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Opinion
Apr. 22, 2007
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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Gun ban made everyone 'feel safe'

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ
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A non-citizen with a green card -- stay tuned, the parallels to Jamaican Colin Ferguson killing six and wounding 19 on the Long Island Railroad in 1993 go way beyond that -- killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University last week, finally growing so weary after two hours of unobstructed mayhem that he gave up waiting for police to intervene and killed himself.

Surprisingly -- but only because we keep assuming they're more susceptible to the weight of facts and evidence than the average house plant -- the victim disarmament movement was once again in full bray last week, splashing around in the gore of Virginia Tech and shrieking with glee at the prospect that this massacre may once again breathe life into their thoroughly discredited agenda.

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    • In fact, it would be harder to dream up a tragedy better designed than Virginia Tech -- where gun-grabbers are disappointed the killer used only a couple of pocket pistols, instead of a big ugly "assault rifle" -- to demonstrate the folly of "gun control."

    Last year, the Roanoke Times quoted Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker saying he was happy to hear of the defeat of Virginia House Bill 1572 -- sponsored by Todd Gilbert -- which would have prohibited public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit ... from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun."

    "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus," the Virginia Tech spokesman said, little more than a year ago.

    One wonders if this cheerful idiot still holds that parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safer on the Virginia Tech campus, knowing they're barred from defending themselves against armed lunatics like Seung-Hui Cho?

    Since Gilbert's bill failed, most universities in Virginia continue to require students and employees other than police to check their guns. In June 2006, Virginia Tech's governing board specifically approved a "violence prevention policy" that reaffirmed that school's ban.

    I know what: Let's next "prevent more violence" in the Middle East by disarming Jews in Israel and trusting the Arabs to leave them alone!

    "Had I been on campus today, and otherwise been entitled to carry firearms for protection and been deprived of that, I don't think words can describe how I would have felt, knowing I could have stopped something like this," Gilbert, the sponsor of that modest 2006 Virginia bill, told World Net Daily on the day of the shootings.

    If that sounds familiar, it's because numerous witnesses to the Colin Ferguson massacre on the Long Island Railroad later testified that -- had they not been barred by law from carrying their own self-defense weapons -- they could easily have saved many lives by taking down the killer on one of the many occasions when he stopped to reload.

    Similarly, Suzanna Gratia Hupp won election to the Texas Legislature after testifying that she could have stopped another mass murderer in Killeen, Texas, from reloading and subsequently shooting Mrs. Hupp's mother and father in the head if the law had allowed her to bring into the Luby's Cafeteria that day the loaded handgun which she had -- as required by law -- left outside in her truck.

    We don't even have to get "theoretical" about this. As Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine pointed out on these pages last week, "Four years ago at Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Va., a man who had killed the dean, a professor and a student was subdued by two students who ran to their cars and grabbed their guns. In 1997 an assistant principal at a public high school in Pearl, Miss., likewise retrieved a handgun from his car and used it to apprehend a student who had killed three people" -- armed citizens in each case almost certainly sparing further lives.

    "Hopefully, there will soon be an opportunity to examine which policies, if any, could have prevented this incident," mewed Josh Horwitz, executive director of the so-called Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, last week.

    Needless to say, Mr. Horwitz then tipped his hand, adding, "In a nation plagued by gun violence and more than 30,000 gun deaths per year, a re-evaluation of our overly permissive attitude toward firearms is long overdue."

    This is the rhetorical equivalent of blaming drunken driving deaths on "the easy availability of cars."

    Actually, it's much stupider than that. There are now some 20,000 overlapping gun control laws in this country, each enacted by lawmakers in violation of their sacred oaths to protect and defend the Constitution, virtually all imposed since the 1920s, before which time this was such a peaceful country that Americans didn't even lock their doors.

    In contrast, we now live in a country where an innocent American can be sent to prison for owning a broken rifle, providing the ATF can haul the thing off to its Virginia test range and cause it to slam-fire three rounds before it jams. Given that the ATF has unconstitutionally banned both the re-importation and new manufacture of BARs, supply and demand now dictate that a single one of these bulky and outdated militia weapons would cost me $10,000 -- once I passed the background check, and assuming the sheriff approves.

