USA Today editorials on the Colorado church shooting

[KBCraig]

First, the most inane, illogical, internally-conflicted piece I've ever read, even for an anti-gun editorial from USA Today. And that's saying a lot!

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/12/ ... .html#more

Our view on shooting sprees: Death at church, and the mall
Arming — or disarming — everyone is no answer. Try other approaches.
In the past nine days, shoppers at an Omaha mall and the faithful at two religious centers in Colorado came into contact with a horrifying phenomenon of modern life: A deranged killer who believes he'll somehow find fulfillment by gunning down strangers.

The incidents by separate gunmen on Dec. 5 and Dec. 9 came so close together that it felt as if some new threshold of depravity had been crossed. The truth, however, is that such indiscriminate shooting sprees now happen with depressing regularity in the USA — the seemingly inevitable byproduct of a society in which guns are readily accessible to unhinged people who slaughter innocents.

There were at least seven such incidents in 2005 and eight in 2006, and there have been seven in 2007. This year's carnage started in February with another shopping mall shooting, in Salt Lake City, where a teenage gunman killed five before being shot dead by police. It was followed in April by the worst mass shooting in the nation's history, when a student at Virginia Tech shot 47, killing 32, before killing himself. How quickly a numbed nation has moved on, and how horrific a slaughter it takes to generate national attention these days.

Spree killings are, of course, just a small percentage of the gun-violence toll in the USA. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly 30,000 people were killed by firearms in 2004, of which about 39% were homicides, 57% suicides and 2% accidents. That's about eight times the number of Americans killed in the Iraq war so far.

Each shooting spree elicits demands to make the insanity stop. Sadly, there's no easy solution. The nation has a vast cultural divide about gun ownership and has settled for stalemate — outrage at the death toll but determination to protect the rights of Americans to bear arms.

Gun control laws have had a limited impact, and the pet proposal of the gun lobby — letting people carry concealed weapons — is a nonsensical answer. Even with more people packing heat, the likelihood of such a person being at the scene of a spree shooting is exceedingly low. (The woman who ended the incident at the Colorado Springs church was a congregant and former cop who volunteered as part of the church's security program.)

With more and more people carrying weapons in public, no matter how well-intentioned, the risk of accidental shootings and additional violence rises. Security on campuses, shopping malls, airports, churches and other public places is best left to professionals.

The best way forward is to keep at the imperfect but important fixes that can eventually make these shootings less murderous and more rare: Ensuring that people with a history of mental illness aren't able to buy guns; taking disturbed young people seriously and getting them counseling; and reinstating the lapsed ban on assault weapons, despite the opposition of the gun lobby.

None of these steps is foolproof, but neither does any of them trample gun rights. The lack of a perfect solution is no reason for society to throw up its hands and accept the unacceptable.

Posted at 12:21 AM/ET, December 14, 2007

[KBCraig]

Next, an excellent retort by Wayne LaPierre:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/12/ ... .html#more

Opposing view: Right-to-carry saves lives
To reduce crime, some armed citizens are always better than none.
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.

Only a tiny fraction of those eligible to get a permit actually get one. But nobody knows how many permit-holders actually carry.

Therein lies the deterrent. An armed few make the many safer, because the bad guys don't know who's armed and who's not.

It's a myth that more permit-holders mean more accidents. In fact, firearm accidents are among the lowest rates on record.

It's time to come clean. Would USA TODAY prefer that Jeanne Assam had left her gun at home on Sunday? Would USA TODAY support repealing Colorado's right-to-carry law?

USA TODAY should give an accounting for its years of opposition to right-to-carry. Or concede that it indeed saves lives.

[FightinAggieCHL]

Spree killings are, of course, just a small percentage of the gun-violence toll in the USA. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly 30,000 people were killed by firearms in 2004, of which about 39% were homicides, 57% suicides and 2% accidents. That's about eight times the number of Americans killed in the Iraq war so far.

Go to war where EVERYONE has a gun, and is trained on how to use it. It's much safer.

[stroo]

Why didn't LaPierre take on the assault rifle ban suggestion. That seems to be the only real change suggested by USA Today and USA Today tacitly accepted right to carry.

[frankie_the_yankee]

I would say that Wayne body slammed USA Today pretty well here. Their editorial writer will probably be in traction for 6 months!

[jbenat]

Doug Giles has a much more inciteful article than USA Today regarding this subject at; http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Doug ... free_zones

I am reading the book "America Fights Back" by Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman that gives much more accurate statistics than the whinning anti's at USA Today (or USA Today the way they would like for it to be).

[KBCraig]

Doug Giles has a much more inciteful article than USA Today regarding this subject at; http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Doug ... free_zones

Last night I commented about the column's title:

KBCraig writes: Sunday, December, 16, 2007 1:57 AM
Heresy!
"God and Glocks"? Heresy!

God's favorite pistol is a 1911, made by His personal gunsmith, St. John Moses Browning.