First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the shootings at Northern Illinois University in the midst of unspeakable tragedy. But, every time I hear of one of these incidents, I am reminded of how flawed the idea of ‘gun control’ is. The campus of Northern Illinois University, like Virginia Tech’s and many other campuses across the country, is a ‘gun-free zone’. This simply means that law abiding gun owners leave their weapons at home (weapons that might have been used to cut short these massacres with return-fire) while the criminals, who care little for laws, continue to carry and use their weapons. We see the same pattern in Washington, DC, where guns are essentially illegal so only the gang members and criminals carry while the law-abiding citizens go unarmed (and are 688 percent more likely to be murdered than citizens of neighboring Virginia [US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004]).
I am not a gun owner [yet ;-)], but this is another example of why gun ownership and—more importantly—gun possession by responsible, law-abiding citizens is not a problem. On the contrary, it is a potential solution and deterrent to gun violence. As the old saying goes, ‘an armed society is a polite society.’
