exaggeration.
To get 18, one has to count all instances from kindergarten through college where a gun was fired on or near school property. This includes a case of a police officer accidentally discharging his gun, as well as suicides – such as that of a 31-year-old military veteran with no connection to the school who killed himself in the school parking lot.
Excluding suicides, there have only been five cases where someone was actually shot at a K-12 school. Four actually involved a gun being fired on school property, and two of those resulted in fatalities.
In fact, gun control advocates’ proposals would do more harm than good. They are the ones opposing life-saving laws.
Every time there’s a mass public shooting, gun control advocates call for more background checks. President Obama did so each time he spoke after a mass public shooting. Gun control advocates like to think this is a magic solution that would have prevented Wednesday’s massacre.
The proposed background check laws wouldn’t have prevented the attack in Florida, nor any other mass public shooting that’s happened in the 21st century.
But the background checks come at a real cost, ranging from $55 in Oregon to $125 in New York City and Washington, D.C.
With millions of mistaken denials because of “false positives,” the checks have confused the names of law-abiding good citizens with those who really are prohibited from owning guns. It is the most vulnerable people – poor minorities – who are kept from being able to protect themselves and their families.
Some, such as Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., reacted to Wednesday’s attack by immediately decrying the failure to keep people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.
But many on the terrorist watch list are not suspected of being terrorist threats, and of the 2,000 people who have bought guns, not a single one has been accused of using a gun in a crime. The bill prohibiting such purchases never got passed because the Democrats didn’t want to pass it.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, offered an alternative. Under his proposal, the U.S. attorney general could deny a person on the terrorist watch list the ability to purchase a gun, but would need to prove probable cause within 72 hours. Otherwise, some unnamed government bureaucrat could arbitrarily add a person to the terror list and the person would lose his right to self-defense.
Democrats said that the time limit was too short. But instead of proposing a longer time period, they fought against any judicial review. . . .
the rest of the piece is available here.
The best way to virtually eliminate school-based shootings is to secure the perimeter entrances. Have only one designated main entrance, with metal detectors. Police or armed security staff, or both, at the entrance.
It’s working at Court house, major-league baseball parks, and at American airports throughout the nation.
Why wait any longer for a solution?
Sorry, Michael. I wish that it was so easy. These attacks are planned at least six months and often more than a year in advance. If someone is going to do that much planning, they will find a way to get weapons into the school. In addition, unless you are going to station multiple armed guards at each entrance, that method can be easily defeated. We have written multiple responses to this at other places on this website.
Easily identified and targetted hirelings, along with TSA type harrassment, at WHAT COST? How easy would it be for a determined perp to circumvent such an obstruction? Pretty easy. Don’t forget, courthouses are low traffic facilities, limited access already. As to that mentioin of airports.. sorry, that don’t fly. Yes, it mostly removes firearms from the “sterile” areas once one is past TSA’s circus sideshow. BUT. I can recall TWO incidents where there were gun attacks inside the sterile areas in the past few years. Furthe,r there is NOTHING to prevent a dedicated perp from walking in to the ticketing area, then on to the security theatre stage, where there are.. HOW MANY hundreds of utterly defenseless folks packed tightly together, slowly moving through seemingly endless lines… a guy with a handgun right there could have an effect, were he of evil intent. I’m surprised it has not been done before. Then what? Security moves out to kerbside, where only ticketed folks can get out of the car? Next step would be a signficantly large car bomb… right at kerbside.
Ya see, the problem ain’t the hardware. Its always the software.. what is in the heart of man. NO rule,s protocol, security, will ever change that. A determined murderer will have his way. Remember Cain, rose up and murdered his brother?… good job all those nasty “assault weapons” were banned back then, eh? Else HOW could he have done it? And God’s response? Did He ban clubs, or rocks, or knives, whatever was used> Of COURSE not. HE knew the root of the problem, and even said so in His little chat with the murderer. EVIL has entered your heart and you acted upon it. Now YOU are marked and banned….. that the evil YOU now harbour can be removed from society.
We don’t do that. Maybe we should? WHY has capital punishment been ended nearly everywhere? Unless you are not yet born, of course. Then your execution is permitted.. sanctioined by the “opinion” of nine old folks in black nighties.
While hardly helpful — #PurePoliticalPorn
Two correlations have been made that I think powerful; with psychiatric drugs, and with immigrants. Removing immigrants removes more than half of the school/mass shootings.