The Fort Hood tragedy on April 2 has brought renewed pushes for gun control legislation from Democrat leaders. The question is, why?
The tragedy in Murrysville, Pa., that left 20 people injured from stab wounds illustrates well that banning more firearms won’t fix the problem. Plus, the Fort Hood shooter legally purchased his weapon. Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says that Fort Hood should revive the background check push, while Piers Morgan took to Twitter mocking the “good guy with a gun” theory and Juan Williams went so far as to say that all of America needs “to be a gun-free zone.”
But the fact of the matter is this: the shootings at Fort Hood, Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colo., took place in gun-free zones. Military bases became gun-free zones under the Clinton presidency, yet since then Aaron Alexis opened fire on unarmed military personnel in Navy Yard, Nidal Hasan killed 13 and wounded three at Fort Hood, and now Lopez killed three soldiers and wounded 16 others.
First Lieutenant Patrick Cook found himself “helpless” after reaching for a sidearm that was banned from Fort Hood.
“I am convinced that concealed weapons would have stopped it, but openly-carried sidearms, like the ones carried in a law enforcement capacity, could have prevented it entirely,” he wrote in a letter to Congress.
In response to recent shootings, the Obama administration has now requested $1.1 billion for gun control. The Department of Justice asked for $382.1 million for “gun safety.” The money would go to cover things such as requiring background checks for all gun sales, strengthening the background check system for gun sales, and passing a new, stronger ban on assault weapons. Unfortunately for the Obama administration, their anti-gun initiatives would do nothing to curb the violence. They seem to have overlooked the fact that it is already a crime for a federally licensed dealer to sell a gun without doing a background check — including at retail stores, gun shows, flea markets or anywhere else.
Furthermore, let’s not forget that there was already a ten-year assault weapons ban under Clinton, which Congress let expire because it did absolutely nothing to curb gun violence. In fact, gun-related murder rates were 19.3 percent higher during the 1994-2004 weapons ban. Finally, President Barack Obama has forgotten that both the Fort Hood shooter’s guns were legally purchased, as was Adam Lanza’s, as was Aaron Alexis’, and as was James Holmes’. The legislation is already there and clearly isn’t the problem, so why are more taxpayer dollars being wasted pushing for more?
Even Vice President Joe Biden admits that the legislation we already have in place isn’t being used to its fullest, saying the government doesn’t have the time or manpower to prosecute those who lie on background checks. If we don’t have the time for what’s already in place, why are members of Congress pushing even more legislation? Even Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) admit that expanded background checks would not have made a difference in the Sandy Hook case. A Justice Department report shows that 76,142 gun ownership permits were denied in 2010. Almost 70 percent of those denials were because criminals or fugitives attempted to buy guns. However, only 62 prosecutions resulted from these denials.
The attacks earlier this year in China give a scary possibility of the slippery slope of too much gun control: a mass knife attack in a Kunming railway station left 29 people dead and 143 wounded from ten attackers wielding knives. Defenders were using metal poles and stools as weapons, and by the time police finally arrived they were armed only with batons, as even police in China often don’t carry guns.
“If they had been armed, they could have saved half the dead and wounded,” parking lot owner Pu Yuanwei, who was in the midst of it, said. More police forces finally arrived with firearms, but some were too cautious to open fire immediately, as they are typically trained not to shoot.
Instead of pushing for gun control, elected officials should be looking at passing legislation like that in Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana and Chicago: new Florida legislation would make it legal to fire a warning shot before shooting an attacker; Kansas is passing legislation to openly carry firearms almost anywhere in the state; Missouri passed legislation refusing to enforce federal gun control laws that are deemed an infringement on gun rights; Indiana passed legislation making it legal to keep firearms in a locked vehicle in school parking lots, and Chicago now has the lowest murder rate in 56 years after making it legal this year for citizens to carry handguns for self-defense.
What we need to be worried about are the people like Lopez, people who won’t be stopped by stricter gun laws. These laws are leaving defenseless the men and women who are law-abiding citizens. Nothing illustrates this better than the tragedy of the recent Fort Hood shooting, where soldiers were left to lie on the ground defenseless and wait to die.
