Mall, church shootings bring criticism of ‘gun free zones’
Reaction to last month’s shootings at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE, and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO, was swift and to the point, and in some cases, not exactly what one has come to expect in the pages of newspapers around the country.
Pro-gun researcher and oft-published author John Lott weighed in, as did Vin Suprynowicz with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and so did Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb and Gun Week Senior Editor Dave Workman.
Lott, writing on the Fox News website, noted that the Omaha Mall shooting was the subject of 2,794 stories worldwide. Yet a critical fact was not covered, he lamented: These shootings happened in so-called gun free zones.
“Despite the lack of news coverage,” Lott wrote, “people are beginning to notice what research has shown for years: Multiple-victim public shootings keep occurring in places where guns already are banned. Forty states have broad right-to-carry laws, but even within these states it is the ‘gun-free zones,’ not other public places, where the attacks happen.”
Not known for pulling any punches in his criticism of the bias in news reports about firearms and self-defense, Lott demanded to know, “When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred?”
He noted that the press, while reporting on whether teachers can have firearms at school and doing spot reports on a growing movement by university and college students who want to carry defensive handguns legally on campus, “the media haven’t started checking what are the rules where these attacks occur.”
“Surely,” Lott observed, “the news stories carry detailed information on the weapon used (in this case, a rifle) and the number of ammunition clips (apparently, two). But if these aspects of the story are deemed important for understanding what happened, why isn’t it also important that the attack occurred where guns were banned? Isn’t it important to know why all the victims were disarmed?”
Lott blasted the media for not specifically pointing to the signs at the Westroads Mall that said guns are prohibited on the premises. And he spared no criticism for anti-gunners, who have lobbied and labored to create “gun free zone” restrictions, and for businesses that succumbed to the pressure.
“If a killer were stalking your family,” Lott noted, “would you feel safer putting a sign out front announcing, ‘This Home Is a Gun-Free Zone’? But that is what the Westroads Mall did.”
Likewise, the sharp-tongued Suprynowicz unloaded on the “gun free zone” philosophy in a Dec. 16 column that was a verbal ear-burner.
Suggesting that employers or business owners, or officials ought to be held legally liable for injuries or fatalities if they post buildings under their control off-limits to defensive handguns, Suprynowicz delivered a blistering assessment of the downside of gun-free zones.
“If you frequent public buildings or work for an employer who bars you from carrying your otherwise legal self-defense weapon” he suggested, “consider advising your loved ones in writing that—in the event you should die under circumstances where you could have saved yourself and others with your handgun—you want the proprietor sued personally.
“Guns save lives,” he said. “Since banning guns costs lives, shouldn’t the individuals who ban self-defense—not the victimized taxpayers—pay the price?”
Suprynowicz acknowledged that private property owners have a right to ban firearms on their property. However, he stressed that government agencies should make it clear to the managers of buildings that are open to the public “that they will not be shielded from the financial repercussions should employees or customers die under circumstances where they could otherwise have defended themselves and others with their own firearms.”
Gottlieb and Workman came out swinging with back-to-back opinion pieces that followed both the Omaha shooting and the incident at Colorado Springs, the latter which ended abruptly when an armed private citizen acting as a volunteer security guard at the New Life Church confronted the gunman and shot him down.
After Omaha, they wrote, “victim disarmament zones are the handiwork of extremist gun control fanatics and their soul-mates in state legislatures who created these loopholes in right-to-carry statutes across the country.”
“If there is a true outrage (about Omaha),” they stated, “it is the prohibition of legally concealed firearms at Westroads Mall. One hell of a lot of good that prohibition did for Hawkins’ eight victims. Undoubtedly such bans make anti-gunners–who fought bitterly and hysterically against passage of a concealed carry law in Nebraska–feel good about themselves, but the reality is that such prohibitions cost lives.”
The pair collaborated last year on the fast-selling America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age, which roared to the top of the charts on Amazon.com and sold out its first printing in 39 days. The timing of the shootings was incredibly coincidental with release of the book, which shreds the notion that “gun free zones” are safe.
In their Op-Ed about the Omaha incident, Workman and Gottlieb noted, “The strategy of gun control extremists is to rob people of their right of self-defense by stripping them of the tools to defend themselves. They alone are responsible for the gun free zone loophole that leaves us all vulnerable to this kind of senseless attack, and it is time that America tell these fools that we’ve had enough.”
A week later, they were back in circulation again with an opinion piece analyzing the Colorado Springs incident.
“We must stop this ‘victim disarmament’ insanity in our work places, shopping malls and even our churches,” they contended. “If necessary, we should pass legislation at the state and federal level that shields armed citizens from criminal and civil liability when lawfully acting in defense of themselves and others during attacks in public places.
“This is America,” they concluded, “where self-reliance should be nurtured, not neutered, and where the heroism exhibited by (the armed citizen in the New Life Church incident) Jeanne Assam should stand as a warning that citizens are tired of being told to cower in fear and ‘wait for help.’ We will rise to the occasion and fight back.”
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