Courtesy Oleg Volk
Yesterday, the tragedy of school shootings again reared its ugly head with reportedly 16 fatalities. Immediately, calls for more gun control rang out loud and clear. You'd expect to also hear complaints about America's "culture of violence" leading to these kinds of crimes, except that this latest case of schoolyard violence happened in Germany.
From the guardian.co.uk:
The country already has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Handguns are only on sale to those aged 18 or over, with heavier weapons restricted to those over 21. No weapon can be purchased legally without a firearms ownership license, which is only available after personal checks.
None of this appears to have prevented a 17-year-old former pupil of Albertville school in Winnenden from going on the rampage.
German media focusing on the fact that the killer's father was a member of a shooting club and owned 16 guns, one of which his son was able to steal and use for this crime. Gun control advocates jumped at the chance to place the blame on the firearm and argue for even stricter controls on firearms ownership.
Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy head of Germany's Christian Democratic Union parliamentary party, didn't seem convinced even more gun laws were the answer.
"The state cannot give a guarantee that nothing like this will happen again," Bosbach said. "Guns laws are already very strict"
According to wikipedia, a number of criteria must be prove before a firearms ownership license, required before purchasing a gun, will even be issued:
- age of consent (18 years for rimfire arms/21 years higher calibers)
- trustworthiness
- personal adequacy
- expert knowledge
- necessity
Persons who are convicted felons, have a record of mental disorder, or are deemed unreliable or aggressive are prohibited from obtaining a firearms ownership license and from owning a gun. The entire process was laid out by a German hunter:
For hunters and gun club members, they have to answer more than 4,000 questions to get the license and there is a specific emphasis in teaching and questions on gun law. You have to have everything registered.
You get a license card, which when you sell your gun will register that sale automatically with the authorities. You can only buy ammunition when you present the card — and the ammunition can only be for the gun you own.
Not only did all of that fail to prevent this tragedy, but this was not even the first of it's kind in recent memory. In 2002, first the city of Freising had a school shooting with 4 fatalities, then later that same year the city of Erfurt experienced a school shooting with 17 killed. In 2006, an Emsdetten youth killed 37.
In nearby Finland, school shootings in 2007 and 2008 left more than 20 killed. That country is currently considering more stringent gun control measures. Switzerland, Portugal, and Denmark have all announced plans for increased gun control measures as well, with the European Union calling for tightening access to guns across the entire bloc by 2010.
All this gun control, yet a determined individual was still able to obtain a firearm and kill with impunity since there was nobody able to stop him until he finally ended up in a shootout with police. It is unclear at this time whether he was killed by police or by his own hand.
When the massacre came to an end, it was armed individuals that stopped it. The gun grabbers don't want to hear it, but how many lives could have been saved if just one person, be it administrator, teacher, or lawfully armed citizen, had been on the scene? Gun control disarmed the victims, but did not disarm the killer. How many deaths will it take before this social experiment of disarming victims is abandoned for real solutions to the problem?
Check out other Gun Rights Examiners:
- Austin: Sean Hannity: ‘Islamic terrorist training camps right here in America’
- Charlotte: Multiple victim public homicide: Lessons of shootings in Alabama & Germany
- DC: Federal law suit filed after DC refuses to register handgun because it’s the wrong color
- Denver: Shootings in the news: How do we respond?
- Los Angeles: Another Shooting: reactions can be irrational, too
- Milwaukee: Why are we tiptoeing?
- Minneapolis: The first thing you do is drag him inside
- National: Wrong reactions to shooting sprees make us more vulnerable
- Seattle: Tragedies in Alabama, Germany will fuel frenzy to ban guns while ignoring root causes of violence
- St. Louis: Two vastly different sets of gun laws; two very similar outcomes
- Wisconsin: Wisconsin's brand new 137 year old carry law
Comments
Ordinary folks need to understand that making it "harder" to obtain weapons of violence does absolutely nothing to make us safer. The crazies bent on some sick rampage or the career criminal carrying out his chosen profession will find a way, easy or hard, to get what they need to acomplish their goals.
Laws restricting access to firearms have the greatest effect on honest citizens, the ones we have the least to fear from, and the most likely to be the intended victims of the bad guys who as stated will still always manage to be armed.
So I submit for consideration the simple fact that gun control, whether well intended or part of some other hidden agenda, is actually counter productive to the maintenance of a safe society and damaging to our individual health and wellbeing.
Uncle Lar - You're beginning to "get" it.
Uncle Lar, moreover, how about this?: One day soon, hopefully, with excellent writers like Daniel White and this fine article, I submit to you that one of two choices will become clear to Americans. They will have to decide that there is no middle ground on the issue of gun control because of several overriding truths, namely: #1 Gun control does not work because it has no effect on either crime or criminals and therefor has NEVER prevented even one crime of violence or saved even one life. #2 All gun control laws are unlawful because the overriding law of the land states that "the right of the people to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms shall not be infringed (read that "regulated" or even "controlled"). #3 The gun banners hide behind the lie that citizens need to be protected by "reasonable" "common sense" laws to "keep guns out of the hands of the hand of criminals, insane people, etc. to prevent "gun violence; yet this is patently a lie becuse it doesn't work(See #1.) contd.
--contd. and because of truth #4 It doesn't work because human behavior (crime) cannot be legislated. In other words, NO law can PREVENT someone from committing a crime. And also: #5 Crime cannot be controlled by controlling or regulating objects, such as firearms. (See #1 again.) So the choice is this: Either Gun control laws are lawful, good, and necessary, or they are not. They are either unlawful, evil, and totally worthless as to protecting society, or they are not. You CAN'T have it both ways. A little poison is still poison. And all of this becomes even more clear when one considers that the founding fathers saw NO reason to place ANY restrictions on the inalienable right to keep and bear arms but DID see fit to put into words that the right "should NOT be INFRINGED". I submit that the evidence is now and will continue to indicate that ALL gun control laws are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, EVIL, and totally UNNECESSARY, except to those whose REAL agenda is to destroy ALL American freedoms!!
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