How many more will die in 'gun-free' zones before the media start asking why?

[WhiteFeather]

Excellent points, especially the concept of suing people that created victim disarmament zones commonly know as so called “gun free zones” where all the killers seem to go.

How come one of these psycho killers never go to a gun club to do a mass shooting?

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/12544531.html

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: How many more will die in 'gun-free' zones before the media start asking why?
Police have identified Robert A. Hawkins, 19, as the assailant who killed eight people with a semi-automatic rifle (not an assault rifle) at the Westroads Mall in Omaha Dec. 5.

Chalk up eight more deaths to "gun control."

The shooting was at least the fourth at an American mall or shopping center so far this year, including one in February in Salt Lake City.

Once again, the killer chose a "gun-free" zone.

Nebraska issues permits "allowing" qualified individuals to carry concealed handguns. (The Second and 14th amendments reaffirm that carrying a weapon is a right, not a privilege -- states have no more legitimate power to require a "permit" for weapons carrying than they have to require a "permit" to attend church or publish a newspaper.)

Leaving aside this "permitting" scheme, Nebraska law allows property owners, such as the Westroads Mall, to post signs banning permit holders from legally carrying guns on their property.

("Some chains such as Bag 'N Save have posted signs, and shopping malls such as Westroads Mall have added 'no weapons' clauses to their posted codes of conduct," the Omaha World-Herald reported on March 28.)

"The same was true for the attack at the Trolley Square Mall in Utah in February," reports John Lott in his Dec. 6 article at www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315563,00.html, headlined "Media Coverage of Mall Shooting Fails to Reveal Mall's Gun-Free-Zone Status."

The question is not whether private property owners have a right to bar firearms on their property -- they do.

(Though selective bans on only some civilians would surely be easier to challenge; watch to see if government police called to such locales are made to check their weapons before entering.)

Rather, the first question here is whether our government agencies are making it fully clear to the managers of buildings otherwise open to the public -- such as Clark County's courthouses and public libraries -- that they will not be shielded from the financial repercussions should employees or customers die under circumstances where they could otherwise have defended themselves and others with their own firearms.

The second question? Mr. Lott, author of "Freedomnomics" and a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, put it very well in the Fox News column in question:

"A Google news search using the phrase 'Omaha Mall Shooting' finds an incredible 2,794 news stories worldwide" in the first 24 hours alone, Mr. Lott notes. "But ... none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. (Dec. 6), mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

"Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn't one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?" asks Mr. Lott, who posts the "No weapons allowed" sign from Salt Lake City's Trolley Square Mall (it's rule 10) at http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/02/...l-in-utah.html.

"Oh come on, Vin," someone will protest at this point. "It wouldn't matter even if these places did allow people to carry guns. Hardly anyone goes armed, so how often would a plain old non-policeman with a gun really save lives?"

Pretty often, it turns out.

In 1997, Luke Woodham slit his mother's throat, grabbed a .30-30 rifle and headed to Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss. -- another gun-free zone -- to start shooting people.

The moment Vice Principal Joel Myrick heard the first shots, he took off at a sprint for his truck. (Because Mr. Myrick kept a handgun in his truck for just such an eventuality, a deadly stupid federal law required him to park it far from campus.)

Woodham shot until he heard sirens, then ran to his car. His plan, authorities subsequently learned, was to drive to nearby Pearl Junior High School and shoot more kids before police could show up.

Joel Myrick foiled that plan, positioning himself to point his gun at Woodham's windshield. Woodham swerved and crashed the car. Myrick held the killer at gunpoint till police arrived, stopping the killing spree.

In 2002, as Mr. Lott reported in The National Review, "Two law students with law-enforcement backgrounds as deputy sheriffs in another state stopped the shooting at the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. ... The students ran to their cars, got their guns, pointed their guns at the attacker, ordered him to drop his gun, and then tackled him and held him until police were able to arrive," thus saving many lives.

At the Trolley Square attack in Utah this year, "Possibly the ban there was even more noteworthy because the off-duty police officer who stopped the attack fortunately violated the ban by taking his gun in with him when he went shopping," Mr. Lott reports.

"There are plenty of cases every year where permit holders stop what would have been multiple victim shootings, but they rarely receive any news coverage," Mr. Lott protests. "When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred?"

Fortunately, we saw the way it works when citizens are armed, less than a week after the Omaha shootings. Shortly after midnight on Dec. 9, Matthew Murray, who had been rejected from a missionary school in Colorado, shot and killed two staffers there. Twelve hours later he drove to the parking lot of the related New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where about 7,000 people were present for the midday service, and opened fire in the parking lot, killing two young women.

Jeanne Assam, 42, a member of the congregation who used to work as a police officer, volunteers to guard the church.

Assam hid. She waited until Murray -- carrying a rifle, two pistols and a backpack with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition -- entered the church. Then she "came out of cover, identified myself and took him down," she told a packed news conference Monday.

The coroner later reported the wounded assailant took his own life -- but not till Assam had blown him to the ground.

Authorities and her minister say Assam saved untold lives -- lives that would have been lost, had Murray attacked in a disarmed-victim city like Los Angeles, New York or Washington.

If you frequent public buildings or work for an employer who bars you from carrying your otherwise legal self-defense weapon, consider advising your loved ones in writing that -- in the event you should die under circumstances where you could have saved yourself and others with your handgun -- you want the proprietor sued personally.

