In the wake of Tuesday’s deadly shooting rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the Biden Administration and other Democrats have seized the opportunity to push for “common-sense gun control.” Their arguments for stripping Americans of their God-given right to keep and bear arms all come down to “fewer guns would mean fewer shootings.” But is that actually the case?
In 2008 — less than two months before he became Obama’s White House Chief of Staff — Rahm Emanuel addressed the “Great Recession” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. In that interview, he said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.” Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other Democrats have cited that “wisdom” for years. Even when they don’t cite it, they live it with the religious zeal of folks meticulously following Sacred Scripture as if their very souls depend on it.
Thus, hours after the shooting — even as some parents in Uvalde were waiting to hear whether their children were numbered among the dead — the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue fired up his teleprompter and addressed the nation from the White House to demand action. And by “action,” Biden means gun control. He made that clear. But his arguments in favor of gun control do not stand up to scrutiny.
In his address, Biden said that he learned of the shooting while returning from Asia and added, “What struck me was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world.” If “these kinds of mass shootings” means only school shootings, Biden is correct. But it is that very limitation that voids his argument. All over the world, mass shootings leave amazing death tolls. Political, religious, and social conflicts have always led to violence and death. We live in a fallen world.
In a ridiculous attempt to equate guns — especially those awful assault weapons — with pointless violence, Biden referred to his success in helping pass the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, saying, “when we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down; when the law expired, mass shootings tripled.” Of course, he offered no proof of that claim, but instead regurgitated the same emotional, illogical pablum he has spouted in the past: “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for, except to kill someone? Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake. It’s just sick.”
Perhaps the question Biden should be asking is, “Why are the vast majority of mass shootings in America at schools?” For that matter, he could broaden the scope and ask, “Why do nearly all mass shootings happen in places where guns are not allowed in the first place?” He — and his fellow Democrats — could also ask, “Why have almost all of the mass shootings in American schools taken place only since the enactment of the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990?”
Advocates of the Second Amendment have long argued that “gun-free zones” are target-rich environments. Since guns are not allowed, law-abiding citizens disarm themselves in those areas, assuring a criminal that he will almost certainly be the only armed person there. He can shoot at will, knowing he is unlikely to meet armed resistance.
Perhaps a previous mass shooting in Texas will illustrate the point. On October 16, 1991, George Hennard drove his pickup truck through the front window of a Luby’s Cafeteria in the small Central Texas city of Killeen. He exited the vehicle and began shooting patrons. Before killing himself to avoid capture by police, he had killed 23 people and injured another 27.
One patron in the cafeteria that day was Suzanna Hupp, a local chiropractor who was having lunch with her elderly parents. Because the law at the time forbade Hupp — who is reported to be an excellent marksman — to conceal inside the restaurant, she had removed her Smith and Wesson .38 revolver from her purse and locked it in her vehicle before going inside. She said she feared losing her chiropractor’s license if she were found to be illegally concealing a gun.
Suzanna Hupp obeyed the law, but it cost her both her parents.
She later testified before the Texas legislature that when the shooting began, she reached for her purse to draw her revolver, only to remember that it was “a hundred feet away in my car.” Her 71-year-old father, Al Gratia, rushed the shooter and was killed. Hupp saw a means of escape and grabbed her 69-year-old mother, Ursula, by the by the shirt and told her, “Come on, we have to go now!” Her mother was killed before they could make their escape.
Hupp told the Texas legislature that she had more than one clear opportunity to shoot Hennard, but their law had disarmed her and she had to stand helplessly by and watch her parents be murdered.
Hupp later ran for — and was elected to — the Texas House of Representatives, where she helped pass legislation to allow concealed carry and for Texans to arm themselves in public places. Despite the Democrat mantra that fewer guns would mean fewer shootings, violent crime — including shootings — went down in Texas after the passage of laws allowing more Texans to arm themselves. The same is true across the country. Following the passage of a slate of concealed-carry laws in states across America in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, state after state that passed such laws saw decreased robberies, assaults, rapes, and murders.
As Jeffrey R. Snyder pointed out in his article “A Nation of Cowards” — first published in the Fall 1993 issue of The Public Interest — Florida is the prime example. He writes:
In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform concealed-carry law which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria. The law requires that a permit be issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least twenty-one years of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse, no history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having satisfactorily completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other competent instructor. The applicant must provide a set of fingerprints, after which the authorities make a background check. The permit must be issued or denied within ninety days, is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed every three years, which provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating whether the permit holder still qualifies.
Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed by HCI [Handgun Control, Inc., now Brady: United Against Gun Violence] and the media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting each other over everyday disputes involving fender benders, impolite behavior, and other slights to their dignity. Terms like “Florida, the Gunshine State” and “Dodge City East” were coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of the law, were encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a “Death Wish” society.
No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the elitist beliefs underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership. Given the qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can only believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so mentally and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will.
Anti-gun zealots have not changed much since 1987. And neither have the facts. Gun grabbers were wrong then, and they are wrong now. As Snyder — a corporate attorney by profession — wrote:
Despite the fact that Miami and Dade County have severe problems with the drug trade, the homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this law, as it did in Oregon following enactment of similar legislation there. There are, in addition, several documented cases of new permit holders successfully using their weapons to defend themselves. Information from the Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning of the program in 1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and only 530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a permit for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the law is benefitting those whom it was intended to benefit — the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission of a crime involving a firearm.
And:
The Florida legislation has been used as a model for legislation adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi. There are, in addition, seven other states (Maine, North and South Dakota, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and, with the exception of cities with a population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania) which provide that concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who satisfy various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in Vermont. Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves may do so. While no one appears to have compiled the statistics from all of these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data base for those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding citizens who carry firearms.
Though written in 1993, the only thing that is really out of date about “A Nation of Cowards” is that laws have changed — for the better in some states, and for the the worse in others. The basic principles — including the fact that more guns actually means fewer shootings — remain true.
And going back to Biden’s claim that “these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world,” it is worth noting that other nations — notably Israel — arm their teachers and school administrators. If a shooter were stupid enough to choose an Israeli school for a massacre, he would quickly realize his mistake. Because he would be shot dead by a science teacher or a math teacher or a coach.
Perhaps what America needs — instead of fewer guns — is more guns. And perhaps it is time for schools to stop being “gun-free zones” filled with unarmed targets. Perhaps it is time to train and arm teachers to defend their young charges with deadly force.
As Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott pointed out recently, 18-year-olds have been able to purchase “long guns” in Texas for more than 60 years. He added to that, ““over the course of that 60 years, we have not had episodes like this,” asking, “Why is it for the majority of those 60 years we did not have school shootings and why is that we do now?”
Similarly, before the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, there was no federal law against a teacher taking a gun to school. And even now, there are exceptions to that law. Furthermore, prior to our modern “nation of cowards” who shudder at the thought of someone having a gun, it was not uncommon for kids to carry a rifle to school to go hunting after class. To echo Abbott’s question — why were there no mass school shootings during all those decades?
One thing is certain: Laws against guns do not stop criminals from taking them to places they are not allowed. Here is a tip for the liberals who think new laws will change anything: The root word of “criminal” is “crime.” A criminal — by definition — does not care if it is a crime. That is why good people need to be armed.
There is a great divide in this nation. One side prefers to see children cowering in classrooms while an active shooter hunts them down. The other side prefers to give children and their teachers a fighting chance by allowing trained teachers to be armed.
This is not about guns. It is about personal responsibility and duty; it is about the ability to choose to defend oneself and one’s community. This writer will give Jeffrey R. Snyder the last word on this topic:
Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone — the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the “great equalizer.” Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many.
The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens armed with razors and knives.
