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?