The Armed-M

April-May 1998

Had a computer crash again...[There was no April issue.] I tried to use Win 98 and it didn't like some of my files. I think my motherboard is going bad also. Soon as I get everything done I need to do on the computer I'll get a new motherboard. I am working now so that interferes with my playing. I am running for county commisioner at the same time. --- Bob Smith

Concealed Carry Permits in NC

After many hassles I have my concealed carry permit. It is not terribly useful but it is better than nothing. The disqualification offences for having a concealed carry weapon are:

  1. Assault
  2. Harassment of and communication with juries.
  3. Violating orders of court
  4. Furnishing poison, controlled substances dangerous weapons, cartridges, ammunition or alcoholic beverages to inmates of charitable, mental or penal institutions or local confinement facilities.
  5. Weapons on campus or other educational facility.
  6. Carrying weapons into assemblies and establishments where alcoholic beverages are sold and consumed
  7. Weapons on state property and in courthouses.
  8. Possession and sale of spring-loaded projectile knives.
  9. Impersonation of fireman or emergency medical services personnel
  10. Impersonation of a law enforcement or other police officer.
  11. Communicating threats
  12. Weapons at parades
  13. Stalking.
  14. Throwing, dropping objects at sporting events.
  15. Exploding dynamite cartridges and bombs.
  16. Riot, inciting to riot.
  17. Disorderly conduct - fighting or other violent conduct or conduct creating threat of imminent fighting or other violence.
  18. Disorderly conduct making utterances gesture, etc. Intended or likely to provoke violent retaliation
  19. Looting, trespass during emergency.
  20. Assault on emergence personnel.
  21. Violation of municipal ordinance dealing with state of emergency.
  22. Violation of county ordinance dealing with state of emergency.
  23. Violation of proclamation of chairman of county commissioners extending emergency restrictions imposed in municipality.
  24. Child abuse
  25. Violation of concealed handgun law.

My fellow Libertarian candidate for county commissioner was telling me about his concealed carry permit. He was in Mississippi and heard that it was not difficult to get a permit. He went to the sheriff and paid him five dollars and had a permit in less than thirty minutes. He said he then over-reacted. He and a friend were leaving a bar (in Mississippi you can have two beers). Two guys approached, one with a large knife and the other with a piece of pipe, and demanded their wallets. My friend had cut out the pockets of his leather overcoat. He reached into his pockets and came out with not one but two automatic shotguns, one in each hand. The two thieves realized that there was a problem and fell to the ground, covered their heads and begged for their lives. I can see their wisdom because if I were faced with someone who was crazy enough to carry two automatic shotguns I would feel in dire jeopardy. Their friend called the cops and when the cop arrived he asked my friend to put the guns down. My friend explained that the guns were hanging from his shoulders on cords and he couldn't put them down. At their hearing the thieves were asked why they picked on such big guys and the thieves said that my friend was driving a car with out of state plates so they had assumed we were unarmed.

If you feel that there is no reason to worry about gun laws because the government is reasonable, here are the laws in Northern Ireland. Before you may buy a pellet gun you must have three farmers give you written permission to hunt on their property, even if you never intend to go hunting. Then there is a $75 fee for your permit to buy an air gun. The permit to buy a second air gun is only $45. I once was told to develop a plan to support a vertical takeoff fighter. After studying the effort I determined that one could not be made. By the time you added vertical takeoff capability to a fighter, the fighter was so compromised in performance that it couldn't compete with a conventional aircraft. There is no way to do a good job of supporting a stupid project. Equally there is no limit to how stupid laws can become when they have no relation to reality. If you study alcohol laws in the various states you will see that there are limits to genius but there is no limit to stupidity. --- Bob Smith

The Real Lesson of the School Shootings
By JOHN R. LOTT JR.
March 27, 1998

This week's horrific shootings in Arkansas have, predictably, spurred calls for more gun control. But it's worth noting that the shootings occurred in one of the few places in Arkansas where possessing a gun is illegal. Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi the three states that have had deadly shootings in public schools over the past half-year all allow law-abiding adults to carry concealed handgun for self-protection, except in public schools. Indeed, federal law generally prohibits guns within 1,000 feet of a school.

Gun prohibitionists concede that banning guns around schools has not quite worked as intended but their response has been to call for more regulations of guns. Yet what might appear to be the most obvious policy may actually cost lives. When gun-control laws are passed, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who adhere to them. Obviously the police cannot be everywhere, so these laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones.