    Yet these bitter-enders keep chirping about "the too easy availability of guns."

    If the hoplophobes really wanted to "examine which policies, if any, could have prevented this incident," why not simply look at the anti-depressant connection?

    Kip Kinkel of Springfield, Ore., one of the first of our recent wave of school shooters, had recently been taken off the psychoactive drug Ritalin when he decided to kill his parents before shooting up a school breakfast. Can you recall that happening before they started prescribing Ritalin to schoolchildren?

    One of the Columbine school shooters was turned down when he tried to enlist in the Marines because he'd been on Luvox, another psychoactive "anti-depressant." And The Associated Press reported last week that Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho "may have been taking medication for depression."

    But we won't be looking at that pattern, will we? Instead, America's hoplophobe press will follow Mr. Horwitz's lead and concentrate on "where he got his guns" -- which makes about as much sense as investigating the latest Baghdad truck bombing by asking, "Where on earth did that suicidal militant get his Toyota?"

    Why don't they explain to us, just this once, why these chemically warped fruitcakes never attack police stations or Army bases? Could it be because, even in their madness, they know the armed people there might shoot back?

    We wouldn't want to similarly inoculate our schools, I suppose.

    Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow."



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    Anon wrote on May 15, 2007 04:24 PM: Did Mr. Suprynowicz really believe that ritalin is an anti-depressant when he wrote this article?

    I know it's not politically correct to call someone with a Polish last name stupid (I do know tons of smart Polish people) I must say his statement about ritalin seems incredibly stupid.


    seataffer wrote on April 28, 2007 04:52 AM: shawn: What relevance does a gang war between crips and bloods have to the VA Tech shooting? Please explain.

    .. it doesn't have anything to do with it, it has to do with kbrowns assertion that 'criminals would rather attack unarmed people rather than armed'.. duh, this was written right before my reply, are you blind too?
    .. if he'd said 'most' criminals, or 'potential criminals', it would be a different story, but since a good portion of shooters are law abiding citz up until they pull the trigger, his remark is not absolute.
    .. thus, your 5:52 apr25 post attacks a faulty premise of your own making. You rebutted nothing I said.

    .. your 5:42 post has also been considered, dallas in a recent yr maybe 05, had ~1410 violcrimes per 100k, while DC had ~1424, that's near parity, nearly the same, equality, they ranked next to each other (or almost); & several progun cities had higher violcrime rates, like nashville I think (morganquitno source).
    .. so if you criticize DC for high violcrime rate then explain why dallas texas shouldn't be criticized for violent crime rate with it's guns galore policy.


    seataffer wrote on April 26, 2007 05:45 AM: shawn: why these chemically warpedfruitcakes never attack police stations or Army bases?

    .. they do actually, called 'suicide by cop' (google it), or when arrested they sometimes get ahold of cops gun & use it. But again its a specious question he asks.

    shawn: In all the states that have allowed concealed carry permits to be issued .. murder and crime rates significantly dropped.

    .. you didn't read all the posts, here is my previous rebuttal which proves you wrong many times over:
    ... montana enacted shall issue ccw ~1991 & it's violent crime rate has tripled, ~120 to ~350.
    .. W.Va enabled shall issue ccw & it's violcrime rate has doubled, as have both dakotas (altho dakotas are still very low).
    .. my pennsylvania enabled shall issue in 1989 & it's violcrime rate has not yet gone down below the '89 start point; indeed it rose ~27% prior to settling down to near parity.
    .. it took tennessee 10 yrs for it's violcrime rate to decrease from it's shall issue start point.
    .. indianas violcrime rate fluctuates over & below like a sine curve, it's shall issue start point, has for ~18 years.
    .. & more importantly, during the same time periods, states with stricter guncontrol measures have, on avg, seen larger decreases in violcrime rates, & I speak only of the 10 stricter guncontrol states (Md,ILL,NY,NJ,RI, Mass,Calif,Hawaii,Conn,"DC").


