“Gun free” zones: the
madness continues
More shootings occur in Illinois as SDGO introduces
right-to-carry legislation
By Zach Lautenschlager
Communications Director
(Note: This is the second article in series documenting the fallacy of the so-called "gun free" zone. You can read the first article here.)
It was just after 3:00 pm on February 14, 2008.
To Julie Gehant, it seemed a
normal Thursday afternoon as she sat in her oceanography class with 150 other
students.
Older than most at Northern Illinois University (NIU), Julie was a military
veteran with twelve years in the US Army. She had served in Bosnia and Korea and
had risen to the rank of staff sergeant. Now, back home and back to school, she
was working toward an elementary education degree so she could teach second
grade. But that was not to be.
Just as Julie’s class was coming to a close, a man dressed in black kicked open
a door and walked on stage. His name was Steven Kazmierczak. He was a former NIU
graduate student with no prior record of violence. Without a word, Kazmierczak
leveled a 12-gauge shotgun and began firing into the audience.
Chaos erupted as students ran for the door, or dropped to the floor beneath
their desks. Kazmierczak reloaded his shotgun, emptied it a second time, then
switched to a handgun and continued firing.
Police arrived in less than three minutes. But by then, Kazmierczak had shot 21
people and killed himself. Five innocent people, including Julie Gehant, were
dead. Thanks to the university’s “gun free” policy, they were unable to defend
themselves, and police could do little more than carry out the dead and wounded.
“Gun free” zones don’t work in Illinois, either
When the Virginia Tech Massacre occurred in April of 2007, university officials
were roundly criticized for failing to implement a number of safety measures. In
response, Northern Illinois University employed many of these measures ten
months later during the tragic shooting there. NIU officials successfully
alerted much of the campus shortly after the first shot was fired.
But in a curious lapse in logic, NIU had also implemented the same failed “gun
free” policy that actually caused many of the deaths at Virginia Tech. Both
schools had banned guns on campus. But the killers simply ignored the bans and
brought their weapons onto campus anyway. In both cases, the “gun free” policy
guaranteed that no one but the killers would be armed, giving them time to shoot
many more people before police could arrive.
The state of Illinois also has its own “gun free” laws. It is one of only two
states in the nation that have absolutely no provision for the right to carry.
It is simply illegal in Illinois to carry a handgun for self-defense outside
your own home or business. Period. In essence, the entire state is one big “gun
free” zone.
On top of this, Illinois requires a special permit before a person can even own
a gun. Anyone who wants to legally possess a firearm must first go through the
permit process, which involves an extensive form and takes 30 days.
But these onerous restrictions didn’t stop Steven Kazmierczak. In fact, no
amount of gun control would have stopped him. Kazmierczak had a clean record. He
legally purchased the firearms he used in the NIU shooting.
Gun control invites brutal Lane Bryant shooting
Sadly, the NIU incident was not the first mass shooting in Illinois this year.
February 2, 2008, was 42 year-old Rhoda McFarland’s day off. She was the manager
of a Lane Bryant women’s clothing store in Chicago. But Rhoda went to work on
that particular Saturday to help out with an expected rush of customers.
At approximately 10:08 am, a man came into the store. He claimed he was there
for a delivery. Then he pulled a gun and demanded cash from the register. When
this didn’t satisfy him, he started yelling and swearing. He herded McFarland
and the 5 other women in the store into a back room, bound their hands with duct
tape and sexually assaulted one of them. Then he left the room.
After a brief struggle with the duct tape, McFarland freed her hands. She
grabbed her cell phone and called 911, but all she and the others could do was
wait for the police. Thanks to the Illinois gun ban, they were completely
defenseless.
While McFarland was still on the phone, the killer came back into the room.
“I see you,” he yelled, and the call was cut short. Police arrived less than two
minutes later to find all six women still lying in the back room, each one shot
execution style in the back of the head. One of them survived, but McFarland and
the other four died instantly. The killer escaped and is still at large.
Police believe he selected the Lane Bryant store because it was a soft target.
He knew that he was unlikely to find any men there. And because of the Illinois
“gun free” laws, he knew that no one would be armed. Tragically, he was right,
and “gun free” zones claimed 5 more innocent lives.
SDGO leads the charge for vital Right-to-Carry bill
While these horrific shootings were happening in Illinois, SDGO members and
supporters were working to prevent future “gun free” zone massacres in South
Dakota.
Every public college in the state currently has a “gun free” policy. You would
think that college officials would have learned from the three separate “gun
free” zone shootings in 2007, resulting in 70 killed and wounded. Instead they
proposed a new “gun free” law in January of 2008, making it a crime to defend
yourself on college campuses across the state.
SDGO had already been working on vital right-to-carry legislation, and rapidly
introduced a bill which recognized that adults on college campuses have the same
right to self-defense that every other adult citizen of South Dakota enjoys.
Gun owners from all over the state raised a firestorm of opposition to the
college gun ban and deluged the Capitol with support for the Right to Carry on
Campus bill. The gun ban was soundly defeated in it’s first committee hearing.
The Right to Carry bill passed the House nearly unanimously and proceeded to the
Senate, where it faced stiff opposition from anti-gun Republican leadership.
Once again SDGO members and supporters flooded the Senators’ desks with
messages. Gun owners thwarted an attempt to bury the bill in committee and won
several swing votes from wavering Senators. The bill came up for its final vote
on February 15th, the day after the NIU shooting, as media reports were
revealing just how deadly a “gun-free” campus can be. But due largely to
anti-gun Republican Leader Dave Knudson, the bill failed by just 2 votes.
This battle is far from over, however. SDGO has carried the fight into the
elections, and in this month’s Primary Election, gun owners have already
demonstrated the cost of voting anti-gun (see p.1). Now SDGO is working to carry
these victories through the fall elections and into the next Legislative
session.
The armed citizen: ending the madness
Armed citizens have stopped innumerable crimes, including several that could
have ended in mass shootings. Just 16 months before the Lane Bryant shooting in
Chicago, a similar incident occurred in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But this one
didn’t end with the dead and wounded in a “gun free” zone.
It was just after 10 pm, and closing time at Alger Heights Grocery Store, when
three men walked in.
They were lead by 45-year-old Michael Sams, who had a lengthy criminal record
and was wanted by Chicago police. Sams pulled a handgun and announced a robbery.
The thugs herded the employees into a back room and started tying them up with
duct tape. It became apparent that they intended to shoot their innocent
victims.
“My concern is that they would have executed these people," county prosecutor
William Forsyth later said.
But Sams had made a fatal mistake. He apparently assumed that his intended
victims were unarmed.
While the thugs were tying everyone up and Sams was brandishing his gun in the
faces of the terrified employees, the store manager pulled his own legally
carried handgun and opened fire.
Sams was mortally wounded, ending his lengthy criminal career. The two younger
men fled, and what could have been another horrific mass shooting ended without
loss of innocent life.
Experience has proven that recognizing the right to bear arms saves lives.
Precious few shootings have happened where the law-abiding were armed.
It is a sad reality that senseless shootings are on the rise. There are answers
to this disturbing trend, but the absurd notion of the “gun free” zone is not
one of them.