Don't Give an Inch! Protect yourselves cand your guns

JEWS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FIREARMS OWNERSHIP
Wednesday April 18, 2007

We've all heard about yesterday's tragic mass shooting on the Virginia Tech Campus that left 33 dead, including the gunman. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of those victims.

As can be expected, gun-prohibitionists are crawling out of the woodwork to lay the blame squarely on the availability of firearms. But how can they?

Virginia law states that holders of concealed carry permits are allowed to carry on university campuses ( http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/80510 ). In the name of "safety", certain persons lobbied successfully to prevent the carrying of firearms on Virginia Tech's campus. Yesterday's massacre was the direct result of that lobbying.

Did the rules forbidding the carrying of firearms prevent Seung Hui Cho's senseless slaughter? Obviously not. In fact, the rules _encouraged_ his rampage because law-abiding citizens were unable to prevent Cho from completing his butchery.

The blood of those 32 innocents is on the hands of those who lobbied for victim disarmament, and on the hands of the president of the university who acquiesed to their short-sighted demands. Their hoplophobia did nothing but ensure that larger numbers of individuals died at the hands of a psychotic.

Speaking of hoplophobia -- we watched with interest the reporting of Nightline's Terry Moran on the slaying during Monday night's special Nightline edition . He showed classic signs of the mental health issues outlined in Dr. Sarah Thompson's classic article, "Raging Against Self-Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines the Anti-Gun Mentality" ( http://www.jpfo.org/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm ).

Despite logic and reason, other gun-prohibitionists will no doubt callously use this incident to push their "gun control" schemes, either out of irrational fear, or a desire for control. We must stand fast and refuse to give in to their emotional rhetoric. "Gun control" would not have prevented this terrible tragedy -- "gun control" _caused_ this tragedy.

_Evil people find a way to kill_. It's that simple.

For perspective, this degree of suicide-killing (or mass-killing via car-bombs) happens about *three times a week in Iraq.* Terror bombers kill in a big way in an attempt to drive policy decisions. Even the U.S. military cannot stop all the bombings in Iraq -- the people who perform them are intent on making their statements via mass murder. Likewise, the U.S. gov't won't be able to stop all of the suicide killings here.

Just as we don't accept the terrorists' killings as policy arguments, we should not let domestic terrorism events like this shooting be treated as policy arguments.

The questions are: what can be done to detect the potential perpetrators? what can be done defensively so that perpetrators cannot do as much damage? VA Tech's response was lousy: they did not take the kind of action needed to respond to a multiple murder on campus when the suspect is on the loose. Likewise, they had assured a defense-free environment, so that the killer could not be stopped by equal force.

VA Tech's ill-considered policies and responses do not create reasons to disarm non-violent people as a national policy -- yet that will be called for.