All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

I fully appreciate doing everything possible to keep Law Enforcement Officers safe. They often do a thankless and dangerous job. LEOs have nothing to fear though from law abiding citizens with firearms. This is a well documented fact. Major academic studies all say that citizens with permits to carry firearms are less likely to commit a crime of any sort than the rest of the population - including LEOs. People who have permits have taken training and more importantly have thought through the consequences of using a firearm for any purpose. Taking responsibility for your own well being and safety is NOT being paranoid it is being prepared. As much as we appreciate the jobs LEO's do they simply cannot be everywhere at every time. We are fortunate in Iowa to live in a pretty safe place. Your odds of actually needing a firearm to defend yourself are really low. However, we all read the papers and listen to the news. Things happen to good people all the time.

Permits to carry concealed weapons in Iowa are a matter of public record. At the Department of Public Safety in Des Moines it shows that there are around 140 some permits issued in Mahaska County. Further examination reveals that all but around 30 are issued with so many restrictions that they are virtually useless pieces of paper. Of the unrestricted permits some showed as issued for carrying large sums of money or valuables (which is puzzling since Iowa law doesn’t allow the use of deadly force to protect property). So what is this saying, that property is worth protecting but human life isn't? I also know of some HIGHLY qualified or endangered individuals that have been turned down for a permit, but if you are say a County Supervisor, prominent attorney or friends with the sheriff you can probably get one. Is this favoritism, discrimination or cronyism on part of the sheriff?

Most counties in Iowa have sheriffs who fairly issue permits. A good example is Polk County Sheriff Dennis Anderson (D -btw). Anyone who takes the Polk Co. class and passes the background check demonstrating responsibility will generally be issued a permit. There are close to 3000 permits issued in Polk Co alone. Through preemption laws once issued a permit is valid in all 99 counties –even in Mahaska Co. So when my friends from Des Moines visit me in Oskaloosa they are allowed to protect themselves where I am not! I am not saying everyone should be allowed to have a weapons permit -in fact there are several who should NOT. According to Iowa law it is the sheriff’s discretion of whom to issue a permit. This "trust the professionalism of the sheriff" argument eliminates the presumption that individuals have the right to defend themselves.

There is no reason though why a Mahaska Co. citizen with a clean record who can pass a background check and the required training (demonstrated responsibility) and without other eliminating just cause should not be afforded the same right to self protection as are citizens of other Iowa counties.

A sheriff that won't issue permits to his law abiding citizens but will issue to friends and cronies discriminates in the worst possible way. He arbitrarily says that some lives are more valuable than others.

Empty Holsters Make a Point

‘Readin’, ‘Riten’, ‘Rithmetic, and Self Defense

It was only a matter of time before someone was able to put two and two together and come out with four. In this case the analogy is one of the idiocy of so called ‘gun free school zones’ and the irrational thought that these ‘zones’ would make a safe haven for our children and their teachers. Look at what the war on drugs has done for our communities. It’s caused the drug dealer to become a good deal more cautious about who their sell to and where. Has it reduced the quantity of drugs available? No. As a matter of fact, there probably isn’t a benefit that can be named as a result of the war on drugs.

The difference between the war on drugs and gun free school zones is that the drug user has made a voluntary choice to go out and seek the drug dealer which often times places the drug user, again voluntarily, in harms way where as the gun free school zone sends our children into an area that the psychopath is guaranteed to be unmolested as he goes about his shooting rampage. Who ever came up with the gun free school zone didn’t give much thought to the fact that if criminals weren’t going to carry guns on to school grounds, we wouldn’t need a law against it in the first place and what need of laws do criminals have?

