Jefferson Review

It is often said that guns are dangerous. I agree. Guns are very dangerous. They kill many people each year, but that is not a good reason to fear them or to try to eliminate them from the face of the earth.

There are many dangerous things in our everyday lives, such as cars, gasoline, knives, swimming pools, fertilizer, and poisons, and, like guns, they also kill many people each year. Nevertheless, we are not so irrational as to try to eliminate them from the face of the earth. We recognize that they have an important positive role to play in our lives, so we educate ourselves about their dangers, take reasonable precautions, and go on about our business.

Guns also have an important positive role to play – for hunting and recreation, but most importantly for self-defense. The facts show that we are much safer when we have guns to defend ourselves against the bad guys who wish to harm us. Many crimes are stopped by a person with a gun, and many crimes are never even attempted because the would-be criminal does not know who might use a gun to stop him. Several references cited at the end of this article provide substantial evidence of the positive role guns play. Only a person with an irrational fear of guns could ignore this extensive evidence and believe that eliminating guns would make us safer.

Because many people have an irrational fear of guns, they ignore the ample evidence and believe that making an area a “gun-free” zone makes it safer. Again, the evidence is clear that they are wrong. Unfortunately, a “gun-free” zone is simply advertising to the bad guys that their potential victims are defenseless in these zones. It is like putting a sign on your house saying, “This house is gun-free and defenseless.” One would not be surprised if some potential burglars considered such a sign to be an open invitation to burglarize the house.

My daughter Nina is a sophomore at Virginia Tech. Four people she knew were shot in the recent massacre, and three of those people now are dead. So Nina and her friends now are grieving and mourning the loss of the 32 talented, promising people whose lives were cut short by one evil man. They also are mourning the loss of their sense of safety.

There is much talk now of what might be done to prevent irrational people or people with violent tendencies from obtaining guns, but the truth is that anyone who is really determined to get a gun will be able to get one. And even if they could not get a gun, they could obtain other means of harming others, such as by making a homemade bomb, for example. The real question is whether irrational citizens and irrational policy makers will prevent the good guys from defending themselves.

If students and professors at Virginia Tech who had passed safety and background checks, such as members of the Corps of Cadets, had been permitted to carry concealed weapons on the campus, they might have stopped the murderer and saved many lives. In fact, if the murderer had thought some of his potential victims might be armed, he might not even have attempted the massacre, and my daughter and her friends certainly would be much safer.

Many people say college students cannot be trusted to carry guns, even after they have passed a background check and safety classes – that they will get drunk and start shooting each other. However, this statement again ignores the actual evidence. The evidence shows that people with concealed carry permits do not commit crimes. Furthermore, at Virginia Tech, more than half of the students live off-campus in apartments that are essentially unsupervised dorms. In those apartments, there is no law or regulation that prevents the students from having guns, even without a concealed carry permit. No doubt students in those apartments have parties and get drunk, but there has not been a problem of them shooting each other.

Again, actual experience shows that the people who make these alarmist statements about guns are ignoring reality. But, since the fear of guns is an irrational fear, reality does not matter to them.

In some countries, all students are taught to handle guns safely, and this education does not turn the students into mass murderers. Instead, it makes them better able to safely use guns to defend themselves and others. If we taught all high school and college students how to handle guns safely, it might help reduce the irrational fear of guns and certainly would make us all much safer. We really ought to do it.

An interview of John Lott http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/chapin/chapin10.html

Papers by John Lott http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=16317

The hidden costs of gun control – John Lott http://www.gunowners.org/sk0405.htm

Guns save lives http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

The facts on deaths of children http://www.gunowners.org/sk0803.htm

Where gun control leads A comprehensive national study in 1996 determined that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed that states, which passed concealed-carry laws, reduced their murder rate by 8.5 percent, rapes by 5 percent, aggravated assaults by 7 percent and robbery by 3 percent. By extrapolation, if the states that do not have concealed-carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly. http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55318

How to prevent the next massacre – Joseph Farah All of the school shooting sprees that ended quickly, without massive losses of life, have done so because one responsible person had a gun and used it. Is there any doubt in your mind that one student or one faculty member with a gun could have ended this carnage yesterday with a greatly reduced death toll? http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55239

Needed: More Americans with guns I want to hear about the good guys being armed and the bad guys being shot dead. … We should conduct a public ad campaign urging the law-abiding public to utilize concealed-carry laws as a bulwark against terrorism. We should consider legislation in state legislatures and Congress to require a large portion of teachers, professors, coaches, etc., to be given incentive to pass firearms training and carry weapons. And we should quit thinking of this as a random, naturally occurring, unavoidable disaster like a tornado. … All of these massacres, these terrorist attacks, have genuine possibilities for being stopped dead in their tracks if they encounter a well-armed, well-trained, educated public vigilant to defend their freedoms. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55227

Being defenseless is not a good defense - "All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun," Pratt said…. Pollsters have found that 85% of Americans would find it appropriate for a principal or teacher to use "a gun at school to defend the lives of students" to stop a school massacre (Research 2000 poll).

More than one year before today's unprecedented shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, the state's General Assembly quashed a bill that would have given qualified college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus. The sponsor of the bill, Del. Todd Gilbert, told WND, "Had I been on campus today, and otherwise been entitled to carry firearms for protection and been deprived of that, I don't think words can describe how I would have felt, knowing I could have stopped something like this."

	Jefferson Review
	"Your Liberty is Our Interest"	April 23, 2007
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