Ann Coulter on Stopping School Shootings

Wow! Great article by one of our favorite conservative woman, titled "WE KNOW HOW TO STOP SCHOOL SHOOTINGS", by Ann Coulter published Wednesday Dec 19, 2012. Wish we would have found it earlier.

In the wake of a monstrous crime like a madman's mass murder of defenseless women and children at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the nation's attention is riveted on what could have been done to prevent such a massacre.

Luckily, some years ago, two famed economists, William Landes at the University of Chicago and John Lott at Yale, conducted a massive study of multiple victim public shootings in the United States between 1977 and 1995 to see how various legal changes affected their frequency and death toll.

Landes and Lott examined many of the very policies being proposed right now in response to the Connecticut massacre: waiting periods and background checks for guns, the death penalty and increased penalties for committing a crime with a gun.

None of these policies had any effect on the frequency of, or carnage from, multiple-victim shootings. (I note that they did not look at reforming our lax mental health laws, presumably because the ACLU is working to keep dangerous nuts on the street in all 50 states.)

Only one public policy has ever been shown to reduce the death rate from such crimes: concealed-carry laws.

The effect of concealed-carry laws in deterring mass public shootings was even greater than the impact of such laws on the murder rate generally.

Someone planning to commit a single murder in a concealed-carry state only has to weigh the odds of one person being armed. But a criminal planning to commit murder in a public place has to worry that anyone in the entire area might have a gun.

You will notice that most multiple-victim shootings occur in "gun-free zones" -- even within states that have concealed-carry laws: public schools, churches, Sikh temples, post offices, the movie theater where James Holmes committed mass murder, and the Portland, Ore., mall where a nut starting gunning down shoppers a few weeks ago.

Guns were banned in all these places. Mass killers may be crazy, but they're not stupid.

If the deterrent effect of concealed-carry laws seems surprising to you, that's because the media hide stories of armed citizens stopping mass shooters. At the Portland shooting, for example, no explanation was given for the amazing fact that the assailant managed to kill only two people in the mall during the busy Christmas season.

It turns out, concealed-carry-holder Nick Meli hadn't noticed that the mall was a gun-free zone. He pointed his (otherwise legal) gun at the shooter as he paused to reload, and the next shot was the attempted mass murderer killing himself. (Meli aimed, but didn't shoot, because there were bystanders behind the shooter.)

In a nonsense "study" going around the Internet right now, Mother Jones magazine claims to have produced its own study of all public shootings in the last 30 years and concludes: "In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun."

This will come as a shock to people who know something about the subject.

The magazine reaches its conclusion by simply excluding all cases where an armed civilian stopped the shooter: They looked only at public shootings where four or more people were killed, i.e., the ones where the shooter wasn't stopped.

If we care about reducing the number of people killed in mass shootings, shouldn't we pay particular attention to the cases where the aspiring mass murderer was prevented from getting off more than a couple rounds?

It would be like testing the effectiveness of weed killers, but refusing to consider any cases where the weeds died.

In addition to the Portland mall case, here are a few more examples excluded by the Mother Jones methodology:

-- Mayan Palace Theater, San Antonio, Texas, this week: Jesus Manuel Garcia shoots at a movie theater, a police car and bystanders from the nearby China Garden restaurant; as he enters the movie theater, guns blazing, an armed off-duty cop shoots Garcia four times, stopping the attack. Total dead: Zero.

-- Winnemucca, Nev., 2008: Ernesto Villagomez opens fire in a crowded restaurant; concealed carry permit-holder shoots him dead. Total dead: Two. (I'm excluding the shooters' deaths in these examples.)

-- Appalachian School of Law, 2002: Crazed immigrant shoots the dean and a professor, then begins shooting students; as he goes for more ammunition, two armed students point their guns at him, allowing a third to tackle him. Total dead: Three.

-- Santee, Calif., 2001: Student begins shooting his classmates -- as well as the "trained campus supervisor"; an off-duty cop who happened to be bringing his daughter to school that day points his gun at the shooter, holding him until more police arrive. Total dead: Two.

-- Pearl High School, Mississippi, 1997: After shooting several people at his high school, student heads for the junior high school; assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieves a .45 pistol from his car and points it at the gunman's head, ending the murder spree. Total dead: Two.

-- Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A student shoots up a junior high school dance being held at a restaurant; restaurant owner pulls out his shotgun and stops the gunman. Total dead: One.

By contrast, the shootings in gun-free zones invariably result in far higher casualty figures -- Sikh temple, Oak Creek, Wis. (six dead); Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. (32 dead); Columbine High School, Columbine, Colo. (12 dead); Amish school, Lancaster County, Pa. (five little girls killed); public school, Craighead County, Ark. (five killed, including four little girls).

