The text for today\u2019s reading in the Gospel of the Politically Correct comes to us from the July 25 London Evening Standard, current sad spokesrag for a nation which rose to greatness in the day when the average peasant was supposed to regularly practice his ability to kill with a longbow at several hundred yards.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the actions of a \u201chomegrown terrorist\u201d who set off a deadly explosion in downtown Oslo before dressing up as a police officer and heading to a summer camp on Norway\u2019s forested island of Utoya, there to shoot and kill at least 80 \u201cLabor Party\u201d offspring in what The AP calls \u201cone of the deadliest shooting sprees in history\u201d (isn\u2019t it funny how they never count government \u201cshooting sprees\u201d?) as \u201cterrified youths ran and even swam for their lives,\u201d the editorialists of the Standard remind us \u201cIt is customary, after every violent tragedy, to observe that lessons must be learned from it. But the reality of the Norwegian massacre is that there are rather few to be learned.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnders Breivik,\u201d the Standardmen continue, \u201cwas patently an obsessive extremist but his background was both prosperous and liberal; he would not have been first on anyone\u2019s checklist of a potential mass homicide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tell me I\u2019m just imagining the Standardmen mean that such a crime might be more understandable if committed by some lower-class barefoot Okie, or a fan of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek — as though Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were not all well-fed leftist intellectuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only obvious moral is that Norway\u2019s relatively strict gun laws should be better enforced,\u201d the Brit editorialists conclude. \u201cNorwegians need a license to own a gun and must keep them in a safe; individuals may not buy automatic weapons. Police may inspect a gun-owner\u2019s home. Yet plainly, those laws were poorly enforced. …\u201d<\/p>\n
Ah. So Norway\u2019s draconian police-state gun laws, which had the effect of all gun laws (disarming the victims while posing no noticeable impediment to the deranged conduct of their assailant), would have prevented these murders if only they\u2019d been \u201cbetter enforced.\u201d Let us review the results when a few other lunatics have decided to engage in mass murder, with special attention to the variable \u201chow effective were the local gun control laws?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the worst American non-government mass shooting in recent memory, one George Hennard in 1991 drove his pickup truck through the window of a Luby\u2019s cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., jumped out and began firing two pistols at the defenseless customers and employees inside. Twenty-three occupants were shot down like dogs — even though Hennard took time to reload — because state law required them to leave their firearms out in their cars.<\/p>\n
One customer, Suzanna Hupp, saw Hennard gun down her parents. Mrs. Hupp later testified, under oath, that she had brought a handgun with her that day but, to her bitter regret, left it in her car, as required by state law, which at the time barred the carrying of a concealed handgun.<\/p>\n
Suzanna Gratia Hupp ran for and was elected to the Texas state Legislature, where she was able to win approval of a \u201cshall issue\u201d law that requires authorities to issue a concealed carry permit to any resident who meets certain objective criteria.<\/p>\n
Unless they join the Army.<\/p>\n
Among President Bill Clinton\u2019s first acts upon taking office in 1993 \u201cwas to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases,\u201d The Washington Times reported in November, 2009. In March 1993, the Army imposed regulations forbidding military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and making it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of Mr. Clinton, terrorists would face more return fire if they attacked a Texas Wal-Mart\u201d than jihadist Major Nidal Malik Hasan encountered in November, 2009, as he reportedly shouted \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d and opened fire at a soldier readiness facility in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 28, the Times editorialized that week.<\/p>\n
In an interview on CNN the Monday night after the Fort Hood shooting, news anchor John Roberts asked Mandy Foster — wife of one of the soldiers shot and wounded at the base — how she felt about her husband\u2019s upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. Ms. Foster responded: \u201cAt least he\u2019s safe there and he can fire back, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Clinton\u2019s deadly rule disarms even officers. \u201cSix of the dead and wounded had commissions,\u201d The Times pointed out. This despite the fact that \u201cAll the public shootings in the United States in which more than three people have been killed have occurred in places where concealed handguns have been banned\u201d — a ban obeyed only by the victims, of course.<\/p>\n
Now let us compare these examples of what happens when victim disarmament \u201cgun control\u201d laws are enforced \u201ceffectively\u201d with the killing spree which occurred over the Fourth of July weekend in 1999 in Santa Clara, Calif.<\/p>\n
In that event, Sgt. Anton Morec of the Santa Clara Police Department told Reuters 21-year-old Richard Gable Stevens \u201cintended to go out in a blaze of glory,\u201d noting Stevens had accumulated more than 100 rounds of ammunition for his rented 9mm semi-automatic weapon.<\/p>\n
Police later found a note from Stevens to his parents, predicting they would be bankrupted by lawsuits from the relatives of his victims.<\/p>\n
Reuters reported \u201cMorec said Stevens arrived at the National Shooting Club Monday evening and rented the rifle for target practice. … After several minutes on the range, however, Stevens returned to the club\u2019s gun store and shot at the ceiling. He then herded three store employees out the door into an alley, saying he intended to kill them,\u201d after which \u201cIt certainly looks like he intended to take a lot more people out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you remember the big headlines about all the people Richard Gable Stevens killed over that Fourth of July weekend in Santa Clara, Calif.?<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t bother trying to look it up. Richard Gable Stevens never killed anyone. Have you guessed why?<\/p>\n
\u201cUnknown to Stevens, one store employee was carrying a .45 caliber handgun concealed beneath his shirt,\u201d Reuters reported. \u201cWhen Stevens looked away, the employee fired, hitting Stevens several times in the chest and bringing him to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
The would-be mass murderer was taken to a local hospital in critical condition. Police concluded \u201cThe quick action by the gun club employee may have headed off a massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terrorist shootings by Arabs sneaking into Israeli schools also dropped almost to zero when Israeli authorities decided to “allow” teachers and parent chaperones to start carrying semi-automatic weapons.<\/p>\n
Yet we\u2019re supposed to believe the best way to have cut short the murder spree allegedly carried out by 32-year-old Norwegian anti-immigration activist Anders Breivik last weekend would have been to \u201cbetter enforce\u201d victim disarmament laws which require that any gun owned by one of those Norwegian camp counselors be KEPT AT HOME IN A SAFE?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The text for today\u2019s reading in the Gospel of the Politically Correct comes to us from the July 25 London Evening Standard, current sad spokesrag for a nation which rose to greatness in the day when the average peasant was supposed to regularly practice his ability to kill with a longbow at several hundred yards. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2nd-amendment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-dn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}