In June 2010 the Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s gun bans. Predictions about Chicago running red with blood in the streets (not sure what they thought was already happening) and turning into the wild wild west (that probably would have been better than what was currently happening in Chicago).
Chicago Mayor Daley predicted the following:
Overturning the gun ban was “a very frightening decision” and predicted more deaths along with Wild West-style shootouts and that people “are going to take a gun and they are going to end their lives in a family dispute.” . . .
Well, it didn’t happen. Time and time again (Virginia’s firearms in restaurants) we’ve seen more guns equals less crime. John Lott, author of “More Guns, Less Crime” analyzed the crime rates in Chicago before and after the gun ban was struck down.
See the rest of John Lott’s analysis of Chicago and DC after their gun bans were lifted:
The following article was written by Robert G. Heinritz, Jr., J.D. on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 in the wake of the Virginia Tech school shootings. The article is being printed with his permission.
Bob Heinritz is an honors graduate in management, economics, and law; and a member of the Bar of the states of Arizona, Illinois, and Missouri. He is a former trial lawyer, and now a business attorney and management consultant, specializing in strategic-planning, productivity, and business turnarounds.The issue at hand is still relevant today and is being debated at schools across the country as they continue to argue whether guns have a place on campuses. Incidents at Colorado State University, in Texas and Arizona, Utah, and elsewhere show that people are still searching for the best solution to protecting the students, faculty, and others on campus. Unfortunately, most of them get it wrong.
“Gun-Free” School Zone Again a Failure
“We’re all ignorant, just on different subjects.” Will Rogers
“Without data, we’re just another schmuck with an opinion.” D. Chris Anderson, Ph.D.
All of us should feel a little sick, and great sympathy for the victims and their families, as a result of the tragic series of shootings by a deranged killer in Blacksburg, Virginia. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the killing-spree at Virginia Tech is precisely what the anti-self-defense forces have been hoping for:
(1) Predictable, the followers of Sarah Brady – and perhaps many of the Democratic candidates for President – will exploit this needless tragedy to call for more gun control among the law-abiding.
(2) Second Amendment advocates, with knowledge of the scientific data, will observe that, in that terrible nightmare-situation in Blacksburg, if just one civilian with a firearms concealed-carry permit had been among the shooter’s intended-victims, he or she could have stopped the killing and saved many lives – long before the police arrived. This is exactly what happened on January 16, 2002 at Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia, where three individuals, two of whom were legally armed with handguns, stopped a disgruntled former student who was trying to kill everyone.
But self-defense was impossible at Virginia Tech. In an incredible act of “feel-good” ignorance, “Policy 5616 – Campus and Workplace Violence Prevention Policy” prohibited all firearms for self-defense from the Virginia campus. Lawful gun-owners – who had submitted applications, paid all fees, submitted fingerprint-cards for national police-checks, and confirmed knowledge of the law and proficiency with their firearm – were told by Virginia Tech they do not have the right to defend their life, even though the State of Virginia has said they can. Their uninformed desire to “feel safe” prompted this foolish university policy, which actually made people less safe. Virginia Tech’s Policy-5616 enabled the needless carnage on their campus. The cost this day – some 33 killed, plus more wounded and possibly dying in a premeditated murder-spree.
It could have been avoided. All credible scientific data confirms in the United States roughly 2.5-million crimes are stopped or deterred by armed civilians every year – most with no shots fired, and fewer than one in a thousand resulting in any death. 2.5-million crimes! There have been scores of credible, independent, criminological-studies which confirm guns in the hands of the law-abiding save lives. You might start by reading economist John Lott’s MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, and his later, MEDIA BIASES AGAINST GUNS. There are hundreds of such publications – many by well-known, liberal Constitutional scholars – on the Constitution, history, and current criminological data. There is no – repeat, NO – valid data that indicates so-called “gun control” laws prevent violence, or keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The data indicates just the reverse – where the law-abiding are deprived of their right of self-defense, violent crime increases.
So-called “gun control” laws harm innocent people. My friend, Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, lost her parents in the Luby’s massacre in Killeen, Texas. Dr. Hupp, who kept her gun locked up that day in compliance with the law at the time, said “I blame the deaths of my parents on the legislators who deny me the right to defend myself.” Just 2-months later, in an eerily-similar incident in a restaurant armed-robbery in Anniston, Alabama, all innocent lives were saved by a lone customer who happen to have a legally-concealed pistol in his possession. The national press – which had such an anti-gun feeding-frenzy over the Killeen incident – never bothered to mention the 21-lives saved by the lone gunman in Anniston.
There is an old legal maxim, “Hard cases make bad laws.” As I am writing this, all major TV networks – following their
ethic “if it bleeds, it leads” – are rehashing every past school-shooting incident in their TV libraries. I have no doubt they will dig up Sarah Brady, Bill Clinton, or some other politician to once again call for their discredited and dangerous laws. What every TV-report has failed to mention is every one of those schools were by law, “gun free” – meaning the killers knew their victims were defenseless. In Israel, attacks on schools were abruptly stopped when teachers and (where appropriate) adult-students were permitted guns for self-defense.
What position will the media take? A rational policy based on the data? Or still more hysterical calls for useless anti-gun laws, which are ultimately more dangerous to our values and public safety?
I just finished a History channel show on the bank robbery that happened in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, on February 28th, 1997. It was on a couple weeks ago on the History channel, but with a DVR you can watch stuff like this when you have some free time. So tonight was the night. Essentially it was a 45 minute shootout between 2 psychos and a bunch of cops. The documentary walked through the horrific event–something no one should ever have to go through.
One thing was I wish it would have focused more on the 2 gunmen before the incident–it did walk through a little about each of them, but there has to be a lot more to the story. Both had issues with the law before they robbed their first bank–from what I could tell the North Hollywood robbery was at least their 2nd bank robbery. Either way, it seems like there were signs that these 2 pyschos were headed for trouble.
One thing that I feel we should do to help reduce crime is to punish criminals harder. Almost all of the gun control in this country simply focuses on punishing law abiding citizens, not criminals. It won’t solve all of our problems, but there’s a whole bunch of laws in this country that are merely a slap on the wrist if you are caught breaking one of them. If we focused on key laws (violent offenses, robbery, homicide, etc.) and gave real sentences, then half of these criminals wouldn’t be walking the streets months after being convicted.
Either way, in this tragic event, it proves a lot about how criminals act. These men modified an AK47 to fire fully automatically. They hand made their own body amour. They were willing to kill even if people followed their instructions. They were vicious psychos who were determined to get through life with shortcuts at the expense of innocent people. Luckily, the two criminals were the only ones who were killed during the event, but there were 10 police officers and 7 civilians who were shot, some who still have health issues from the incident today.
I hope we can all learn from this event and find real ways of stopping these types of criminals before they do something like this. Or at least provide ways for people to defend themselves if they are ever caught in a situation like this.
You can find a brief clip on what happened here.