    Shawn In San Diego, CA wrote on April 25, 2007 05:52 PM: Hi again seataffer. Perhaps you should take a look in the mirror at your own specious logic before condeming others. What relevance does a gang war between crips and bloods have to the VA Tech shooting? Please explain. Actually I can't really consider your logic "specious" because it doesn't look good or seem logical even at first glance; in fact it seemed totally nonsensical from the moment I read it. The motivation for gangs to attack each other is significantly different and it is way off point. Cho didn't attack a gang; he wasn't fighting a war; his goal was clearly to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time; hence the gun free zone served his purpose perfectly. What a perfect place to find thousands of unarmed victims. The fact is that gun free zones can't possibly make any difference whatsoever in preventing gun crimes. It is a pointless piece of legislation that makes the person signing it into law feel good but does nothing to make us safer. In fact, it makes us less safe. It's that simple.


    Shawn In Sandiego, CA wrote on April 25, 2007 05:42 PM: seataffer and kbrown: The actual population of the two cities is a totally irrelevant statistic. You must show the RATE of crime for your comments to have any real value. In addition, someone would have to show whether dallas has an effective concealed carry law. just because handguns aren't outlawed in Dallas doesn't mean that people are allowed to carry them in public. Neither of you are providing enough info to have a legitimate debate about anything.


    Shawn in San Diego, CA wrote on April 25, 2007 10:37 AM: I find it amusing how none of the anti-gun zealots bothered to answer Vin's final question: "Why don't they explain to us, just this once, why these chemically warped fruitcakes never attack police stations or Army bases? Could it be because, even in their madness, they know the armed people there might shoot back?" Vin never said anything about EVERYONE packing heat. In all the states that have allowed concealed carry permits to be issued, none of the wild wild west scenarios, came to fruition. Instead, murder and crime rates significantly dropped. That's okay though; I don't expect liberals to actually have any common sense. I'm just glad I live in a free country where even stupid people with no common sense can voice their opinion openly. What a country! Oh and by the way; the gun free zones at schools is a fairly recent phenomenon. Perhaps someone can explain to me how this country survived so long without them. It's only AFTER we've been establishing these gun free zones that the mass murder incidents have been increasing at an alarming rate (another example of common sense that the anti-gun zealots simply won't accept).


    seataffer wrote on April 25, 2007 04:04 AM: kbrown: Please put things a little into perspective.. DC Pop. 550,000, compared to Dallas Pop. 20,851,820.

    .. wrong agayne batman, 21 million is not the dallas pop: Dallas, TX Population (2000): 1,188,580. Est'd 2005: 1,213,825.
    .. so now that you see things in proper perspective you should be able to see the aptness of my contrast. Dallas has ~twice the population of DC, so they both rank as 'large cities' with pops over 500,000, of which there are only ~35 in the US.

    kbrown: .. criminals would rather attack unarmed people than those that are armed.

    .. crips vs bloods must be hidden neath that blind eye of yours;
    .. your specious logic again, unarmed people predominate in public everywhere, even in dallas, only to a mildly lesser extent.
    .. the point being, if pro gun & relatively 'armed' dallas texas, in a recent year, had near the same violent crime rate as DC, why hadn't the presence of all those dallas guns lowered their viol crime rate when compared with DC?


    timmothy p. fitzgerald wrote on April 24, 2007 04:48 PM: right on the money on your sunday ed. please keep telling them what the average american thinks! god bless.


    Ken Brown wrote on April 24, 2007 02:46 PM: Whos turning a blind eye seataffer? Please put things a little into perspective. Washington DC Pop. 550,000, compared to Dallas Pop. 20,851,820. I dont think its a very big stretch of the imagination to see that criminals would rather attack unarmed people than those that are armed. And further more I condemn any sensless act with any weapon against any person.


    seataffer wrote on April 24, 2007 01:05 PM: kbrown writes: Laws like this have never stopped the criminals, just us law abiding citizens. Wazhington DC is a gun free zone ...

    .. Wash DC is NOT a gun free zone, there are approx 100,000 LEGAL rifles & shotguns owned by it's ~550,000 residents, not that low a gun ownership rate.
    .. Wash DC bans handguns, but it has had a comparable violent crime rate with progun dallas texas.
    .. If you condemn DC's violent crime rate you must also condemn Dallas' since they have been approx the same.
    .. you gun people make specious & inane arguments, ridiculing gun control efforts when they don't live up to expectations, while closing blind eyes to the stink in your own gunny backyards.


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