Posted by Kromey at 11:48pm Dec 18 '10It punishes after the fact.
Case in point: The Columbine shooting was in 1999. The federal "Gun-Free School Zone" law was passed in 1990, declared unconstitutional and struck down in 1995, and then put back on the books (in an almost identical form) in 1995. Additionally, the Gun-Free Schools Act was passed in 1994.
They didn't stop the massacre at Columbine, though, did they?
Virginia Tech is a similar story -- it was (and remains) illegal to possess firearms on the VA Tech campus, and yet that, again, didn't stop Cho from killing 32 people.
So how did these extraneous laws that do nothing but disarm good, law-abiding citizens do anything to protect the 48 people killed in these two incidents?
Look, I'm certainly not suggesting that all laws are useless, nor that none of them serve to protect us. What I am suggesting, though, is that all it would have taken in either of these incidents to drastically reduce the number of victims was just one gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen. Instead, we have created huge zones where someone bent on killing people can be all but guaranteed that he will be facing down nothing but completely unarmed victims.
Does anyone seriously believe that someone who intends on shooting up a school, or going on a rampage in a college campus, is going to say to himself, "Oh, right, it's illegal for me to take me gun there -- nah, I won't do it after all."?
Or that the "crazies", as you put it, will even give a moment's thought to any of these laws?
Which is going to best stop a "crazy" hell-bent on killing as many people as he can: A piece of paper with some legislators' signatures on it, or a few bullets going in his direction?
Case in point: The Columbine shooting was in 1999. The federal "Gun-Free School Zone" law was passed in 1990, declared unconstitutional and struck down in 1995, and then put back on the books (in an almost identical form) in 1995. Additionally, the Gun-Free Schools Act was passed in 1994.
They didn't stop the massacre at Columbine, though, did they?
Virginia Tech is a similar story -- it was (and remains) illegal to possess firearms on the VA Tech campus, and yet that, again, didn't stop Cho from killing 32 people.
So how did these extraneous laws that do nothing but disarm good, law-abiding citizens do anything to protect the 48 people killed in these two incidents?
Look, I'm certainly not suggesting that all laws are useless, nor that none of them serve to protect us. What I am suggesting, though, is that all it would have taken in either of these incidents to drastically reduce the number of victims was just one gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen. Instead, we have created huge zones where someone bent on killing people can be all but guaranteed that he will be facing down nothing but completely unarmed victims.
Does anyone seriously believe that someone who intends on shooting up a school, or going on a rampage in a college campus, is going to say to himself, "Oh, right, it's illegal for me to take me gun there -- nah, I won't do it after all."?
Or that the "crazies", as you put it, will even give a moment's thought to any of these laws?
Which is going to best stop a "crazy" hell-bent on killing as many people as he can: A piece of paper with some legislators' signatures on it, or a few bullets going in his direction?
Legislation doesn't protect - Kromey