Silver Rail Elementary School Shooting … Part 2 ….

 

So before Kaylub Giamanco shot the school shooter, an unnamed teacher used what she had at her disposal to try to fight him off: a cell phone and her body.  It angers me that society continues to choose to leave the most vulnerable members of society defenseless, “secured” only by signs and policies that have no hope of keeping them safe or preventing attacks.  So I’m going to turn the usual question around: how many more children and teachers are we going to sacrifice as martyrs to the “gun free” cult before we take substantial steps to provide for their safety?  Evil individuals aren’t going away.  They have been around since forever.  Thomas Paine summed it up the best back in the 1700s:

“Whoever considers the unprincipled enemy we have to cope with, will not hesitate to declare that nothing but arms or miracles can reduce them to reason and moderation. They have lost sight of the limits of humanity. The portrait of a parent red with the blood of her children is a picture fit only for the galleries of the infernals…  These people [they think - added] are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them... Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation [or criminal - added] refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves,” Thoughts on Defensive War.

Silver Rail Elementary School Shooting … Part 1….

So in the wake of the Oregon school shooting some legislators are once again calling for even more gun control.  All the laws we have had in place for decades have stopped nothing; obviously according to them, we just don’t have the right mix of laws in place.  What always gets me are the number of people who say this who will argue in a hot second that the war on drugs has stopped nothing, that, like prohibition, laws prevent nothing.  Well, that is as true of so called “gun control” as it was for alcohol and drugs.

This reality was recognized hundreds of years ago by Cesare Bonesana in his treatise, Of Crimes and Punishments, in the chapter titled, Of false Ideas of Utility:

“A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave'; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

“The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.”