Gun Control Experiment

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is already being used by the left as a vehicle to push through gun control laws. Every time a gun is used in a high-profile crime, this is the predictable consequence.

This time, more than most, it seems to be a particularly moronic response.

Because, in fact, the Virginia Tech campus was a particularly good experiment in rather complete gun control. All guns are banned on campus — even the campus police have no guns, and even faculty and students with concealed-carry permits are not allowed to have those guns on campus. Cho (the murderer) was violating the law when he brought his weapons on campus and used them to kill and wound dozens of people. He had obtained the weapons illegally in the first place. In other words, under existing laws, every step of Cho’s path was illegal.

But it didn’t stop him.

And neither will another slew of laws stop future murders.

I’ve never been able to understand how the left can look at situations like this and decide that the answer is more gun control laws. There just seems to be something about guns that turns a leftish brain to mush. Not only do they have trouble understanding arguments that gun control is actually increases the risks to ordinary, law-abiding citizens — they also manage to avoid acknowledging the abundance of actual evidence supporting that notion.

There are a lot of places in the world (not just in the U.S.!) where ordinary, law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry guns — and in some cases, are actually encouraged to do so. And there are a lot of places in the world (including in the U.S.) where ordinary citizens are forbidden to carry guns. This is not a recent development; it has been true for many years. The world has been conducting an experiment on the effectiveness of gun control in reducing the incidence of violence — and scientists have studied this.

But you won’t hear the left crowing about the results of these studies, or using them as evidence to support their quest for more gun control legislation. Why not?

Because the studies show that increased gun control not only fails to reduce violence upon the citizenry, it actually increases it. The mechanism isn’t hard to discern: citizens who can defend themselves with weaponry equivalent to what the bad guys have are simply less vulnerable.

Well, duh!

There are already reports of several students and faculty who have concealed carry permits and who were in a position to stop Cho — but, being law-abiding citizens, they did not have their guns with them. It also turns out that last year, in response to yet another campus shooting, the Virginia state assembly considered a bill to allow students and faculty who passed a review and permit process to carry guns on campus. The Virginia Tech administration lobbied against this legislation, and in the end the bill never made it out of committee. Afterwards, the Virginia Tech spokesman crowed about their victory, and declared that because this bill was defeated, the students and their parents would feel safe on campus.

I wonder how safe they’re feeling today?

I wonder how the parents of the dead and wounded students would react to that spokesman’s declaration of victory today?

But most of all, I wonder at how anyone can look at situations like this and conclude that disarming the citizenry is the action needed. Me, I think it would be much more productive to train the faculty and students in firearms use and safety, and to issue weapons and ammunition just as we issue books. Think about it — Cho would have had weapons either way, but in my scenario he wouldn’t have gotten very far before some pissed-off coed dropped him in his tracks…