In the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Germany, anti gun groups on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have predictably used this tragedy to argue for more gun laws, despite the fact that the killer broke a great many laws already, would not have been deterred by one more law, and was able to succeed in his rampage only because his victims were disarmed. A well written article explaining the pointlessness of gun control appeared in the Times Online, which is a British news agency. Given the restrictive and ineffective gun laws that already prevent British citizens from defending themselves, I hope that those in the UK as well as Germany take this article to heart:
An excerpt of the Times Online article discussing the pointlessness of additional gun laws:
If the Germans are serious about stopping killers running amok in schools, they might consider the Israeli solution of arming teachers. It works there, as it has on occasion in America – the massacre in the “gun-free zone” of Virginia Tech can be contrasted with the assault by a former pupil on the neighbouring Appalachian Law School in 2002 that was halted by two armed students. . . .
Neither we nor the Germans, of course, would be willing to adopt such a policy. We are more appalled now by the idea of an armed society. Yet an international study published in the Harvard Journal on Law & Public Policy in 2007 found that European nations with high gun ownership levels, such as Switzerland, Norway and Austria, had significantly lower murder rates than European countries with low levels of legal firearms possession.
Read the rest of the article here.
My thanks to Anders for pointing out this article.