Something I wrote in 2007 after another mass murder then. As true now as it was then.
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What IS the best way to reduce or prevent mass shootings?
No method is 100% perfect, of course, and never will be as long as we are a society of imperfect people.
But most of the methods being tried today, pretty much have no effect. Indeed, insane mass murderers seem to be drawn to the "Gun Free Zones" set up by naïve liberals. Where else can they be guaranteed a large collection of unarmed, vulnerable targets, with many uninterrupted minutes to blow away as many people as they like before the cops get there?
Is there a viable way to cut down the numbers of such shootings, and/or the body counts?
Many of the whackos (people who actually start shooting into crowds, at malls, post offices, schools etc.) know it is a suicide mission. The idea that they may be killed, obviously doesn't deter them... in that way, anyway.
But what most of them want, is to go out with a huge splash. They want huge headlines after the fact, crying and wailing about the ten or twenty or thirty innocent people who died, how horrible it all is, wailing and gnashing about what we could have done to prevent it, three-page exposes about the shooter's disturbed childhood and how unfair society was to him, etc. etc. To their twisted minds, that's worth getting dead over.
But if they show up at their planned execution site, start pulling the trigger, wound the first person, miss with the next shot, and then get get shot through the middle of the bod by someone in the crowd they never suspected might have his own gun, next day's headlines will be much less lurid. Some nut pulled a gun and fired two shots, wounding one. The wounded person is now recovering in the hospital, and the nut is dead, end of story. He's a footnote on page 28, if that.
And THAT's what the whackos don't want to happen. They want huge headlines and weeks of media coverage, even after they are dead, that's mostly why they're doing it.
If everyone is allowed to carry, most people still won't bother. I probably wouldn't most of the time. But some people will. And a nutcase like this guy will never know which people in the crowd, are the ones with their own gun. Could be the granny in the wheelchair over there, whose kids were killed in a home invasion robbery five years ago, who swore she'd never go unarmed again, and never misses her weekend hour or two at the practice range.
The deranged whacko is certainly insane. But he's obviously still coherent enough to have a goal in mind, and to do what he needs to carry it out. And he's probably coherent enough to realize that a few unknown people in the crowd who have guns and are practiced in their use, can and will deny him the splashy headlines he wants. And there's nothing he can do about it.
It's enough to often make even a deranged whacko reconsider his plans. Why start shooting at a public event, if you're simply going to become dead three seconds later with little or no lurid body count to show for it?
Letting law-abiding citizens carry freely is, and has always been, the best deterrent to crime. Criminals know there will be somebody nearby who will discourage them quickly. Only in so-called "gun free zones" are the criminals guaranteed the freedom to carry out their crimes.
Or does somebody think that some nutcase who is ready and willing to murder dozens of people, will turn around and obey a new "No guns permitted here" law?
