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| February 23, 2000 |
I’ve moved to Oregon and one of the first “privileges” in this state I intend to avail myself of is the state’s easy-to-obtain concealed weapon permit. Never mind that the Supreme Court has correctly ruled that the government may not license or ask a fee any of our rights before we can exercise them, thereby making the requirement for a permit for concealed carry unconstitutional under both the 2nd Amendment and the 14th Amendment, as well as the 9th and 10th. I have not the time nor the money to fight for my rights when so many Oregonians have bowed to it like sheep, so I’ll go through the permit process.
However, to my surprise I discovered that, possession of a “permit” to carry notwithstanding, I will still not be allowed to carry a gun in “public buildings.” Public buildings are defined as: a hospital, capitol building, a public or private school, college or university, a courthouse, city hall, or residence of any state official and the grounds adjacent to each such building and, I suppose, whatever the state determines to define as public in the future.
Of course, no such proscription is going to prevent a thug or lunatic from carrying a weapon into a school or anywhere else. And if a nut does show up at the local elementary school (or anyplace else the state deems he cannot carry a gun–which in Texas appears to be the whole state) and starts blowing the kids away, who do you expect to step in and stop him? The police? Of course not. They’re not going to get there until the crackpot has had his fun.
So, if the police are not there when some nut calmly strolls through a “gun free” zone putting bullets into the heads of the little tykes, who will be there? Why the teachers and the parents who come to pick their kids up. Responsible citizens who obey the unconstitutional law and leave their constitutional weapons at home get to watch helplessly as their kids get gunned down. This so that the gun control people and the legislators who crave their votes can feel good about themselves.
And when it is over, what will the gun grabbers do in response? They’ll make even more laws that make it more difficult for the law-abiding to own and carry a gun. Laws which only the law-abiding will adhere to.
What’s the solution? What can we do about the aberrants who decide to trot through a school, a mall, or a crowded restaurant making sitting ducks of the people who are there?
Remember Dr. Suzanne Gratia? She was the one woman who could have stopped the massacre at the Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, where 23 people were killed. She had gone there with her parents for lunch, and when George Hennard, an unemployed 35-year-old Belton, Texas, man came in with a pistol in each hand and calmly walked through the restaurant deliberately shooting one customer after another, Dr. Gratia got to watch first her father get killed, then, as her mother cradled the dying man in her arms, she watched the bastard blow her mother’s brains out. Gratia, herself, was wounded as she tried to escape from the restaurant. In all, Hennard killed 23 unarmed people and wounded more than 20 others. Gratia, of course, to be compliant with Texas’ insane gun control laws that prohibit responsible citizens from exercising their 2nd Amendment right, had left her own .380 auto in her car. When Hennard started shooting, he had his back to Gratia. As she later explained to gun grabbers like Charles Schummer, in her testimony before Congress, had she been allowed to exercise her right to carry her gun she could have ended the carnage as quickly as it started by shooting Hennard in the head, thereby saving the lives of at least 20 people. But that, of course, didn’t happen and Hennard had his maddening sport before killing himself. I hope the good folks at Handgun Control, the politicians in the Texas Legislature, and the tyrants in Congress who have deprived us of our rights slept well that night.
Does anyone remember the chilling 911 recording of the school teacher who used her cell phone to call the police during the Columbine High School shooting? The media played it over and over again. That phone call, of course, didn’t save a single life. But what if that teacher had had a 9mm. Smith & Wesson or a Ruger .357 GP-100 instead of a phone, and she had learned to use it as millions of women, including my ex-wife, have? She, or any other appropriately armed teacher, could have sent those little turds to hell before they could have killed a baker’s dozen at Columbine. But the state of Colorado had already seen fit to make it illegal for her, or any other teacher, to have kept a gun in her possession, thereby guaranteeing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold a free reign of terror. Laws designed to “protect” our school children only succeed in keeping responsible people from bearing arms, never the murderers, the assassins, the terrorists, or the insane.
In Pearl, Mississippi, Luke Woodham, 16, killed his mother then went to school, killed two students and wounded seven others. When he tried to flee, Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, in violation of the law to keep his school a “gun free” zone, did what no other private law-abiding citizen was prepared to do: he retrieved his gun and held the shooter at bay until the police arrived. One man, exercising a right our Founding Father intended us all to have, held the shooter while all the legislators, all the police, and all the members of Handgun Control were elsewhere.
And therein is the solution to mass shooting in schools–or anywhere else. It is a solution already worked out by the Israelis. We should follow their lead. After years of terrorist attacks at Israeli schools that involved both shootings and the taking of hostages, Israelis found the obvious and effective solution: let the teachers arm themselves. Terrorism at schools fell from national tragedy to zero. That’s right, folks, when teachers in Israel were allowed to arm themselves as they saw fit, terrorism at the schools disappeared.
In the United States, however, it is now public policy to let students die when responsible citizens could save them. We sacrifice our children so gun-control junkies can feel good about themselves and so gutless
politicians can win their votes.
So, fellow citizens of Oregon, if there is a school shooting taking place in my presence in Oregon, rest assured that neither I nor any other rational, responsible, and law-abiding citizen in this state can save your children. I and other law-abiding citizens will leave our guns at home when we go to pick up our children. But the nuts will bring theirs to school.
There, now, everyone who feels good about this, raise your hands.
