[Retain Mike]

Well, here we go again with a opportuity for the oh so predictable editorials unrelated to any factual reporting. From Ronald Reagan, through Columbine and Virginia Tech, and on to Phoenix the fiction will re-emerge that ever more precise laws preventing law-abiding people from carrying pistols or rifles will eventually force psychopaths to cower before rules restricting firearms.

However, a rigorous, twenty-year study by John Lott and William Landes from University of Chicago Law School supports expanding concealed carry in public places. Subsequent studies of national data in academic journals show 16 studies finding that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime and show 10 with findings of no discernible effect. No exacting, peer reviewed study refutes their position.

Passage of shall issue laws correlates with large decreases in multiple victim shootings, and reduced harm when shootings actually occur. Use of citizen deadly force makes startling interruptions causing assailants to abandon or improvise assaults. Police then respond to incidences in progress, instead of arriving for body counts and paperwork.

Also important were absences of shootings. Public place shootings provide perpetrators leading roles in malevolent fantasies. Previously imagined screams and explosions suddenly penetrate their beings, embellished by intimate, self-created visual stimuli of human terror, bloody mists, broken bodies, culminating in splendid, convulsive suicides at their chosen moment. The latent presence of armed citizens provides a deterrent disqualifying certain places, and leading prospective murderers to abandon fantasies, or to seek a supportive “gun free” environment.

Rather than invite or allow licensed individuals greater opportunity to thwart violence, it seems more comforting for public officials and writers such as Dionne to weave pleasing elusions around an occasional Columbine, Omaha mall or Virginia Tech. We can expect public places to remain official islands of contentment for predators and psychopaths, during the ten-minute plus police response time.

However if we must suffer more rational firearms laws directed at instruments instead humans let us follow a more consistent, connected liberal logic. The unaddressed problem here obviously has to do with inflammatory rhetoric. For just one example consider that in Fairfax County Virginia guns appear to live passive lives. Yet as soon as they cross the Potomac River and enter the Anacostia area of Washington D.C., they become psychopaths when hearing rules associated with rigid gun control legislation.

We need to take a lead from the Obama administration, which has excised such phrases as “unlawful enemy combatant” and “war on terror” from any discussion surrounding the events of 9/11 and thereafter. Guns need to understand we are not at war with them. If we approach them with an open mind and without preconditions, then we can arrive at lasting détente.

Using this more embracing, benevolent approach to interacting with guns; legislation should consider ways to make guns feel welcome. Let’s require teachers with concealed carry permits to take their pistols to work. In this way guns would not feel offended, and would be unlikely to react violently.

Link to Study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272929

More Guns, Less Crime? The Case for Arming Yourself
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/11/more-guns-less-crime/the-case-for-arming-yourself

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Guns need to understand we are not at war with them. If we approach them with an open mind and without preconditions, then we can arrive at lasting détente. Using this more embracing, benevolent approach to interacting with guns; legislation should consider ways to make guns feel welcome. Let’s require teachers with concealed carry permits to take their pistols to work. In this way guns would not feel offended, and would be unlikely to react violently.

If you do that the SUV lawyers will be all over you seeking equal treatment.