All these took place in gun-free zones, resulting in lots of people getting killed -- and thereby warranting inclusion in the Mother Jones study.

If what we care about is saving the lives of innocent human beings by reducing the number of mass public shootings and the deaths they cause, only one policy has ever been shown to work: concealed-carry laws. On the other hand, if what we care about is self-indulgent grandstanding, and to hell with dozens of innocent children being murdered in cold blood, try the other policies.

Online Remarks from Ann's column:

You cannot ban crazy or stupid, but you can Arm yourselves against them.

When Seconds count, cops are Minutes away.

You left out the Azana Spa in Wisconsin where three unarmed women were killed and four unarmed women were wounded. The sign on the door the killer used for entry read: "No Firearms Allowed".

As a Democrat, it's a rare instance when I agree with Ms. Coulter. This time I am with her 100%.

The article brings up an interesting point. She says, in all of the examples, that the shooters surrendered as soon a weapon was aimed at them and that all instances happened in "no-gun zones".

Violent crime is curbed when the criminal knows that his victim may fight back.

She is correct & in many cases the gunman commits suicide when they fear the police or someone is closing in. So imagine if a few arms brandished 5 minutes before the police response time occurs. Probably save some additional carnage.

When Florida enacted its conceal carry law robberies went down by 80% because the bad guys didn't know who was carrying so they then aimed at foreigners coming off cruise ships and areas frequented by overseas tourists and those incidents went up per capita.

Lindisfarne To Sandy Hook: The Tragedy of Wishful

This article, Lindisfarne To Sandy Hook: The Tragedy of Wishful was sent to us and linked to the article published on the American Thinker.

By Richard F. Miniter

I pull up in front of our town's little savings bank branch, drop out of the door and when my boots hit the pavement reach under my shirt and the remove the Smith & Wesson Model 28 .357 which I then put under the seat before locking the truck. "What are you doing Grandpa?" my granddaughter asks walking around from the other door.

"Here's a word of advice cupcake. It's never a good idea to walk into a bank with a gun." I don't always carry it. It's a big piece of iron but it's the same gun I carried long ago as a police officer, I'm very comfortable with it and sometimes I get a feeling when about to leave the house and after a moment's hesitation, take it along. And that day was one of those.

The next stop after the bank was her school and when we walked in together I left it locked up under the seat again. Not because I was worried about violating the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act because, and while most school teachers and administrators don't understand this, there are exceptions and I'm one. Instead I left the gun under the seat because I would give those school teachers and administrators the vapors if they even suspected I was armed. Guns are evil most of them seem to feel. Not only mine. The guns of the police they'd summon to their aid are bad too. The make believe guns boys play cowboy with are bad too, even the gun a second grader might pencil in when drawing a picture of an "army man" is evil. It's a key tenet of their wishful thinking.

And a very strange brand of wishful thinking it is. Because instead of hoping for something to come their way, they're wishing for nothing to happen. Its symbol might be a monkey with it hands over its eyes because it's principal doctrine is that if you can't see any evil, refuse to see any evil, then it doesn't exist. Of course it's only a variation of the old notion that if you don't look a lion in the eye he won't charge. But it's what these people believe. Which is why that school, like many other schools run by similar believers once prohibited any discussion of 9/11, any videotapes, photographs or indeed any reference to it at all. Again if you don't see evil or don't learn about it, talk it out, try to learn the lessons it teaches you, then it doesn't exist, won't have any power over you. Can't.

Without any evidence at all that they're right, indeed in the face of any number of horrible examples proving them wrong, they cling to this belief. Because on some level they believe they want to convince themselves that they're "better than that", better than Beslan, better than Columbine, better than those awful images of people jumping from the twin towers. That they're different somehow. Special.

Which means that they will not suffer armed fathers or grandfathers around children as it "sends the wrong message."

And so I leave the gun under the seat.

But educators should know something about history. Because this is an old story and has its roots in a tragedy every bit as compelling as Sandy Hook School. The story of Lindisfarne.

An island connected to northern England's coast by a tidal causeway. A holy place, in fact its name today is Holy Island and 1300 years ago it was Christendom's most prominent experiment with what we today would call a Gun Free School Zone. But what happened there should have proved for all time that covering one's eyes, pretending that demons don't exist, that you're somehow "better than that", is worse than futile. Criminally worse.

Lindisfarne was a monastery, renowned for its non-violence, dedicated to learning, to the idea that in the tumult of the early Middle Ages, man could, should be, was "better than that." Gloriously "better than that." And for a while people believed along with them in this "right message" and endowed Lindisfarne with riches, sang its praises in ten thousand churches.

