“In the end there were 38 children dead at the school, two teachers and four other adults.”
I’m not talking about the horrific shooting in Connecticut. I’m talking about the worst school murder in American history. It took place in Michigan, in 1927. A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, used explosives not guns to commit the murders.
Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
I hoped the left would not politicize the Sandy Hook massacre in order to push their agenda for gun control, but there is no doubt now that the big push has begun for “gun control”. The left feels they can now do things they could not do before. They know tragedy can be a great opportunity to play on our emotions even though the facts may not warrant their solutions. Before the bodies of those poor children were even removed from the school, before we could mourn for their souls or the souls of the hero teachers, the left began the push to use this tragedy to attack the second amendment.
Facts you won’t hear during the left’s push to limit law abiding citizens’ access to arms for self-defense are presented by John Fund in his article “The Facts about Mass Shootings”:
1. Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media. In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
2. Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.
3. The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
4. Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
5. Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,”
6. Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.
7. The Aurora CO shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.
8. “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
I hope but doubt that we can have an honest discussion about how we can prevent or at least reduce tragedies like the Sandy Hook murders, but in order to do so we must be honest and not play on the fears and emotions while disregarding the facts.
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