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Lockdowns and 'No Guns Allowed' Signs Increase Murder by
Greg Perry In the worst mass shooting in America’s history, more than 30 people were murdered and more than a dozen wounded from gunfire at Virginia Tech, an incident that plastered the news outlets for more than 24 hours after the incident. The shootings took place in two waves a few hours apart. The school is getting heat that they didn’t institute a lockdown after the first wave of shootings. I say that the failure to perform an immediate lockdown could have saved some lives. More important than the lockdown, however, it was a different school policy that had nothing to do with lockdowns that encouraged this incident and gave the shooter confidence that he could take out a large number of students before he killed himself. It’s a school policy that is true all across the country. Perhaps the Shooter Didn’t Understand It Was Wrong I think I know what caused all this. I bet that Virginia Tech failed to post a "No Guns Allowed" sign on their front gate. The shooter, failing to see such a sign, probably didn’t realize guns weren’t allowed on school campuses in America. As an aside, guns are not allowed in America’s post offices either. Most law-abiding citizens who have gone through heinous background checks, been fingerprinted by their government, and waited months to get approved to carry a concealed firearm to protect their families know that even after all that, they are not allowed to carry guns onto school grounds or post offices. Without such a sign and without such a permit, however, how can a murderer without such a permit expect to know that guns aren’t allowed on those premises? If only the school had the foresight to post such a sign. The shooter would have been deterred. Surely, a "No Guns Allowed" sign would mean those 32 or so dead people would be alive right now. Locking Down Schools Incites Panic and Increases Casualties Let me offer a scenario: Which is scarier: being in a building where you hear shots, or being locked in the building where you hear shots? The moment shots are suspected of being fired, a school’s first response is to go in lockdown mode. I propose that is a dangerous – no a deadly – situation. How would you feel knowing you cannot escape from such a building? Now I realize this means each individual room is locked so a shooter cannot get through the door (as though a .308 or even something less powerful wouldn’t blast through a lock faster than Bill Clinton’s come-ons at a White House Intern Training Camp). Put yourself into the shoes of the students in lockdown as they hear shots. Think about how helpless you would feel in spite of being in a locked room. Wouldn’t you feel safer being able to run outside to get as far away as you could? As someone who practices target shooting myself, I know how hard it is to hit a stationary target. Just a slight movement makes the job of hitting anything exponentially harder. (For public school math teachers reading this, I realize I need to explain the term exponential for you; that means it’s much, much harder.) Listen closely because the following advice may very well save your life some day: if someone points a gun at you, or you realize you’re being shot at, your number one chance at staying alive is to move as fast as you can away from where you think the shooter is located. I don’t care if you have a gun yourself, don’t stand there and shoot back if you can move. A moving target is extremely difficult to hit. Just because shots are coming from outside your locked room, even if you were ignorant of the fact that a lock or sheetrock on the walls isn’t going to stop a lot of ammo, how certain are you there is only one shooter? Remember Columbine? What if those two murderers had decided that one would remain undercover with weapons in a large backpack until the first shooter made a rampage through the building? The teacher and students locked in the room with the second shooter would sure have quite a nightmare when the second shooter decided to reveal himself with a few well-placed rounds. My bride, a former public school teacher until I rescued her 17 years ago by marrying her, just told me this: Lockdown is nothing more than an attempt to keep collateral damage to a fixed number. It’s their (failed) hope that the maximum number of students who will die will be the number locked inside the room or hall with the shooter. Lockdown, like metal detectors at the front doors of schools, is a sad admission that the entire system is a failure. Lockdowns are proof that those currently in charge, the Leftists, have absolutely no idea how to control crime. (By the way, I consider that the Leftists have primarily been in charge for more than 5 decades in America. Recent elections have done little to move us more to the Left than we already were.) Insensitivity for the Victims’ Relatives and Friends Lest you wonder if I’m being somewhat sarcastic, let me be extremely clear: I’m dripping with sickening sarcasm as I write this. Lest you think I might be a little too insensitive to the parents and other relatives and friends of these victims, let me clarify who has the insensitivity to those victims: the Leftists in America. The Leftists who include Republicans and Democrats – such as George Bush Sr. who renounced his NRA membership shortly after being elected. The Leftists in America are the ones insensitive to the parents, relatives, and friends of those murdered and wounded college students. The Leftists in America created the rule that you cannot carry a firearm onto a public school ground or post office in America. The Leftists in America think that a "No Guns Allowed" sign will keep a willful murderer from taking a gun into that area. They are the open-minded Leftists... The Leftists whose minds are so open their brains have dripped out onto their shoes. Political correctness and being on the social and political Left side of the spectrum isn’t just wrong... it’s deadly wrong. The lives of you and your family and your friends depend on you fighting against such policies with every fiber of your being. They are going to begin screaming stricter gun control any second now. You need to be louder, and earlier, demanding that more gun freedoms are given back to this country’s citizens. What If Only One Thing Were Different at Virginia Tech? I realize some of you have already opened your email and started sending me messages about how wrong I am about lockdowns being less safe than not using them. That is fine, I realize there are arguments to be made on the other side – not good ones in my opinion but they are there nonetheless. But let me propose the following: instead of lockdowns, why not just remove the rule that says no guns are allowed on school grounds? Those without concealed carry licenses still cannot legally carry onto a school even if the schools allowed guns. The only people you stop from carrying a gun into a school with rules like "No Guns Allowed" are those law-abiding citizens who have been trained in firearm safety and had a background check with permits. The only people who win from lockdowns are the murderers with the guns inside the locked cages called classrooms who now have what some from my state of Oklahoma might call "easy pickins." If guns were allowed on school grounds – by those law-abiding citizens who are licensed to carry them just as is true at every Wal-Mart – then two things would likely be true now:
Many reading this despise the idea of concealed carry permits. I do too. But that is not my discussion today. That is not the point of this article. Many reading this despise the fact that public schools even exist. I do too. That is not the point of this article. Just because every government school in America should be closed before midnight tonight does not eliminate the immediate need of implementing a simple solution that would save lives. The Real Solution Lockdowns increase death tolls. But eliminating lockdowns will not solve the problem. Eliminating lockdowns only reduces the collateral damage that is sure to occur whenever a lockdown is present. The real solution to reducing school murders is to remove the insane rule that keeps trained, law-abiding licensed citizens from carrying guns onto campuses and school yards.
April 18, 2007 Greg Perry [send him mail] is the pistol-packing author of more than 75 books. What he does best is teach others how to maximize their eBay income. That's because he smashes his eBay competitors by implementing time-proven Direct Marketing techniques that others completely ignore. If you've ever considered eBay, you'll make far more money when you read his newest book, eXtreme eBay – How to Quickly Apply the Most Powerful Direct Marketing Techniques in the World to Every Item You Sell on eBay. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
Think
back to major shooting incidents you recall over the past decade
or so. They generally take place at locations where permit-holding
law-abiding citizens are not allowed to take guns: post offices
and schools.