Thought-free Zones

In my earlier post on the shootings that occurred yesterday, I declined to go into the political backlash that has almost been thrust into the forefront of the coverage by the MSM (I am going by what I read online; I have tried to stay away from watching any coverage on the news networks).  Like clock-work, there have been calls for increased gun control in the form of creating "gun-free zones" or proposals to outlaw private ownership of handguns.  I have seen those on both the Left and Right (though it has mostly been coming from the Left) essentially making these types of arguments.  

For example, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp, which owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, courageously asked if this will finally move politicians to finally ban assault weapons.  Nevermind the fact that assault weapons were not used in the shootings in Connecticut and that there actually is already a ban on fully automatic assault weapons that dates back to the passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934.

Today in USA Today, Glenn Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee, takes on these types of arguments and finds them wanting.  I will quote his piece in full because it's the shortest and clearest distillation I've read on exposing the myths and fallacies of the anti-gun crowd:

"After a shooting spree," author William Burroughs once said, "they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it." Burroughs continued: "I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military." 

Plenty of people — especially among America's political and journalistic classes — feel differently. They'd be much more comfortable seeing ordinary Americans disarmed. And whenever there is a mass shooting, or other gun incident that snags the headlines, they do their best to exploit the tragedy and push for laws that would, well, take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. 

There are a lot of problems with this approach, but one of the most significant is this one: It doesn't work. One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well. 

In a way, this is no surprise. If there's someone present with a gun when a mass shooting begins, the shooter is likely to be shot himself. And, in fact, many mass shootings — from the high school shooting by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Miss., to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., where an armed volunteer shot the attacker — have been terminated when someone retrieved a gun from a car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter. 

Policies making areas "gun free" provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren't stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it's the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.
This vulnerability makes some people uncomfortable. I teach at a state university with a campus gun-free policy, and quite a few of my students have permits to carry guns. After the Virginia Tech shooting a few years ago, one of them asked me if we could move class off campus, because she felt unsafe being unarmed. I certainly would have felt perfectly safe having her carry a gun in my presence; she was, and is, a responsible adult. I feel the same way about the other law students I know who have carry permits. 

Gun-free zones are premised on a lie: that murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers. That's an insult to honest people. Sometimes, it's a deadly one. The notion that more guns mean more crime is wrong. In fact, as gun ownership has expanded over the past decade, crime has gone down. 

Fortunately, the efforts to punish "the people who didn't do it" are getting less traction these days. The Supreme Court, of course, has recognized that under the Constitution, honest people have a right to defend themselves with firearms, inside and outside the home, something that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit recently acknowledged in striking down Illinois' gun-carry ban. Given that gun-free zones seem to be a magnet for mass shooters, maybe we should be working to shrink or eliminate them, rather than expand them. As they say, if it saves just one life, it's worth it.

One thing to take away:  Murderers don't follow the law.