So you think banning guns will end mass homicide?

By Chad D. Baus

In the wake of the nation's worst mass shooting on the 'no-guns' campus of Virginia Tech, gun ban extremists like Ohio's Toby Hoover couldn't even wait until the bodies were counted before attempting to exploit the dead by calling for tighter gun control measures.

From the OCAGV statement released just hours after the VT massacre, entitled "It's About the Guns":

Our weak gun laws make it a certainty that the United States will suffer recurrences of such preventable tragedies. There is a crying need for Americans to understand - It's about the guns!" Toby Hoover, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence said: "Listening to reports, you'd think the gun was the least of the problem this morning. The focus is on security, behavior and etc, anything but the hard, cold fact that such bloodshed was made possible by only one thing - a gun."

Is mass murder "made possible by only one thing - a gun"? Would banning guns help our nation avoid "recurrences of such preventable tragedies"? Unfortunately for gun ban extremists, murderous psychopaths (the same ones their legislative goals would ensure are the only ones with guns) keep disproving their ridiculous claims.

FOXNews.com is reporting that a man armed with a 21-inch-long knife killed nine people, including six children, and wounded 17 others in a rampage over the weekend in a central Philippine province.

Click 'Read More' for complete details.

From the story:

The man first attacked and wounded five members of his cousin's family with whom he lived in a remote village outside Calbayog city in central Samar province at around 2 a.m. local time, said Senior Police Officer Jessie Gianan, desk officer at the Calbayog police station. One of the cousin's sons, aged 7, died later in a hospital, police said, correcting an earlier report that two sons had died.

The man then barged into a neighbor's house, where he stabbed and hacked to death a 37-year-old pregnant woman and her three daughters and two sons, aged 1 to 9. Two daughters survived, Gianan said by telephone.

He entered two other homes where five people were sleeping, killing two men, and then returned to a wake where he had been drinking earlier and attacked everyone in his path, Gianan said.

A total of 17 people were wounded, he said.

The man then surrendered to another villager who turned him over to the authorities. It was not immediately clear what prompted the rampage.

According to a July 2003 JPFO.org news alert, citizens in the Philippines have been subject in recent years to increasing levels of gun control, all presumably in the name of preventing just these types of mass homicides:

The Philippine Interior Department had issued thousands of carry permits to citizens who showed a professional or self-protection need. These permits cost $131 (US)—a very substantial sum in that nation. Now, by order of the Philippine President, all of these permits are cancelled.

Under Philippine law, most citizens may own only two firearms: one shotgun or .22 caliber rifle, and one handgun. Getting a license for each gun requires proof of employment, approval from police officials, mayors and courts, passing drug and psychiatric tests, and paying fees. Buying a firearm involves more approvals and fees. Owners need the carry permit if they want to transport a gun outside the home.

By canceling the carry permits nationwide, the government has placed gun owners in a no-win, defenseless position. If a person is caught with a firearm outside of the home, he or she faces prosecution and/or confiscation of the firearm. (The gun prohibition laws don't affect the communist New People's Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or the various rebels and bandit gangs in rural areas.)

The Filipino people have no Second Amendment legal protection of their right to own and possess firearms.

Of course, as has now been proven in the spilling of the blood of 17 victims, canceling the carry permits for law-abiding citizens did nothing to make Philipinos safer, but instead took one more self-defense option away from them when violence came calling.

FLASHBACK: British doctors call for KNIFE control