http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story_pf.php?id=155166&ac=Phedi
Here's more proof that 'disarmed' and 'victim' are synonymous
When violence looms and every second counts, recall that the police are
only
minutes away.
M.D. Harmon
December 14, 2007
Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have
kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage
on the nearest police station?
Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting range
or hunting club to vent their murderous frustration.
It should only take a moment's thought to understand why:
Those places have people who have relatively easy access to
weapons themselves.
It's one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it's quite another
to consider that one's murderous intent could be brought to an
untimely halt through the immediate application of superior
firepower.
However, there are places that draw these people like magnets,
and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the
possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely
advertised.
Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their
vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that
say "No Guns Permitted" or "Gun-Free Zone."
Virginia Tech was proud of its "gun-free" status, and boasted
about how safe a place it was once it posted signs forbidding
firearms on campus.
Thirty-two people died there last April as the cost of that
exercise in hubris and futility.
Other places where firearms are typically banned are stores,
including shopping malls, government buildings, including
schools, and places of worship.
We saw in the Columbine shootings how effective gun bans are
for schools.
And in Omaha last week, eight people died in a shopping mall
before the shooter, cornered by police, killed himself.
In Ogden, Utah, last February, a man killed five people in a mall
before an armed off-duty police officer pinned him down until
help could arrive.
And just this past weekend, a disturbed youth who had posted
violent diatribes against Christians on an Internet site killed two
students at a Colorado missionary center.
He later showed up at a church that had an association with the
missionary group carrying multiple weapons and 1,000 rounds
of ammunition.
But because of the earlier shootings, the church had activated its
voluntary security force, composed of members who had
licenses to carry concealed weapons and the training to use
them.
The gunman killed two teenage girls in the church parking lot
and wounded their father before he entered the church.
But once he got inside, he was confronted by one of the church's
volunteer guards, Jeanne Assam, a former police officer armed
with a pistol.
As witnesses described it, she advanced on the shooter yelling
"Surrender," and when he raised his weapon, fired several shots,
bringing him to the ground. Police reported that the badly
wounded gunman then shot himself to death.
Assam, dubbed "Dirty Harriet" by one writer, was credited by the
church's pastor with having saved 50 to 100 lives.
It's almost enough to make a fair-minded, thoughtful person
conclude that armed, law-abiding citizens might have saved
countless more lives at places like those listed above.
But not in the view of the confiscation crowd. They point at the
weapons the gunmen used and say that banning them would
halt such shootings.
Problem is, there's precious little evidence to support that view,
and much to disprove it.
Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of
serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for
almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to
that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of
people to defend themselves also counts.
The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits
are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a
22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder
rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower
aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession
of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted.
As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who
blogs as "Instapundit") noted after the VT murders last spring,
"People don't stop killers. People with guns do."
He wrote, "Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002
shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student
retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter.
Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was
stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his
truck and ran to the scene."
Police, he notes, can't be everywhere, and when they do arrive,
it's usually too late for at least some victims.
However, "one group of people is, by definition, always on the
scene: the victims. (But) if they're armed, they may wind up not
being victims at all."
As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders whether the Second
Amendment protects our right of self-defense with firearms, the
actual case is being proved by people like Jeanne Assam.
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