To the Editor: Ohioans are sitting ducks
December 17, 2007
Dayton Daily News
While we can admire Jeanne Assam as a heroine whose actions saved lives, let's keep in mind that, in Ohio, she'd be facing a jail term right about now. In Ohio, taking a gun into a church is generally against the law, even with a conceal-carry permit.
Ohio is effectively a "sitting duck" state: If shots ring out in your church, or in most other public places, your only legal recourse is to run, hide, pray and basically kiss your butt good-bye. Police will almost certainly arrive too late to save you.
It is time to revisit Ohio's insane conceal-carry laws and remove the restrictions. Responsible, armed adult citizens such as Jeanne Assam are not a danger. When you are confronted with a life-threatening situation, she may be the only chance you have of getting out alive.
Siobhan Semmett
Centerville
What follows are excerpts and links to other excellent commentary that have been published in major media throughout the nation in the wake of the foiled attack on New Life Church in Colorado.
- By Cal Thomas
I have been waiting for this to happen. For years we have witnessed the carnage when innocents were mowed down at schools, colleges, shopping malls and post offices. The unarmed (disarmed?) were easy targets for crazed gunmen armed with grievances, weapons and ammunition.
Now someone has shot back, probably saving many lives. All of the gun-control laws that have been passed and are still being contemplated could not have had the effect of one armed, trained and law-abiding citizen on the scene like 42-year-old Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The gunman, 24-year-old Mathew Murray, had been expelled from the Youth With a Mission, or YWAM, organization for health reasons, according to officials. Authorities say Murray vowed revenge in several Web postings, which copied abundantly from the manifesto written by Columbine High School killer Eric Harris before the 1999 school massacre.
In rants laced with profanity, Murray lashed out against Christians he said had "brought this on yourselves." He wrote that Christians "are to blame for most of the problems in the world." Does that qualify as a "hate crime"? Probably not as such designations are usually given only to "oppressed minorities."
It is Assam and not the shooter who received — and deserves — most of the media attention and praise. Calm and collected at a news conference, Assam detailed her movements and decision-making after hearing shots in the parking lot outside the church.
Praise the Lord . . . and the armed security guard
- By David Reinhard
W hat can you say about the Sunday slaughter at a megachurch and missionary training center in Colorado?
What can you say when a 24-year-old man who said he "hates" Christians shoots two twentysomethings dead at the Youth With a Mission office in Arvada, before killing two teenage girls at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs? That we'll never have an ample explanation for such blood-soaked depravity this side of paradise? Yes. That a special wickedness is afoot in the world when this kind of evil runs amok in a house of God? Surely. That there's a savage irony in the fact that Sunday's violence was visited upon people preparing for Christmas, the birthday of the Prince of Peace? Too true.
Yes, all that, but also this: Thank God the New Life Church in Colorado Springs was not a gun-free zone. Thank God volunteer security guard Jeanne Assam was licensed to carry a weapon. Thank God she used her gun to stop Matthew Murray. Yes, thank God.
- By Wayne LaPierre
Let's stop saying there's nothing new to say.
The policy that USA TODAY derided in a 1994 editorial as "one of the most cockamamie clichés in the pro-gun lexicon" halted unspeakable carnage in a Colorado Springs megachurch on Sunday.
Colorado's right-to-carry law — which USA TODAY fiercely opposed as "an old West remedy" — empowered volunteer security guard Jeanne Assam to stop a mass murderer inside her crowded church.
It is fortunate but not relevant that Assam had a law enforcement background. All permit-holders undergo training, testing and background checks.
Right-to-carry saves lives. That's news this paper should cover, not disregard.
While USA TODAY predicted mayhem that never materialized, right-to-carry laws have spread from 15 to 40 states since 1991.
Statistics can't console grieving families, but might be more useful than defeatist editorials in developing public firearms policy.
Our analysis of FBI crime data shows that in 2006, compared with the rest of the country, states with right-to-carry had overall average violent crime rates 26% lower.
Critics argue that right-to-carry will produce "too many" armed citizens, but in the same breath they say that if a crime occurs, there'll be "too few" armed citizens to be useful. The fact is, some armed citizens are always better than none.
- 3342 reads
