Compare Different Policies from Around the USA. Part 6 in the Right to Protect Yourself

Americans are understandably determined that massacres such as the one at Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut, never happen again. But how? Some demand ever stricter control of firearms. Many others advocate more effective treatment of mentally ill people and understand that so-called gun-free zones simply disarm law-abiding victims.

The long-term answer needs to take these and many different viewpoints into consideration. What does experience demonstrate to be both effective and ineffective in the USA? What does not work? What does?

The Results of Banning Guns in Colorado After Colorado’s 2003 concealed carry law was enacted, Colorado State University decided to allow concealed carry, while the University of Colorado prohibited firearms. Comparing the two is salutary.

Colorado State observed a rapid decline in reported crimes, while the latter, under the gun ban they claimed was for safety, observed a rapid increase in crime. Crime at the gun-free University of Colorado has risen 35 percent since 2004, while crime at Colorado State University has dropped 60 percent in the same time frame.*

At Colorado State, in 2002, there were 47 reported sexual offenses, whereas in 2008, there were 2. The college saw a similar drop in crime in virtually every other category after concealed carry became legal. In Colorado's universities, guns comprehensively deter crime.

Hundreds of Incidents have Favorable Outcomes As readily available reports of the hundreds of incidents show, gun owners stop a lot of criminal mayhem—attempted murders, rapes, assaults, robberies—every year. …Policymakers interested in reducing harm should therefore refrain from treating ordinary gun owners as hoodlums and adopt policies that respect the ownership and carrying of arms by responsible individuals.

Even President Obama has had to chide gun safety advocates to accept the proposition that “almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible.”

Are America's Increasingly Strict Gun Policies Working? Back in the mid-1960s, in most US states, an adult could walk into a store and buy an AR-15 rifle, no questions asked. Today, firearms are the most heavily regulated consumer product in the United States.

Nowadays, if you want to purchase an AR-15 or any other firearm, the store must first get permission for the sale from the FBI or its state counterpart. Permission is denied if the buyer is in one of nine categories of "prohibited persons," including felons, domestic-violence misdemeanants, and persons who have been adjudicated mentally ill or alcoholic.

Since, half a century ago, "active shooters" were rare, what can account for the continued increase in these shootings? Counter-intuitively, could it be the increasingly stringent gun control regulations, which just disarm innocent victims while leaving criminals with illegal access to guns?

Piers Morgan's Inept Public Attack on Your Right to Protect Yourself
Unfortunately, Britain's Piers Morgan's vituperative yet inept attack on American Larry Pratt** just demonstrates his failure to overcome a government controlled education's deficiencies. Morgan's highly emotional public outburst - in favor of surrendering freedoms and against skeptically exploring the value of gun controls - only demonstrates that educational systems seem to prefer to teach you what to think, not how to think.

Morgan doesn't realize that whenever you point a finger at someone else, you are also pointing three fingers back at yourself. So in calling Pratt "an unbelievably stupid man" and saying "You are talking complete and utter nonsense ... an absolute lie," Morgan fails to realize he's actually talking to and about himself!

Because Morgan hasn't investigated the matter with an open mind, his only avenue is to defend his irrational stance emotionally. But since he's ignoring the facts, how can he offer any rational basis for ever more restrictions on your right to defend yourself. More proof of government failure: At school he was obviously not taught, nor has he since learned, the benefits of thinking for himself. So his behavior , understandably, was scurrilous.

So on behalf of the British, allow me to apologize for my fellow countryman Morgan's uncouthness. As adults, rather than children masquerading as grown-ups in adult bodies, most of us learn how to think for ourselves. We realize the value of politeness. We appreciate that disagreeing with another doesn't mean you need to vilify them. In fact, adults the world over know that alienating others doesn't help to win disagreements.

Do Governments Want You to Believe, Not Explore Skeptically? At school, far too many students are taught to believe others, to accept the educational system's point of view. In contrast, scientists learn to approach things with a skeptical mind. You'll change your life with the scientific approach - being skeptical stops other people taking advantage of you. This secret of success will stop you repeating nonsense spouted by politicians who pretend their misleading sophist policies will benefit you.

Governments, like colleges and schools, can't guarantee the safety of their citizens or students, so why deprive responsible citizens of their right to protect themselves and their school-children?

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact, so please +1 and share this widely!

Food for Thought "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one... Distrust and caution are the parents of security."

- Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790, US Statesman, Diplomat and Inventor

* Crime at Colorado State University has dropped with concealed gun carry is in: http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WP-Tough-Targets.pdf

** Britain Piers Morgan's scurrilous public attack on American Larry Pratt can be explored at: http://www.reason.com/blog/2012/12/20/piers-morgans-argument-for-gun-con...