Amidst Tragedy, Logic and Reason Must Prevail

by Tim Inwood

Like all of you I was reeling for days over the horror of what happened in Newtown, Connecticut. The victims for the most part were so young, so innocent. There is no reason to bother to try to rationalize what this lunatic did as it was evil and insane. As a parent my deepest sympathies and condolences go out to the families suffering at what should have been a happy time of year filled with family and love.

While we were all caught up in the emotion of the moment, a more ghoulish faction was rapidly acting on their political agenda to, as Representative Jerrold Nadler put it, "exploit" the shooting to attack American gun rights. People like Nadler, Diane Feinstein, Mayor Bloomberg, Mayor Menino, the entire MSNBC network, etc., disgust me in that their first reaction was to climb on top of the bodies for political gain and to lay waste to the Second Amendment of our Constitution.

We have been here before, sadly, and as before this group's first reaction is to blame the hardware. But let's consider some other things going on in our country.

Prior to 1995 this sort of thing was rare. The Texas tower shooting in 1966 and a horrific bombing of a school in Bath Township, Michigan, in 1927 where 45 people died were rare incidents of violence committed by madmen.

After 1995 and the release of a film called The Basketball Diaries, this sort of insane crime became more common. In the film, a black trenchcoat-clad Leonardo DiCaprio is depicted going into his school and shooting fellow students. How many times have we seen this same scenario played out now by mentally deranged sick and evil people? However, Hollywood continues to churn out violent films with sick fantasies claiming it is their First Amendment right to do so. The same is true of violent video game makers who create a product aimed at our youth. These games can indeed desensitize a young mind to killing.

A whole Goth culture has been created by these dark fantasies churned out by Hollywood, television, graphic novels, video games, etc., but do we see the mainstream news networks wringing their hands over this self-destructive counter-culture of which the shooter was a member? No, they are hung up on the hardware, the gun.

Well, let's look at the gun control aspect of this and existing law. MSNBC reported over the weekend that the evil 20-year-old perpetrator of these acts (I refuse to use his name and give him the evil infamy he wanted) tried to buy a long gun earlier in the week and was turned down by the National Instant Check System. The law worked - it denied him a gun. Failing to get the gun legally, he went and murdered his mother to obtain her legally-owned guns. Now I must ask, what gun control law, short of prohibition of guns for civilians, would have stopped him? None.

So do we disarm every citizen? Well let's say we did. So now no law-abiding citizen has a gun, we become Wells’s Eloi in a world full of Morlocks. What happens? We have seen what happens in the UK and Europe -- crime goes up, criminals run amok, people live in fear at the mercy of criminals. We also see, here in the States, areas where gun control laws virtually prohibit ownership that crime is horrendous. Just look at the statistics for Washington D.C. or Chicago.

Let us not forget that criminals have been known to kill police officers to obtain their guns. Will we now disarm police officers too to prevent this? Our liberal friends keep telling us prohibition against illegal drugs does not work. Well I can assure you it won't with guns either. Criminals will obtain arms.

The President has made clear his desire to ban guns. He stated it directly in the second Presidential debate with Romney. He has given a couple speeches since the shooting and has spoken in vague terms about how we must "change" which clearly is an indication aimed at guns. Frankly I would love to see some reporter ask him when he will give a tearful press conference, where he wipes away invisible tears, about the three hundred plus dead men, women and children killed by the guns his administration sent to criminals and drug cartels in Mexico. Obama has no credibility to address this issue considering he shipped arms to criminals in Mexico knowing it would create havoc and, he hoped, an outcry to attack our gun rights in the very first months of his administration. He has more blood on his hands than the sick twisted twenty-year-old who killed his mother and perpetrated this crime.

I want to join my friend and Buckeye Firearms Association Chair Jim Irvine in endorsing doing what the Israelis have done in their schools since 1974 - allowing trained teachers and staff to carry arms. So many times this has worked to save lives, it is ridiculous that we let this hang up about the "gun" (as though it is inherently evil) prevent us from doing this here the U.S.

It is a matter of fact that a mass shooting was stopped by an armed Vice Principal in Pearl, Mississippi, in 1997 who had to run out to his car, off the school property, and then return with his Colt .45 ACP. How many lives might have been saved had he been allowed to carry that gun that day? We have an irrational fear of guns in this country and the wishy-washy left needs to get over it and let logic prevail. Arm the teachers who are trained and wish to carry. Just think what might have happened had one or two of the staff at Sandy Hook been armed when this cretin walked in. Had two people fired on him, it probably would have ended then and there and the children saved. But no, we won’t allow it because liberals and their irrational hate for guns won’t permit it. That is insane. As I said five years ago, it is time to end the Culture of Sheep.

I have said it before and I will repeat it again now. Over two million times a year in this country, law-abiding citizens will use a legally owned gun to save their life in the face of a thug. This is a statistic we have known for some time. Guns are more beneficial to our society than detrimental. The biggest problem is that the law-abiding are blocked from being able to protect themselves in many places and those are the very places these monsters wanting to rack up a big body count attack.

As long as we continue to have criminal protection zones where thugs and criminals are the only ones armed, we will have carnage. I urge Congress not to attack the rights of millions of law-abiding Americans because of a small percentage of insane criminals who are out there walking in our midst.

While on that subject perhaps it is now that we the sane should question why these mentally ill people who should be institutionalized are walking among us. They are a danger to themselves and all of us. I would urge President 0bama and Diane Feinstein, along with their gun-hating ilk, to stop their irrational war on inanimate objects and our rights and deal with the people who are the danger to us all. That, it seems to me, is the more rational course for dealing with these events. Lunatic Control makes more sense than Gun Control in every one of these cases.

Tim Inwood is the current Legislative Liaison and Past President of the Clinton County Farmers and Sportsmen Association, an Endowment Member of the NRA and Life Member of the OGCA, Republican Central Committeeman for Chester Township A, in Clinton County, Ohio, and a volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.