Evil By Association

It's painful to see how the public discourse in this country has disintegrated to such a level now that we can't come together over anything, even a tragedy like the shootings at Virginia Tech. The bodies weren't even cold before Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia was on the radio blaming the shootings on President Bush, the GOP, and the NRA. Other equally uninformed people, such as Rosie O'Donnell, are making a soapbox of the piled bodies at VT. On the day after such an event it's really quite a disgusting display.

It's no longer possible for an event like this latest massacre to be caused by an evil or demented individual; it must now be the fault of an evil or demented political party since all events are now reduced to their political impact regardless of the human toll. Therefore, all Republicans are evil by association because many of us believe the 2nd amendment means what it says and we believe that restricting access to guns doesn't stop these terrible attacks, but makes them more likely and more deadly.

Political Diary addresses that issue in this post from today:

The horrific slaying of 32 Virginia Tech students yesterday was largely treated with restraint in the public policy community. But Paul Helmke, a former mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind. and current president of the Brady Campaign, immediately called for more gun-control measures as a way for the nation to respond. Likewise, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat whose husband was killed by a gunman in 1993, claimed: "The unfortunate situation in Virginia could have been avoided if congressional leaders stood up to the gun lobby."

In reality, Virginia Tech was, as many bloggers put it, a "danger-free zone for armed criminals." The school was one of many to prohibit all guns on campus. Last year, legislation to allow exceptions for licensed and trained gun owners failed to pass the Virginia legislature.

Virginia Tech officials falsely believed their policy meant more security, not less. Its spokesman, Larry Hincker, described the school's anti-gun policy in 2005 by saying: "We believe guns don't belong in the classroom. In an academic environment, we believe you should be free from fear." He proudly noted that students who had tried to bring handguns onto school property had been promptly suspended.

John Lott, a gun-control scholar, says the problems with such laws is that good intentions aren't enough. "What counts is whether the laws ultimately save lives. Unfortunately, too many gun laws primarily disarm law-abiding citizens, not criminals." He notes that some 40 states now have some kind of law allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed firearms. In most of those states, between 2% and 6% of all adults have such permits, thus giving citizens in a community the size of a university the knowledge that someone other than the local police will have access to self-defense.

Such laws have consequences. Mr. Lott and Bill Landes of the University of Chicago law school examined multiple-victim public shootings in the U.S. from 1977 to 1999 and found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, the rate of multiple victim public shootings fell by 60%. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell even more -- an average of 78% -- as the remaining incidents tended to involve fewer victims per attack.

As blogger Glenn Reynolds noted at Instapundit.com, the most egregious incidents involving mass slaughter "do seem to take place in locations where it's not legal for people with carry permits to carry guns, though. I certainly wish that someone had been in a position to shoot this guy at the outset."

I would love to hear from the Virginia legislators who were quite pleased with themselves when they defeated the bill that might have given someone the opportunity to end yesterday's shooting before the toll hit 32. Do they still feel their "do-gooder" approach to gun legislation made the campus safer? Do they think that had guns been allowed on campus that there would have been daily shootouts? (they probably do).

The ignorant will continue their assault on gun rights while ignoring the statistics shown above, and God help us if we get a Dem Congress and a Dem White House. The gun bills will be flying, though based on the recent ruling in Washington D.C., I'm not sure how much farther they can go without crossing important constitutional boundries.

If we're going to play the "guilt by association" game, I've got one for you based on a caller to Rush Limbaugh today. The shooter apparently left a rambling note blaming "rich kids" and "debauchery on campus" as part of the reason that we all made him do this terrible deed.

Where do you suppose this Korean immigrant learned all that stuff? I don't think he got that while he was still living in the old country or else I'm sure he would never have come here. We all know that our universities are chock full of lefty nuts who, if not outright anti-American, are at the very least anti-capitalism and very much opposed to the free market economic system we have that allows some folks to get richer than others. The press will not leave one stone unturned to determine where and how this guy got his guns, but will they try and find out where he got his ideas? Will they investigate the teachings of his VT professors and examine them for the kind of leftist tripe displayed in his suicide manifesto?

Don't hold your breath.