Consider a fact hardly mentioned during the massive news coverage of the October 1997 shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Miss. An assistant principal retrieved a gun from his car and physically immobilized the gunman for a full 41/2 minutes while waiting for the police to arrive. The gunman had already fatally shot two students (after earlier stabbing his mother to death). Who knows how many lives the assistant principal saved by his prompt response?

Allowing teachers and other law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns in schools would not only make it easier to stop shootings in progress. It could also help deter shootings from ever occurring. Twenty-five or more years ago in Israel, terrorists would pull out machine guns in malls and fire away at civilians. However, with expanded concealed-handgun use by Israeli citizens,terrorists soon found the ordinary people around them pulling pistols on them. Suffice it to say, terrorists in Israel no longer engage in such public shootings they have switched to bombing, a tactic that doesn't allow the intended victims to respond.

The one recent shooting of schoolchildren in Israel further illustrates these points. On March 13, 1997, seventh- and eighth-grade Israeli girls were shot to death by a Jordanian soldier while they visited Jordan's so-called Island of Peace. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Israelis had "complied with Jordanian requests to leave their weapons behind when they entered the border enclave. Otherwise, they might have been able to stop the shooting, several parents said."

Together with my colleague William Landes, I have studied multiple-victim public shootings in the U.S. from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two people were killed or injured in a public place; to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas we excluded shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery. The U.S. averaged 21 such shootings per year, with an average of 1.8 people killed and 2.7 wounded in each one.

We examined a whole range of different gun laws as well as other methods of deterrence, such as the death penalty. However, only one policy succeeded in reducing deaths and injuries from these shootings allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns.

The effect of "shall-issue" concealed handgun laws which give adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness has been dramatic. Thirty-one states now have such laws. When states passed them during the 19 years we studied, the number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by 84%. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90%, injuries by 82%. Higher arrest rates and increased use of the death penalty slightly reduced the incidence of these events, but the effects were never statistically significant.

With over 19,600 people murdered in 1996, those killed in multiple victim public shootings account for fewer than 0.2% of the total. Yet these are surely the murders that attract national as well as international attention, often for days after the attack. Victims recount their feelings of utter helplessness as a gunman methodically shoots his cowering prey.

Unfortunately, much of the public policy debate is driven by lopsided coverage of gun use. Tragic events like those in Arkansas receive massive news coverage, as they should, but discussions of the 2.5 million times each year that people use guns defensively including cases in which public shootings are stopped before they happen are ignored. Dramatic stories of mothers who prevented their children from being kidnapped by carjackers seldom even make the local news.

Attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, have backfired. Instead of making schools safe for children, we have made them safe for those intent on harming our children. Current school policies fire teachers who even accidentally bring otherwise legal concealed handguns to school. We might consider reversing this policy and begin rewarding teachers who take on the responsibility to help protect children.

Mr. Lott, a fellow at the University of Chicago School of Law, is the author of
"More Guns, Less Crime," forthcoming in early May from the University of Chicago Press.
Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Guns save lives, says Libertarian Party
despite tragic shooting at Arkansas school

Tuesday's tragic massacre in an Arkansas school yard where a pair of schoolboys brutally shot and killed five unsuspecting people won't cause the Libertarian Party to budge one inch on its 100% pro-gun position, the party's chairman said today.

"The Libertarian Party will continue to fight any attempts to disarm law-abiding Americans despite efforts by political vultures to exploit this tragedy to advance their anti-gun agenda," said Steve Dasbach, national chairman of the Libertarian Party.

"Guns not only save more lives than they cost, they are a fundamental bulwark in our defense of liberty. Any effort to restrict that right is not only unsafe, it's positively un-American," he said.

"Of course, our hearts go out to the victims, survivors, and families of this tragedy. And, like all Americans, we hope that the perpetrators are punished appropriately for this horrific crime. But don't punish the Bill of Rights for the actions of two mentally ill juvenile criminals."

Dasbach's comments came 24 hours after two young boys, age 11 and 13, opened fire on classmates and teachers in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Their barrage left four students and one teacher dead, and 11 others wounded.

But aren't Libertarians somewhat leery of speaking out in favor of guns after such a tragedy?

No, said Dasbach: "The time to defend the Second Amendment is not when it is easy, but when it is most difficult. That is when the danger is greatest that politicians perhaps well-meaning, but deluded will try to revoke our Second Amendment rights.