When was the last time anyone heard of a psychotic gunman going on a shooting rampage in a police station? If one where to change the scenario and make police stations gun free zones and all officers were required to leave their firearms unloaded and locked securely in the trunk of their patrol cars, it’s almost guaranteed that there would eventually be a news headline touting the horrendous attack by a mentally disturbed man wielding a virtual arsenal who caused X number of deaths in precinct X police station. And why can we count on someone shooting up a gun free police station? For the same reason we can count on someone shooting up a gun free school. Disturbed people do disturbing things that make no sense to us. The only thing we can do, living in a society with all of the freedoms and rights we have, is to try to anticipate the acts of these disturbed people and be able to react. In the case of the police station what would be the most rational action to take? This is a simple one. How about arming policemen? This is guaranteed to reduce or eliminate police officer deaths should the unthinkable happen. Allow the targets of the attack the opportunity to defend themselves. Is this a novel idea to gun control proponents? It obviously is when it comes to gun free school zones. It’s not novel to those students who are the target of the psychopath who finds it convenient to disobey the law and walk right past the signs stating “Gun Free Zone”. Or maybe it offers him some comfort knowing that he is safe for the three to five minutes it may take police to arrive. Those students and their supporters who don’t believe it to be a novel idea that school zones shouldn’t be totally gun free demonstrated at Gonzaga college the week of October 22nd to the 26th to protest the fact that trained and licensed students, teachers, or administrators, are all prohibited from carrying firearms on campus. These protests were punctuated by the wearing of an empty holster on campus. The protests were triggered by the most recent mass shooting on a college campus at Virginia Tech. Several of the students killed at Virginia Tech had permits to carry concealed firearms but school rules outlaw the possession of firearms on campus. Unfortunately, the shooter didn’t realize how much trouble he would be in if he were caught with firearms on campus. It’s a shame that some people don’t consider the consequences of their actions before hand. Maybe making the letters on the gun free zone sign larger would help.

It’s difficult to understand the thought process that went on in making our schools gun free zones or to phrase it another way, free kill zones. Gun control proponents tend to focus on anecdotal tails of woe and misery brought on by firearms and neglect to look at the detailed statistics assembled by neutral groups such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Division or even the anti gun Centers for Disease Control who report that the target of an attack is more likely to survive the attack if they fight back and what more effective weapon to fight back with than a firearm in the hands of a trained individual? This was demonstrated at Grundy, Virginia, Appalachian School of Law, when a former law student disregarded the gun free school zone law and used a firearm to kill the dean, a law professor, and another student before two other students ran to their cars, retrieved their own firearms, and forced the shooter to drop his weapon and surrender. This could have been the end of the story for Virginia Tech or even Columbine and every other school shooting except for the blindness of those who must be frustrated to tears at the fact that they made a very good law, “No Guns On School Grounds” but certain people are not following the law. These people need to study their U.S. history and see what happened when the federal government tried the great experiment of Prohibition. It was a noble idea but totally impractical, humans beings being the people they are. Instead of creating a nation of tea toddlers, congress brought forth the most violent era in our nations recent history which even lead to additional gun laws when the gangs found that the Tommy gun was a most convenient means of convincing members of rival bootlegging gangs to give up territory and profits. Another noble experiment. Eliminate private possession of fully automatic weapons unless licensed by the federal government. The problem is, if one has the money, one can buy any number of fully automatic weapons and possess them illegally.

This brings us back to the war on drugs. If a vote were held regarding the success or failure of the war on drugs, it would show that the war was a resounding failure. The Clinton 1994 Assault Weapon Ban? Even the Centers for Disease Control states that was a failure. Prohibition? Obviously a resounding failure. Gun free school zones? Again, a failure when examined from the prospective of keeping disturbed people with firearms off of school campuses. One can’t be naïve enough to believe that any person intent on committing a murder on a school campus has been deterred by the fact that there is a law against carrying firearms on that campus. So what’s the answer? That’s easy. Don’t send children to be educated in a free fire zone. Allow students, where applicable, to carry concealed weapons. Allow teachers and administrators to carry concealed weapons on campus. Allow security guards to carry firearms openly. In other words, you can’t stop the psycho but you can permit his targets the opportunity to defend themselves.

Those who perpetuate gun free school zones are every bit as culpable for the multiple campus deaths as the gunman is.

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