Yet another Gun Free Zone tragedy

My heart goes out to the families of the disarmed victims of the Westroads Omaha Nebraska Mall that were shot on December 5th by a madman. The experiment called a "Gun Free Zone" is well past due to come to an end. It is a terrible experiment that continues to use human beings as the mice & the body count continues to mount as the experiment proves over & over again that "Gun Free Zones" simply do not work.

What does a Gun Free Zone really accomplish? Simply to disarm the law abiding citizens who choose to go into them. It is already illegal to shoot people, having a rule that criminals can't bring their guns into a gun free zone does not add any deterrent for them.

It is also interesting to note that with all of the reporters surrounding that Mall to cover the story, not one single reporter bothered to mention the no guns allowed sign posted at all of the Mall entrances. John R. Lott Jr has written a very nice opinion piece with the below observation.

A Google news search using the phrase "Omaha Mall Shooting" finds an incredible 2,794 news stories worldwide for the last day. From India and Taiwan to Britain and Austria, there are probably few people in the world who haven’t heard about this tragedy.

But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb released a press release today with his viewpoint:

“What happened at the Westroads Mall can happen anywhere that political hysteria results in victim disarmament,” Gottlieb stated. “Blaming firearms for this crime is like blaming cars for drunk driving. The argument doesn’t wash

Who's to say whether any of the victims or even any of the other shoppers within earshot of the shooting were forced to leave their gun in their vehicle to obey the Gun Free Zone rule. We'll probably never know. But you can't argue with the fact that if any of the victims or citizens nearby normally carried a gun & had not been disarmed at the door, they would have had a much better chance of defending themselves and ending the shooting much earlier than the shooter had planned.

Since it was a Gun Free Zone the shooter had all the time in the world to continue his rampage while waiting for Police to arrive. Only because he decided to go ahead & take his own life did it end as quickly as it did.

The anti gun folks are already using this tragedy to call for additional gun bans. Can someone please tell me how a criminal willing to steal a gun he is legally not even allowed to touch due to his criminal history, and willing to shoot people when it's already against the law to murder, would really care about breaking one more gun law?

Even if we ignore that obvious fact, how exactly would he have been less effective using any of a multitude of popular & far more powerful semi-automatic hunting rifles than the semi-automatic weapon that the criminal used in this tragedy? It's the criminals that need to be banned, not the guns. Who was it anyway that decided it is a good idea to let criminals back out on the streets as an experiment to see if they will behave or fall back into crime?

Private businesses that disarm their visitors should be held responsible for their safety. Even the Mall security were unarmed. It is highly likely that the most they had at their disposal was a can of pepper spray. Knowing that they would not have a very good chance of stopping an armed criminal with a can of pepper spray they wisely waited for the Police to arrive.

It's time to take our heads out of the sand. As Robert A. Heinlein said: "An armed society is a polite society" which is why we never had any of these mass shootings before gun free zones were invented. A disarmed society is a barrel full of helpless fish that criminals simply can't resist shooting into.