Op-Ed: The Dirty Little Secret of ‘Gun-Free School Zones’

December 26, 2006
The Hawaii Reporter

By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman

This October, there were three fatal attacks on school property in less than a week; more than 20 since February 1996 when a 14-year-old youth strolled into a junior high school in Moses Lake, Wash. and opened fire, killing two students and a teacher.

The dirty little secret of all these atrocities is that they happened in so-called “Gun Free School Zones.” Prior to the enactment of that horribly misguided federal legislation and its state-level clones, one never read about school massacres because there weren’t any. The Gun Free School Zones Act transformed the public school landscape into a free-fire zone for whackos by removing any possibility, however small, that an armed teacher, student or private citizen might be present to intervene. As a result, monsters like Colorado’s Duane Morrison or Pennsylvania’s Charles Roberts, and a host of others have committed mayhem, courtesy of gun control fanatics who pressured Congress and state legislatures to pass such statutes.

The exception is Luke Woodham, who shot up Mississippi’s Pearl High School in 1997 after slitting his mother’s throat. Midway through his spree, Woodham encountered Vice Principal Joel Myrick, who had rushed to his car to retrieve a .45-caliber pistol. Myrick aimed the gun at Woodham’s head and held him until police arrived.

You read little about Myrick’s heroism, and less about his handgun, in press reports.

After the Pennsylvania attack on an Amish school in Lancaster County, anti-gun Gov. Ed Rendell had a remarkable moment of candor when he admitted that tougher gun laws would not have stopped the gunman. “You can make all the changes you want,” Rendell said, “but you can never stop a random act of violence by someone intent on taking his own life.”

His remarks were largely ignored because nobody wants to admit that Rendell is right about this, same as they overlooked Myrick and his gun. Such facts don’t fit the anti-gun agenda.

Click here to read the full commentary in the The Hawaii Reporter.

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