Reichley Column: The folly of 'gun-free' zones

“Packed into cubicles with 5-foot-high dividers, the 300 unarmed soldiers were sitting ducks. Those who weren’t hit by direct fire were struck by rounds ricocheting off the desks and tile floor.”

— AP story on Fort Hood Shootings (Nov. 6)

“Petkewicz looked at the classroom door. It struck him that ‘There’s nothing stopping him from coming in here. We were just sitting ducks.’”

— MSNBC Today Show report on Virginia Tech shootings (April 18)

The news that the Fort Hood shooter was a graduate of Virginia Tech brought home the story of mass murder and opened the old wounds of the 2007 campus massacre that left 32 dead. Army officials
even turned to Virginia Tech administrators for help responding to the shooting. So it would be unfortunate if neither the Army nor Virginia Tech learned the most valuable lesson from these shootings.

Simply put, gun-free zones kill people. According to John Lott, author of “More Guns, Less Crime”, every public shooting where more than three people were killed took place in locations where guns were
banned. Both the Virginia Tech shooter and the Fort Hood shooter violated a “gun-free” zone when they carried loaded firearms — not that breaking the law matters to a person who is about to slaughter
dozens of innocent people.

Last week was Defense Education Week, a yearly event sponsored by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, an organization based on a simple concept — students are tired of being sitting ducks.
Speaking to Dan Casey of the Roanoke Times, Ken Stanton, Vice President of the Virginia Tech chapter of the SCCC, explained why it was time to change the rules: Under existing rules “we have no
chance. We literally are sitting ducks. We’re seeing way too much evidence of that.”

A lot of us were surprised to learn that most military bases are gun-free zones. Fort Hood hero Pfc. Marquest Smith recounted the first moments after the shooting started. He pushed the civilian worker
he was speaking with under her desk, and waited for the shooter to run out of bullets, wishing he had a gun to stop the slaughter.

At Fort Hood, nobody would argue the unarmed victims weren’t trained to safely handle a firearm. They simply weren’t trusted to do so — at least on our own politically correct soil. Mandy Foster, wife of
an injured soldier, sarcastically noted when asked how she felt about her husband being deployed to Afghanistan, “At least he’s safe there and he can fire back, right?”

While over 12,000 members of SCCC work to restore the rights of all concealed carry permit holders to protect themselves on campus, Bob Marshall has been championing a more limited bill to allow
college professors with permits to carry their weapons on campus. In 2009, Marshall introduced HB 1656, which “Allows full-time faculty members of state institutions of higher education who possess a
valid Virginia concealed handgun permit to carry a concealed handgun on campus.”

Studies show that the deciding factor in the number of deaths in a multiple-victim shooting is the time between the outbreak of shooting, and when the first gun holder confronts the shooter. In the Tech
massacre the shooter killed himself only after the police entered the building. An attempted killing spree at a Colorado church in December of that year ended when an armed member of the church
serving as a volunteer security guard shot the killer.

And the Fort Hood killings ended when the police arrived, 10 minutes after the shooting started and took down Hassan — just in time to save the life of Smith, who had run back into the building to save
more victims only to run into the gunman. Being unarmed, he could do nothing more than run away, and the shooter followed him out the door, firing at him. Fortunately, Sgt. Kimberly Munley and her partner were able to intervene, Munley getting shot in the process.

In the Tech shootings, some victims had plenty of time to safely respond, if only they had a gun available. Marshall’s bill would put guns in the hands of professors and employees of the state who have
permits and training in gun safety and use. The bill died in committee last year. It’s time to pass this bill. It’s time to end the folly of “gun- free zones,” and reverse the policy which makes students and
professors sitting ducks for the next crazed killer.

Charles Reichley has been a Prince William County resident since 1981. He can be reached at criticallythinking@msn.com.