Many politicians and gun control advocates say if more guns mean fewer mass public shootings, the United States should be the safest place in the world. Indeed, the US has relatively few mass public shootings compared to the rest of the world, but we would have even fewer if we could get rid of gun-free zones. Ninety-eight percent of the mass public shootings in the US from 1950 to 2018 occurred in places that banned general citizens from having guns for protection.
Nikki Goeser makes the point that owning a gun doesn’t do much good for law-abiding citizens when they aren’t allowed to have the gun with them. Nikki’s husband was shot and killed in front of her in a gun-free zone by her stalker. Because of TN State Law back in 2009, Nikki had to leave her gun that she normally carried for self-defense, locked inside her vehicle because it was a gun-free zone. Nikki obeyed that gun-control law. Her stalker did not have a handgun carry permit and he proceeded to conceal carry the gun illegally and bring it into a gun-free zone and murdered her husband. Nikki was left helpless to defend her husband and herself.
The War On Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies
More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 3rd ed, 2010)
Straight Shooting: Firearms, Economics and Public Policy
Denied a Chance: How Gun Control helped a stalker murder my husband
Freedomnomics, see Chapter 4 for a general overview of the economics of crime
Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench
This just goes to show you that following some laws can be deadly. Just like many Judges and Politicians don’t obey laws they disagree with, we should do the same.
Unfortunately, for hypocritical politicians, there are rarely any resulting negative consequences when they break the law; not so for ordinary citizens, even when doing so to make themselves, or their loved ones, safer.
Some pigs will always be “more equal than other animals”!