Virginia Tech Shooting editorial by Christian author Jack Kinsella

[TGO David]

Repost from another site...

Invoking the Law of Unintended Consequences

Jack Kinsella

''When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns''

Commentary on the News

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

It is a certainty that the Virginia Tech shooting will dominate the media to the exclusion of all else for as long as the media can milk the story. So I'll limit my conversation on the topic to just two observations before moving on to make my point.

In the first place, there are already demands that everybody above the rank of janitor at the university be fired for not locking down the university when the first two killings took place. Police found two bodies, a male and female, and believed the killings were part of a domestic dispute.

Given the information that they had, there were but two choices. Lock down the entire campus, possibly creating a panic in which some of the students may have been injured. In hindsight, that would appear to have been the correct choice. But who could have guessed?

This case was bizarre by any standard. In the 'normal' course of events (if one can bend the word 'normal' enough to make it fit a murder scene) the murderer kills his victim, and then flees the scene to avoid being captured.

That is what the campus authorities wrongly assumed was the case in this instance. The media continues to trumpet the fact that the Virginia Tech Massacre was the worst mass-shooting in US history. Think about our blood-soaked history for a second and allow that fact to pull things into perspective.

It was worse than the bloodiest day in old Tombstone. It was worse than the Chicago St Valentine's Day Massacre. It was worse than the U of T shootings by Charles Whitman back in 1966. It was worse than Columbine. In all our history, it was the worst case of mass murder ever, period.

To allege the school authorities were negligent because they didn't anticipate that this rather ordinary-appearing homicide (again, forgive my use of the word 'ordinary' but the fact that such a word fits is terrifyingly revealing of our cultural decline) was the precursor to an inevitable massacre is simply ridiculous.

The next observation I think is worth making has to do with the fact that the shooter evidently had nothing to fear. He walked from classroom to classroom, shooting students with impunity, stopping along the way to reload his weapons.

At least forty-eight people were either killed or injured in a 21 minute shooting spree. That means the gunman fired a minimum of 48 rounds before turning the weapon on himself. There are stories of students holding the doors closed to keep the gunman out as he fired through the doors into the classrooms.

At least one professor reportedly held the door shut long enough to allow his students to escape jumping out of windows, before the professor was killed by one of the rounds that penetrated the door.

At least forty-eight rounds. At least 21 minutes. What if just one of those professors or students had themselves been armed?

What if the gunman walked into one of the classrooms and was cut down by an armed student or teacher before he could complete his mission? If it saved just one student, if that student was your kid, would it have been worth it?

The massacre was a direct result of the American social myth that guns kill people. Following that logic, if one eliminates guns, one eliminates murder. That logic is clearly flawed.

Guns are inanimate objects. Without a person pulling the trigger, a gun is no more dangerous than a steam iron.

Anybody with enough money can obtain a gun provided they aren't worried about getting arrested. When a guy intends to use it to commit murder, the risk of arrest for unlawful possession of a handgun isn't much of a deterrent.

It only deters the kind of people who aren't planning to use a weapon in a major crime.

Remember the old bumper sticker? "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

I don't mean to use this tragedy to make a political point. It isn't a political point that I am trying to make -- it is a point of logic.

Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. At the time the law was passed, critics predicted increases in violence. So when the law went into effect, the Dade County Police began a program to record all arrest and non arrest incidents involving concealed carry licensees.

Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury.

The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them.

Between 1987 when Florida adopted the right-to-carry law and the passage of the Brady Bill in 1994, the handgun homicide rate nationwide went UP by 24%. In Florida during the same period, the handgun homicide rate DROPPED by 41%.

According to one study, as of 1998, nationwide, there was only one recorded incident of a licensed firearm being used following a traffic accident. One. (And a grand jury found that shooting was in self-defense.)

As of 1998, no licensed gun owner had ever shot a police officer. Not one. But during this same study period, there were nine school shooting massacres.

(In one celebrated case, Assistant Principal Joel Myrick used his licensed gun to stop Luke Woodham after he shot nine students at Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi.)

Between 1977 and 1992, 10 states adopted right-to- carry laws. One study found that the implementation of these laws created no change in suicide rates, a one half of one percent rise in accidental firearm deaths, a 5% decline in rapes, a 7% decline in aggravated assaults, and an 8% decline in murder in those states.

