Reformation Faith Today

Today saw two more attacks by gun weilding assailants, both in Colorado. Fox News reported on an attack early Sunday morning at a Youth With a Mission training facility in Colorado. Then later on Sunday a man opened fire at a church near Denver soon after the 11:00 service had ended.

This is on top of the tragic slaughter in an Omaha mall last week where eight people were killed and five wounded.

These shootings are indeed tragic. Innocent people were killed and wounded.

John Lott wrote an opinion on FoxNews online about the vulnerability we all face in what he calls “gun free zones.” In most cases like these, the only person with a firearm is the killer. The rest of us are not allowed to carry a firearm in malls, churches and schools.

There are many of us law-abiding citizens who have concealed carry permits. Since the law restricts where we can carry our firearms, and since we obey the law, when some insane person decides to open fire, there is no one around who can defend the innocents.

This a tragedy and a shame. Of course the criminal probably knows the law. He knows that there are signs telling him not to bring a gun into the public place. And of course, since he is a criminal, he ignores the law!

Here is an excerpt from Lott’s piece:

People know the list: Virginia Tech saw 32 murdered earlier this year; the Columbine High School shooting left 13 murdered in 1999; Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, had 23 who were fatally shot by a deranged man in 1991; and a McDonald’s in Southern California had 21 people shot dead by an unemployed security guard in 1984.

All these attacks — indeed, all attacks involving more than a small number of people being killed — happened in gun-free zones.

In recent years, similar attacks have occurred across the world, including in Australia, France, Germany and Britain. Do all these countries lack enough gun-control laws? Hardly. The reverse is more accurate.

The law-abiding, not criminals, are obeying the rules. Disarming the victims simply means that the killers have less to fear. As Wednesday’s attack demonstrated yet again, police are important, but they almost always arrive at the crime scene after the crime has occurred.

The longer it takes for someone to arrive on the scene with a gun, the more people who will be harmed by such an attack.

You can see the entire opinion piece here. I think Lott makes a very good argument for us law-abiding permit holders to be able to carry our firearms in places such as these.

What do you think? Should we be allowed to carry our firearms in these kinds of places? Would it matter?