Recognizing the Right to Carry
SDGO continues fighting to put the law on the side of citizen self-defense
(This is the third article in series documenting the fallacy of the "gun free" zone. You can read the first article here)
By Zach Lautenschlager
Communications Director
The armed thug leaped from the shadows, tackled the jogger and brandished a handgun in her face.
The park was deserted, but the young woman was unconcerned.
“Get that thing out of my face,” she demanded. “This is a Gun Free Zone.”
The masked man burst into the classroom and leveled a shotgun at the college students.
Chaos erupted as students scrambled for the door.
“Now wait just a minute!” bawled the professor. “This is a Gun Free Zone!”
The young punk pulled a semi-auto from under his sweatshirt and opened fire in the department store.
An unarmed security guard hid behind a store counter.
“Drop the gun now!” he hollered. “Can’t you read the signs? This is a Gun Free Zone.”
How many people really believe that posting a “gun free zone” sign prevents crime? Does anyone truly think that the suicidal murderers at Virginia Tech or Columbine Highschool just didn’t see the signs? Did they forget to read the policy outlawing firearms? If only they had known! Surely that would have stopped them from shooting 84 innocent people.
In reality, so-called “gun free zones” do not reduce violent crime. They invite it.
Every major mass shooting in recent history has been committed in a “gun free zone.” In 1984, James Oliver Huberty shot 40 people in a McDonald’s restaurant in San Diego, California. George Jo Hennard shot and killed 23 people and wounded 20 more in a Luby's Cafeteria in Texas in 1991. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 and wounded 23 at the Columbine Highschool in 1999. Charles Williams shot 15 at a California highschool in 2001. Jeffrey Weise shot 22 at a highschool in Minnesota in 2005. In 2007, Sulejman Talović shot 9 people at a mall in Utah, Seung-Hui Cho shot 49 at Virginia Tech, and Richard Hawkins shot 13 at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska. Earlier this year, an unidentified killer shot 6 women at a Lane Bryant clothing store in a Chicago suburb, and Steven Kazmierczak shot 24 more people at Northern Illinois University.
All of these incidents share a common factor: citizens were banned from defending themselves in the areas where they took place. Each and every one of them was committed in a so-called “gun free zone.” But horrific mass shootings are not the only crimes that “gun free zones” invite.
Washington, D.C. has some of the most onerous anti-gun laws in America. Rifles, shotguns and handguns are all essentially illegal. While the recent “Heller” court case officially overturned the D.C. gun ban, the practical reality has not yet changed. Washington, D.C. is still largely one big “gun free zone.”
Predictably, it has one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation. In fact, Washington, D.C. is well-known as the Murder Capital. After 25 years of the D.C. ban, FBI statistics showed a 51% increase in the city’s murder rate, while the national rate dropped 36% in the same period. The city of Arlington, Virginia, is only separated from Washington, D.C. by the Potomac River. It is virtually the same city, but Arlington is governed by Virginia’s much less restrictive gun laws. On the 25th anniversary of the D.C. ban, Arlington’s murder rate was a modest 2.1 per 100,000 people. Washington’s was 46.4.
The city of Chicago is another “gun free zone” with a legendary violent crime rate. Handguns have been banned there for almost twenty years. On top of that, the state of Illinois has its own “gun free” laws. 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.
Once again, the violent crime rate in Chicago and its suburbs is predictably high. Over the last fifteen years, large American cities have seen a steady decline in violent crime. But not Chicago. The crime rate there remains almost double that of major cities in other states.
SDGO has noted before that there are answers to violent crimes like mass shootings, murder, rape or armed robbery. But gun control is not one of them. Anti-gun restrictions are utterly useless against a madman bent on a bloody suicide or a criminal with dozens of illegal options for obtaining a firearm.
Gun control does do one thing very effectively, however. It curtails citizen self-defense, guaranteeing that the law-abiding will not have the means to defend their own lives from criminal attack. Ultimately, anti-gun restrictions put the kibosh on one of the most effective crime fighting tools available: the armed citizen.
Armed citizens bring thousands of crimes to a screeching halt every year. The right to self-defense is what the Second Amendment is all about. Over the last 20 years, SDGO has battled to protect the right of the people to bear arms in self-defense, from recognizing the Right-to-Carry to passing the Castle Doctrine.
Currently, SDGO is working to pass several pieces of citizen self-defense legislation in the upcoming legislative session. But SDGO is only as strong as its members and supporters. Now is the time for gun owners in South Dakota to stand up for the right to keep and bear arms.