Guns save lives. Since banning guns costs lives, shouldn't the individuals who ban self-defense -- not the victimized taxpayers -- pay the price?


Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow." See http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...n&vci=51238921

[WhiteFeather]

Look another product of the system that will be used to create more anti-gun laws...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,318506,00.html

Mall Gunman Admitted He was Satanic, Attempted Suicide

The teen gunman who killed eight people and himself in a mall this month once told social workers he was satanic and acknowledged that he often acted before thinking of the consequences, according to newly released court records.

Robert Hawkins' file includes hundreds of pages of court transcripts, drug tests and letters from caseworkers, therapists and family members. They give the clearest picture yet of a young man who told a therapist in April 2005 that "he is not sure if there is a God or life after death and that when he dies, he'll probably go to hell."

More than two years later, on Dec. 5, the 19-year-old Hawkins walked into a department store in the Westroads Mall and shot 11 people, then committed suicide

A judge on Wednesday ordered the documents released after motions were filed by several news organizations, including The Associated Press.

In one report, Hawkins, who had been in and out of the juvenile justice system since he was 14, told a social worker he was feeling overwhelmed by court hearings and school and tried to kill himself.

He told the social worker, Angela Pick, that he wanted to die when he swallowed about 30 Tylenol pills in January 2006, she wrote in a report to Sarpy County Juvenile Court.

Her report said Hawkins ended up in the emergency room. He was released to his father six days later, and his demeanor "appeared to improve. His father and this worker observed him to be more positive," Pick wrote.

"He said that he never wanted to go through that again," she wrote.

Hawkins became a ward of the state in 2002, after a stay in a Missouri treatment facility for threatening to kill his stepmother.

He was released from state custody in August 2006 after caseworkers, therapists and his family agreed that the extra nine months he could have remained in custody until he turned 19 wouldn't have been worth it, given his lack of cooperation.

"Robbie has been in the court system for many years and has reached maximum benefit from what the department can provide," Pick wrote on Aug. 17, 2006. "He has continued to make some poor decisions but not any that are a safety concern at this time."

Hawkins became violent with a staff member at a residential treatment program in Omaha in August 2003 and had to be restrained, according to a letter from therapist Steven Moore.

When it was suggested that Hawkins be sent to a residential facility, the teen said, "I'll burn that (expletive) place down with all of the people in it if you send me there," Moore wrote.

A constant theme of court hearings was Hawkins' drug use. He told social workers he started using marijuana at age 13 and typically smoked twice a week.

By age 17, he said, he smoked marijuana almost daily and had snorted cocaine four to five times. He was expelled from school in October 2005 for trying to sell drugs to classmates.

Hawkins shrugged off criticism of his drug use and acknowledged selling drugs to pay for his marijuana habit, the documents said.

While his father, Ron Hawkins, attended most of his son's court hearings, Robert Hawkins had a strained and sometimes nonexistent relationship with his mother, Maribel Rodriguez, the records show.

Social workers didn't know where Rodriguez was living when Hawkins entered state custody. She requested visitation around July 2005, then told her son that if he lived with her he couldn't have contact with his father, according to a social worker's report.

Ron Hawkins said he was at the end of his rope when he agreed that his son should be released from state custody.

"I can not continue like this," Ron Hawkins wrote in an e-mail dated Aug. 18, 2006, three days before Hawkins left the system. "I love my son, but he will not believe or even listen to anything I try to tell him."

"He will have to stand or fall on his own to learn these lessons about life," Ron Hawkins wrote. "It is beyond my ability and I have to release him to God, praying that He will make sure that nothing happens to him that can not be undone."

[brewguy]

Why don't folks who carry just ignore the sign and continue to CC?

[Shawn.L]

Why don't folks who carry just ignore the sign and continue to CC?

Here in PA "THE SIGN" has no legal weight, if they discover you are carrying they can only ask you to leave. If you do not leave you have commited defant tresspass, but if you either dont get discovered, or leave when asked, you will have broken no laws. I dont believe other states are so lucky.
I think responsible gun owners in general want to obey the rules, and thus their virtue is used against them.
I ignore those signs, but only because the law allows me to.

[tes151]

The media knows all about it. They don't need to ask why. You will never hear the truth about " gun free victim zones " from the mainstream media because it goes against their agenda they are spoon feeding to the sheeple. Shhhhhhhhh, don't rock the boat.

[CoyoteJack]

Here in PA "THE SIGN" has no legal weight, if they discover you are carrying they can only ask you to leave. If you do not leave you have commited defant tresspass, but if you either dont get discovered, or leave when asked, you will have broken no laws. I dont believe other states are so lucky.
I think responsible gun owners in general want to obey the rules, and thus their virtue is used against them.
I ignore those signs, but only because the law allows me to.

So then those signs saying 'Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again' aren't valid?

[God's Country]

How many more will die in 'gun-free' zones before the media start asking why?

Simple, as many that need to die until the country is "gun free."

[bogey1]

we should start a media free day... no tv, no radio, no news papers...... lets see what happens next...

[tes151]

we should start a media free day... no tv, no radio, no news papers...... lets see what happens next...

Won't make a bit of difference. They aren't catering to you or I, just the Libs that are willing to drink the cool-aid they are offering in place of common sense.

[XD45]

Why don't folks who carry just ignore the sign and continue to CC?

although in PA the signs hold no weight, in many states your committing a crime if you ignore the signs.