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EDITORIALS &
OPINION
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Rosie's Softheaded Scenario
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/5/2006
Gun Control: Ms. O'Donnell exploits the Amish tragedy to blame the National Rifle Association and "gun lobby." But is the issue too many guns or the fact that at schools there's often one gun too few?
On Tuesday's edition of ABC's "The View," well-known liberal activist and sometimes comedian Rosie O'Donnell used the occasion of the tragic hostage-taking and killings at an Amish school in Pennsylvania to editorialize that the event should provoke even tighter gun control.
The "queen of nice" opined: "I think the horror of imagining 6- to- 13-year-old girls handcuffed together and shot execution-style, one by one, is perhaps enough to awaken the nation that maybe we need some stricter gun control laws."
She went on to blame "the lobby organization of the NRA, allowing no rules and no registration and absolutely, sort of, carte blanche to make guns available to Americans in a way they're not in the rest of the world."
Well, the National Rifle Association does support sensible and workable things such as instant computerized checks of gun purchasers and mandatory punishment for offenders just for carrying or using a gun in a crime. But it doesn't believe in disarming potential victims, and supports concealed-weapons laws that have demonstrably reduced crime and murder rates around the country.
Gun control advocates such as O'Donnell prefer laws like the Gun Free School Zones Act, which have turned the area inside and outside schools into a free-fire zone for wackos who know there's little possibility they'll be confronted by an armed guard, teacher, principal or parent who might prevent these tragedies by confronting, keeping at bay or disabling an armed intruder.
Last year, seven people were killed at a high school in Red Lake, Minn., that did have a security guard. But the guard, the one individual who could have prevented the tragedy, and who saw the armed and dangerous shooter approach the school, was unarmed.
The problem in Red Lake was not that the nation has too many guns, but that it had one too few. An armed security guard could have held the killer at bay or disabled him. On more than one occasion armed citizens have successfully intervened in school shootings to save lives.
Few Americans are aware that in an October 1997 shooting spree at a Pearl, Miss., high school that left two students dead, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car and immobilized the shooter until police arrived, preventing further killings.
A school-related shooting in Edinboro, Pa., that left one teacher dead was stopped only after the owner of a nearby restaurant pointed a gun at the shooter while he was attempting to reload and held him at bay, again preventing more deaths, until police arrived 11 minutes later.
Another school shooting occurred in January 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia, when a disgruntled former student killed Law Dean L. Anthony Sutin, associate professor Thomas Blackwell and another student. Two of the three students who overpowered the gunman were armed; they ran to their cars to get the guns they used to disarm the shooter and prevent more deaths.
Back in 2000, when O'Donnell moved to Greenwich, Conn., from Nyack, N.Y., because Greenwich, in her view, was a "safe" community, the Stamford Advocate reported that her bodyguard applied to the Greenwich Police Department for a concealed-weapon permit to carry a firearm when he escorted her then 4-year-old to school. Apparently her children deserve armed protection, but not the children of those in her audience.
Those who say we will be made safer by disarming potential victims are shooting blanks.
OPINION
View Archive | Printer Version
Rosie's Softheaded Scenario
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/5/2006
Gun Control: Ms. O'Donnell exploits the Amish tragedy to blame the National Rifle Association and "gun lobby." But is the issue too many guns or the fact that at schools there's often one gun too few?
On Tuesday's edition of ABC's "The View," well-known liberal activist and sometimes comedian Rosie O'Donnell used the occasion of the tragic hostage-taking and killings at an Amish school in Pennsylvania to editorialize that the event should provoke even tighter gun control.
The "queen of nice" opined: "I think the horror of imagining 6- to- 13-year-old girls handcuffed together and shot execution-style, one by one, is perhaps enough to awaken the nation that maybe we need some stricter gun control laws."
She went on to blame "the lobby organization of the NRA, allowing no rules and no registration and absolutely, sort of, carte blanche to make guns available to Americans in a way they're not in the rest of the world."
Well, the National Rifle Association does support sensible and workable things such as instant computerized checks of gun purchasers and mandatory punishment for offenders just for carrying or using a gun in a crime. But it doesn't believe in disarming potential victims, and supports concealed-weapons laws that have demonstrably reduced crime and murder rates around the country.
Gun control advocates such as O'Donnell prefer laws like the Gun Free School Zones Act, which have turned the area inside and outside schools into a free-fire zone for wackos who know there's little possibility they'll be confronted by an armed guard, teacher, principal or parent who might prevent these tragedies by confronting, keeping at bay or disabling an armed intruder.
Last year, seven people were killed at a high school in Red Lake, Minn., that did have a security guard. But the guard, the one individual who could have prevented the tragedy, and who saw the armed and dangerous shooter approach the school, was unarmed.
The problem in Red Lake was not that the nation has too many guns, but that it had one too few. An armed security guard could have held the killer at bay or disabled him. On more than one occasion armed citizens have successfully intervened in school shootings to save lives.
Few Americans are aware that in an October 1997 shooting spree at a Pearl, Miss., high school that left two students dead, an assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car and immobilized the shooter until police arrived, preventing further killings.
A school-related shooting in Edinboro, Pa., that left one teacher dead was stopped only after the owner of a nearby restaurant pointed a gun at the shooter while he was attempting to reload and held him at bay, again preventing more deaths, until police arrived 11 minutes later.
Another school shooting occurred in January 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia, when a disgruntled former student killed Law Dean L. Anthony Sutin, associate professor Thomas Blackwell and another student. Two of the three students who overpowered the gunman were armed; they ran to their cars to get the guns they used to disarm the shooter and prevent more deaths.
Back in 2000, when O'Donnell moved to Greenwich, Conn., from Nyack, N.Y., because Greenwich, in her view, was a "safe" community, the Stamford Advocate reported that her bodyguard applied to the Greenwich Police Department for a concealed-weapon permit to carry a firearm when he escorted her then 4-year-old to school. Apparently her children deserve armed protection, but not the children of those in her audience.
Those who say we will be made safer by disarming potential victims are shooting blanks.
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