Gun Control not the solution for school violence.

This is without contest the worst school shooting at any level this country has ever seen and perhaps the world. I for one have wondered since the moment this happened if the situation would have played out differently if Virginia Tech had been like the rest of the state and allowed students and faculty the right to carry with a concealed weapon permits.

Many on the left are using this tragedy to push there agenda for total ban on guns. In their simplistic views of the world, if there were no guns there would be no crime and we would all live in a peaceful, safer society, holding hands singing kum-bye-yah. Several countries have tried this tactic and every single one has failed miserably.

Great Britain has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. To curb violent crime rates, they banned all handguns in 1997. What happened after they disarmed the general public? Homicide rates jumped by 50% and armed muggings increased by 53%. All handguns gone, and gun violence up.

In 1996, Australia took 660,000 guns off the street in a "buy back" program. If the liberal gun control theory is right, crime rates should have fallen. They didn't. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the murder rate increased by nearly 10%, assaults rose by 17%, and armed robbery went up by 73%. But how can that be? I thought fewer guns meant less violent crime
The truth is if you outlaw guns then outlaws are the only ones with guns. In all the years the Brady anti-gun organization has been advocating gun control there has never been one single gun control plan presented that would take the guns out of the hands of criminals. This is the oddity of gun control. Only law abiding people are going to abide by gun control laws. Criminals are not.

You will never get the guns out of the hands of those who want to use them for crime. Like it or not, that includes troubled people like Cho Seung-Hui and many others who have opened fire in schools and other public places. These people were intent on destruction and no anti-gun law or policy would have prevented these tragedies.

There have been some school shootings that were actually prevented or stopped by civilians with guns believe it or not.

In one incident a man was driving by a school when he noticed children running frantically out of the building. One of the children told him that there was a student inside shooting people. The civilian pulled out his gun, ran in side, and confronted the student. The student put down the gun and surrendered.

In another high school a vice-principal was informed there was a student in the hallways with a gun. He had a gun in his car, so he had to park off campus. He sprinted a half-mile to his car. He then sprinted back with the gun to confront the student. Lives saved.

There have been many other cases where civilians with guns have prevented further carnage at the hands of killers. The media isn't fond of reporting these episodes because they don't contribute to the cause of gun control.

Here is something else I have not seen in the media. Citizens in Virginia are permitted to carry concealed weapons with a proper permit from the state unless you are on a college campus. Earlier this year the Virginia General Assembly failed to act on house bill 1572 that would have allowed college students and employees to carry handguns on campus with a concealed weapons permit. However the bill died in subcommittee.

After the bill was thrown out Larry Hincker, a spokesman for Virginia Tech, said "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Really.. how safe do you suppose the students and faculty in Norris Hall felt as gun shots rang out and bullets started flying?

What if there had been a student or a professor in the dorm with a gun that heard the argument in an adjoining room. Could that student or faculty member prevented this whole tragedy from ever happening? We will never know.

Some people, otherwise known as liberals, will argue "We don't want to return to the wild, wild west." We don’t? Why not? What research do you suppose they have put into their "wild wild west" slogan other than what they have seen in the movies? Have they researched anything about the actual crime rates in the so-called wild west? You might be surprised to learn that the crime rate in what we now refer to as the "wild wild west" was actually lower than what it is in most American cities today.

Here is a story about two towns that took two completely different approaches with gun control.
In March 1982, Kennesaw Ga. In response to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of "Wild West" showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.

The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.

By comparison, Morton Grove, the first city in Illinois to adopt a gun ban for anyone other than police officers, the city's crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent.
This was not what some predicted.

In a column titled "Gun Town USA," Art Buchwald suggested Kennesaw would soon become a place where routine disagreements between neighbors would be settled in shootouts. The Washington Post mocked Kennesaw as "the brave little city … soon to be pistol-packing capital of the world."

Now let me ask this. If you are a madman that wants to shoot a place up are you going to do it in “Gun Town USA” the pistol-packing capital of the world or are you going to go to Morton Grove, Illinois?