Sunday evening, President Obama said in reaction to the NewTown, Connecticut, massacre that “we have to change.” He was right.
Obama and those who think like him have to change.
They have to abandon their irrational belief that laws are magic.
They have to realize that making someplace a “gun-free zone” doesn’t make the people there safer — it makes them less safe, because it only affects the peaceful, law-abiding, and harmless.
They have to admit that banning some weapon or weapons won’t deter madmen, terrorists, or other predators because it only affects the peaceful, law-abiding, and harmless.
Three decades ago, after a series of PLO terrorist attacks on schools, the Israelis realized that the only way to stop such attacks was to arm the adults at those schools. Are we too stupid to learn the lesson learned by those Israelis — that you stop someone from shooting your children by shooting back?
The problem at Sandy Hook Elementary school wasn’t too many guns — it was too few. The only guns in the school were in the hands of the deranged predator, Adam Lanza.
School principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach rushed Lanza in an attempt to stop him, but they were unarmed and defenseless. Lanza shot them down. Teacher Victoria Soto stood between Lanza and the door behind which her students were hiding. She too was gunned down.
What if Hochsprung, Sherlach, or Soto had had a .38 revolver and had been trained to use it? Could one of them have put two slugs center-mass into Lanza before he shot anyone else? We’ll never know.
But we do know this: the only way Lanza could have been stopped is if someone in that school had shot him.
Obama and those who think like him have to change.
They have to recognize that laws won’t keep weapons out of the hands of the bad guys. And they have to recognize that weapons in the hands of the good guys, and the will to use them, will save lives.
