An opinion columnist for the Collegiate Times in Virginia took a swipe at so-called “gun-free zones” and a poll running with the story suggests a majority of readers agree with her.
Amanda Fields, an opinions columnist for the newspaper, wrote that the way “the left has tried to take away gun rights is by implementing gun-free zones.”
“A gun-free zone is exactly what is sounds like,” she said, “it’s a place where citizens are not legally allowed to carry guns. In a fairytale, perhaps this would be a great idea. No one carries a gun, no shootings and no robberies, right? Wrong. The people who commit gun violence are not law-abiding citizens. If you haven’t noticed, murder and assault are already illegal. The law does not act as a deterrent for any of the people who have committed or wish to commit such acts.”
Nearly 70 percent of the respondents to the accompanying survey agree that gun-free zones are not an effective deterrent to violence.
“The only people who truly abide by gun-free zones are the people who respect the law and have no intent of using their gun to harm an innocent person,” Fields observed. “These zones unarm the good guys and have no impact on the bad guys, essentially making citizens in a gun-free zone sitting ducks.”
Such a statement gives some people in academia heartburn because it goes against the grain of campus political correctness.
This is especially so with the Collegiate Times. It is headquartered at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, the scene of a mass campus shooting that occurred ten years ago in which 32 people were killed and another 17 were wounded. The day afterwards, an organization called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus was created. Could an armed student or teacher, or both, have stopped the slaughter? That will never be known, but they may have at least changed the odds.
The idea of carrying firearms on campus has caught on in a couple of states, because whether they want to acknowledge it or otherwise, crimes can occur on college and university campuses. What makes a difference is whether the intended victims have the means to fight back.
Fields noted that advertising a place as “gun-free” is tantamount to hanging a neon sign out front as a signal to criminals and crazy people to come in and have their way. And she said something else:
“Edmund Burke once said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Politicians on the left are making it so that good men have no option but to do nothing.”
Related:
House Committee Releases ‘Scathing’ Fast and Furious Report
Kim Kardashian: ‘I Know Importance of Armed Security’
In Northwest, Ferry Terrorists Might Face More Than Just Police