Its ruins today are still a beacon atop a spire of high rock, surmounted by sheer stone walls, far above the everyday concerns of this world.

But they are ruins because one dark night in the eighth century Lindisfarne's rock and walls were scaled by Vikings holding their swords in their mouths. Demons out of the northern seas who chased the unarmed monks from room to room in the monastery, butchering them for sport, sacking their golden altar and trampling their precious books underfoot. An event which shook Christendom to its core.

Why did it happen? Quite simply because the killers were drawn by the defenselessness of the place, by Lindisfarne's "right message", by the fact that Lindisfarne abjured violence and trusted as school administrators trust today, in never looking the lion in the eye.

Above all by the fact that Lindisfarne would not suffer the presence of armed men who might defend it.

Today most of us don't even remember that there once was such a place. Even though we keep repeating the same mistake it made. We don't remember what we should have learned then; that weakness will, sooner or later, summon horror.

As Adam Lanza was summoned to Sandy Hook School.

Chose the one target where he had the best chance of not encountering armed citizens, a gun-free school zone. Just as the Vikings didn't choose to assault one of the many fortified castles chock a block with armed men elsewhere on the coast but instead chose Lindisfarne. Just as Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold didn't choose a gun show to assault, a rodeo, a police station but instead chose Columbine.

I'm not certain what the solution is. No one wants schools to become armed camps with sandbagged revetments, passwords and barbed wire. Besides the evil one is a liar painted with many tongues and so the monsters who wish to kill children often adopt other techniques. Walter Seifert in Cologne Germany constructed a flame thrower he put to use through an elementary school's windows burning to death eight students, two teachers and horribly maiming many others. You have the three men who buried an entire school bus load of children in California. You have poisoners, knife wielding maniacs, stranglers, bombers, kidnappers and pedophile killers.

Instead it strikes me that any solution has to be rooted in natural affinity. The relationship of parent to child, neighbor to neighbor, grandparent to grandchild. Not in the fatuous belief that stone hearted killers will obey the resolutions of school boards, the acts of Congress or indeed do anything but laugh at any amount of wishful thinking.

In this vein there is an interesting sidebar to the Revolutionary War. That fact that while the British and the Tories and Indians found it relatively easy to break our militia in the open and massacre them, the same militia could not be defeated in the woods. The reason was that when the militia couldn't see their officers, let alone listen to them tell them where to stand, neighbors, fathers, sons, cousins and uncles broke ranks and gathered together. And after the battle had been joined wouldn't leave each other. Wouldn't desert their wounded son or their neighbor's body and so the British found them impossible to budge.

Considering this point one might recall that at Columbine there were no such bonds which could gather and stop Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Nor was one considered necessary. Instead there were only rules grounded in a lot of wishful thinking. Rules which Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold ignored and so despite a surplus of bravery among individual teachers and students, there was an armed sheriff's deputy on duty who heard the first shots and didn't run towards them as he would have if they were his children. There was the school principal clueless about the murderers, who couldn't recall Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold student walking the halls in black trench coats in the days prior to the killings and threatening other students. We can believe his testimony or not but one thing we know for sure is that he wasn't looking for any lions to stare down.

Finally there were the despicable parents of Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold who ignored or were oblivious to the collection of weapons. Mothers and fathers in authority over their children who simply wished nothing bad would happen.

And so the concept of a gun free school zone established by authority turned out to be as much of a joke at Columbine as it was the other day in Newtown, Connecticut. Just as the same idea was shown a farce at Lindisfarne 1300 years ago.

But yet, these children have fathers and numbered among them men who will protect their children and know how to do it.

Now I understand that public education today is a determinedly feminine institution. But they have tremendous leeway under the law and so one thing they school administrators and teachers might consider doing is admit the fact that they have no more idea on how to physically defend children than they do about how to build a space shuttle with their second grade paper doll scissors. But among the parents of their pupils are many men who do have that experience and training. Former or current police officers, soldiers and Marines. People who've been shot at and who've shot. Had to winkle armed men out of a closed room and take them down. Men who will deter evil by their presence.

So for once why can't some hapless school administrator call them in? Ask them what they would do to keep these children safe? Their children safe. And then heed what they say. Do what they say.

It is all so sad. But the bullet ridden bodies of those little angels and angelic teachers in Newtown should show us that wishful thinking won't work, has never worked and will never work. If it did, we'd only have to wish those children back.

Wouldn't we?

Richard F. Miniter is a former local Chief-Of-Police and the author of THE THINGS I WANT MOST, The Extraordinary Journey Of A Boy To A Family Of His Own, BDD, Random House. He can be reached at miniterhome@aol.com