Using 1995 numbers, the statics come out to be 1 more accidental gun death, 316 less murders, 939 less rapes, and 14,702 less aggravated assaults, in these 10 states annually. (Lott, John R. Jr. "More Guns Less Crime.)

The massacre at Virginia Tech was not a hardware problem. It was a heart problem. Having decided in his heart, the gunmen then set out to obtain the weapons. Had he NOT been the only armed individual at Virginia Tech, it is unlikely that he would have killed so many students.

It doesn't seem to be much of a leap of logic to assume that, had the gunman expected a substantial number of students and teachers to be armed, a shooting spree may never even have entered his mind.

That's why school shootings are unique to this generation (the first case of an adolescent school shooting in US history was carried out by a 16 year-old schoolgirl named Brenda Spencer in 1979).

There were only two school shootings prior to the passage of the Brady Bill in 1994 -- the one in 1979 and a second in 1987. It is worth noting that there were a dozen more between 1995 and 2000.

(And in the first seven years of the 21st century, there were 20, including the VT massacre.)

The false prophets of the last half century have preached a social gospel about the inherent goodness of the brotherhood of man. Sin, they taught, is an archaic concept that has no place in our modern, enlightened society.

Prisons should be places of rehabilitation rather than punishment. Criminal behavior was an environmental problem. Remove the opportunity for crime, (ie., guns) and crime will go down.

Hence, the ridiculous conclusion that guns are responsible for murders rather than the people who use them to that end.

Asked of the signs of His coming, Jesus prophesied, "And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." (Matthew 24:11-12)

He also warned elsewhere, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." (Matthew 7:15)

The Apostle Paul warned of 'perilous times' to come 'in the last days'. Paul goes on to explain why:

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good . . . " (2nd Timothy 3:1-3)

God and prayer are forbidden topics in the US educational system. Students are taught the social gospel of the brotherhood of man. There is no God, the kids are taught.

"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, MURDER, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers . . ." (Romans 1:28 )

No doubt those who believe man is the supreme being are sincere. But they are sincerely wrong.

"Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil." (Proverbs 1:31-33)

Our prayers are with the families of the victims of the slaughter. May God bless and heal them. And may God protect us all from the law of unintended consequences.

Until He comes.

[Mike]

Wow.

Great read! Great article.

The truth shall set us free.

[Guest jackdog]

Pretty good read, but not sure i agree with his assessment of the Universities handling of the incident at 7:30 AM. From everything I heard and read, the university Police jumped to an assumption of who did the original shooting including a possible motive. Plus the university, was adamant about a gun free environment. They let all the people on that campus believe they were in a save environment. That to me is just plain stupid.

[Guest LegalRaptor]

This was very interesting. Overall, his argument is, to me, unassailable. In terms of arguing our SA rights, however, I would have preferred to omit the religious aspect. (I am not familiar with the Omega Letter. Maybe his target audience was already on board with the religious aspect). Nothing against religion, just that once you inject it, those of any other religious persuasion automatically move away from the position, and start to question all of the other arguments. I guess what I am getting at is that the RKBA issue should be publicly debated without injecting religion if we want to reach and persuade the largest number of people. Otherwise we risk expanding the debate to include all of the religious assertions unnecessarily.

I know I am risking a flaming by saying this. I emphasize that I am not saying that religion is wrong, or that Christianity is wrong, or that any other religious position is wrong. Only that if we want to persuade the general populace, we need to recognize that the populace is diverse. Argue religion on religious issues, and SA issues on SA issues.

OK, I'm a target now.

[TGO David]

No, I agree. He is a Christian author and his intended audience is a Christian audience. I'm not familiar with the Omega Letter either but I thought it was an interesting angle to this sticky subject.

[Guest LegalRaptor]

After posting the above, I "googled" The Omega Letter, and found that it is, indeed, a Christian Newsletter. Therefore, the target audience was already onboard with the religious aspect of the argument, so the author had no risk of being "tuned out" by this target audience. With this added information, I have no argument with the author's decision to include his religious discussion in the newsletter article. However, I still think that for general audiences, we will be more persuasive using secular arguments.