Other recent articles under: 2nd Amendment as of Nov 11, 2007
Topic: 2nd Amendment
America Hasn't Learned From VA Tech Shootings
Seven months ago, an angry, unbalanced VA Tech student went on a killing rampage, murdering and injuring more then 30 people. The aftermath has shown us that virtually nothing was learned about what it takes to protect innocent individuals from the actions of madmen. by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Seven months after that horrible day in April 2007 when an angry loner named Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded countless more, after the Virginia Tech Review Panel completed their findings and sent them to the governor's office, after the Federal government did their own little song-and-dance, the verdict is in. We didn't learn anything from the incident.
The bottom line is that innocent, non-violent students, teachers, administrators, and staff at Virginia Tech and at schools across the country are still not permitted to defend themselves from mad gunman by arming themselves so they can fight back if necessary. As in so many other areas of our society, our college campuses continue to insist that the innocent should be lambs delivered to slaughter whenever someone doesn't go to psychotherapy and ends up going off his rocker. Instead, we have been "reassured" once again that steps have been taken to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
Of course, not all gun control advocates feel that way. Many of them won't be happy until the citizenry are completely disarmed. Others don't want to disarm everyone...just the nutcases. But none of that group are willing to admit that people should have the right to defend themselves against madmen. They don't dare, because they know that it would undermine their entire argument.
One of the most striking things that came out of the Virginia Tech Review Panel's report was a little-noticed appendix. It was probably included to provide justification for further gun contol and further restrictions on the second amendment, but it actually served the opposite purpose. Appendix L of the report provided a long list of school shootings between 1966 and 2007. And I mean a long list. 44 separate school shooting incidents were cited, 39 of them coming after 1980, when gun control has been most prevalent and most strong in this country.
Included was an incident in January 2002 at the Appallachian School of Law, also in Virginia. The item says, "Graduate student Peter Odighizuwa, 42, recently dismissed from Virginia's Appallachian School of Law, returns to campus and kills the dean, a professor, and a student before being tackled by students. The attack also wounds three female students." What the note fails to mention is that the students who tackled the gunman were able to arm themselves, something most students are not permitted to do. Were it not for this fact, they likely would not have been able to stop the gunman, who would have continued to shoot them and other persons on the scene. Even then, the defenders weren't permitted to carry their guns on campus. They had to run to their cars off campus to retrieve their firearms, thus losing precious time and precious lives. Despite this hampering, they still managed to keep a bad incident from becoming much worse. Yet who among the gun control crowd even noticed?
How many other times have the victims been armed in these shootings? I don't know. The report certainly doesn't say, and it isn't likely to. My guess is that the innocent have almost never been armed, save in this one incident. Since the report left this inconvenient fact out of the Appallachian School item, there is every reason to believe that similar facts would have been left out of any other school incidents where the innocent were armed even if it had happened. However, it is highly likely given the prevalence of gun control laws that very few other situations included armed defenders.
And this is ultimately the worst tragedy, the unlearned lesson. So long as the innocent are not permitted to arm themselves on campuses, there will continue to be shooting incidents where gunman can feel free in their angry, mixed-up minds to start shooting, knowing that it is extremely unlikely that their intended victims will have the means to fight back.
That's the worst tragedy of all.
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