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NRA's gun-free zone myth: Local restrictions on firearms don't attract mass killers
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Ever since the massacres in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., this idea has been repeated like some surreal requiem: The reason that mass gun violence keeps happening is because the United States is full of places that ban guns.
Second Amendment activists have long floated this theme, and now lawmakers across the nation are using it, too. During a recent floor debate in the Colorado legislature, Republican state Rep. Carole Murray put it this way: "Most of the mass killings that we talk about have been affected in gun-free zones. So when you have a gun-free zone, it's like saying, 'Come and get me.'"
- Snip -
With its overtones of fear and heroism, the argument makes for slick sound bites. But here's the problem: Both its underlying assumptions are contradicted by data. Not only is there zero evidence to support them, our examination at Mother Jones of America's mass shootings indicates they are just plain wrong.
Among the 62 mass shootings over the past 30 years that we studied, not a single case includes evidence that the killer chose to target a place because it banned guns. To the contrary, in many of the cases there was clearly another motive for the choice of location. For example, 20 were workplace shootings, most of which involved perpetrators who felt wronged by employers and colleagues. Last September, when a troubled man working at a sign manufacturer in Minneapolis was told he would be let go, he pulled out a 9mm Glock and killed six people and injured another before putting a bullet in his own head. Similar tragedies unfolded at a beer distributor in Connecticut in 2010 and at a plastics factory in Kentucky in 2008.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/03/24/nras-gun-free-zone-myth--column/2015657/
[/center]
Ever since the massacres in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., this idea has been repeated like some surreal requiem: The reason that mass gun violence keeps happening is because the United States is full of places that ban guns.
Second Amendment activists have long floated this theme, and now lawmakers across the nation are using it, too. During a recent floor debate in the Colorado legislature, Republican state Rep. Carole Murray put it this way: "Most of the mass killings that we talk about have been affected in gun-free zones. So when you have a gun-free zone, it's like saying, 'Come and get me.'"
- Snip -
With its overtones of fear and heroism, the argument makes for slick sound bites. But here's the problem: Both its underlying assumptions are contradicted by data. Not only is there zero evidence to support them, our examination at Mother Jones of America's mass shootings indicates they are just plain wrong.
Among the 62 mass shootings over the past 30 years that we studied, not a single case includes evidence that the killer chose to target a place because it banned guns. To the contrary, in many of the cases there was clearly another motive for the choice of location. For example, 20 were workplace shootings, most of which involved perpetrators who felt wronged by employers and colleagues. Last September, when a troubled man working at a sign manufacturer in Minneapolis was told he would be let go, he pulled out a 9mm Glock and killed six people and injured another before putting a bullet in his own head. Similar tragedies unfolded at a beer distributor in Connecticut in 2010 and at a plastics factory in Kentucky in 2008.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/03/24/nras-gun-free-zone-myth--column/2015657/
The right-wing Second Amendment absolutist argument against gun free zones goes something like "the killers deliberately choose sites where firearms are forbidden, and because there are no weapons, no "good guy with a gun" will be on hand to stop the crime. It is a NRA apologist fantasy that gun-free zones prevent armed civilians from saving the day (a gun nut's wet dream). Not one of the 62 mass shootings that have been documented was stopped this way.
In Chicago (and elsewhere), many business owners and managers are prohibiting guns on their property by posting "gun free" signage, and rightfully so. This tactic is presently the best way to combat the right-wing push for relaxing the public carry of lethal weapons everywhere. By spreading fear and false information, the right-wing gun lobby's marketing effort to sell more guns is making our nation less safe. We can legally stop the this right-wing insanity by denying them real estate on which to practice their paranoid SYG vigilante fantasies.
Urge the businesses that you patronize to make their establishments "gun free" places where people can feel safe and relaxed. Support a gun control group today in any way that you can and take our country back from the likes of idiots like Wayne and Ted.