"In fact, failing to speak out now would be to surrender to the demagogues. We know that numerous politicians will swoop in on the blood-stained victims of this tragedy, and use their needless deaths as an excuse to demand that Americans give up their rights in exchange for promised security. But the criminal behavior of young psychopaths should not be the basis of unconstitutional laws," he said.

Besides, said Dasbach, the tragedy in Arkansas is an opportunity to remind Americans that guns actually save lives.

"For every one innocent victim murdered in Arkansas, there are dozens of Americans who are alive today because of the defensive use of guns," he pointed out.

"Libertarians know that guns are not the cause of America's rising tide of violence. In fact, they're one of the solutions," said Dasbach. "We believe the most effective way to stop human predators is by repealing the laws prohibiting concealed weapons. We also know that guns are the best defense an individual can have against crime, and that the laws banning guns accomplish only one thing victim disarmament."

But Libertarians don't support gun rights merely as a deterrent to crime, said Dasbach.

"We're also the only political party with the guts to publicly state, and forcefully defend, the true purpose of the Second Amendment," he said. "Ultimately, that purpose isn't about hunting, or collecting, or target shooting. It's not even about stopping criminals. It's about defending freedom against tyrants, be they foreign or domestic.

"That's why the Founding Fathers enshrined the right to keep and bear arms into the Bill of Rights, and why Libertarians will continue to support that right," he said. "Yes, we mourn the victims in Arkansas whose lives were needlessly lost because of the actions of deranged criminals but we will never let criminals or opportunistic politicians blackmail us into surrendering our fundamental rights."

Study Finds No Big Rise in School Crime
The New York Times
BY TAMAR LEWIN

Just last week, in response to President Clinton's request for a report on school safety, the National Center for Education Statistics released its first survey on crime in the public schools, finding that more than half the schools had experienced some crime during the 1996-97 school year, but only 1 in 10 had a serious violent crime like rape, robbery, or fights with a weapon.

Among the schools sampled, there were four suicides and no homicides. The Department of Education has no earlier data of its own, but the new findings, compared with similar studies by private groups in the past, seem to show that the incidence of crime in schools has not grown significantly over the last two decades.

The incident in Arkansas yesterday and equally horrifying multiple school shootings in West Paducah, Ky., last December and in Pearl, Miss., last November have combined to create a perception that school violence is reaching new highs. But there is no statistical evidence of that.

''The numbers seem to be pretty flat,'' said Edith McArthur, one of the authors of the Department of Education study. ''I'm a parent, too, and you get even one of these horrible shootings and it's scary. But it's such a rare event that they didn't show up at all in our study, and as a statistician, I'd have to say that there's no data showing an increase.''

The latest report was based on a survey of principals at 1,234 of the nation's 87,000 public schools.

The only scientific study of violent deaths in school, by the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found 105 violent deaths in the two years from 1992 to 1994, 85 of them homicide and the rest suicides or accidents. That is a far higher rate than the 25 violent school deaths the National School Safety Center, which tracks school deaths reported in the media, found in calendar year 1996 or the 26 it tracked last year.

Not counting yesterday's shootings, the center said, there have been 18 violent deaths since school began in September. The Department of Education study found that fights without a weapon were the most commonly reported crimes, with about 190,000 incidents a year, followed by 116,000 incidents of theft and 98,000 of vandalism.

Among more serious crimes, the study found about 4,000 rapes a year, 7,000 robberies and 11,000 fights or attacks with a weapon.

Generally, elementary schools experience much less serious crime than middle schools or high schools. Only 4 percent of the elementary schools surveyed had had any serious crime during the year, compared with 19 percent of the middle schools and 21 percent of the high schools.

School crime was more common in larger schools and city schools than in smaller or rural schools. A third of the largest schools, those with 1,000 students or more, had at least one serious violent crime. Among the schools with less than 300 students, only 4 percent reported such crimes.

The survey found that more than three-quarters of the schools had some form of anti-violence program. But only 2 percent have become so concerned that they had hired guards and started metal checks.

Copyright (c) 1998 The New York Times Co.

[end of newsletter]

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The Armed-M is a publication of the 2nd Amendment SIG, a special interest group of American Mensa Ltd. Opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the writers, and not of American Mensa, Ltd. which has no opinions.

Editor's disclaimer: The ARMED-M is written for intelligent thinking people. Much of what it contains is "Raw Intelligence" material from a single source that has not or can not be checked for validity. Do not turn off your brain or powers of discrimination when reading this publication, and as a ARMED-M never run off half cocked.

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