Gun Control

Via instapundit:

Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage on the nearest police station?

Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting range or hunting club to vent their murderous frustration.

It should only take a moment's thought to understand why: Those places have people who have relatively easy access to weapons themselves.

It's one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it's quite another to consider that one's murderous intent could be brought to an untimely halt through the immediate application of superior firepower.

However, there are places that draw these people like magnets, and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely advertised.

Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that say "No Guns Permitted" or "Gun-Free Zone."

...The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted.

As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as "Instapundit") noted after the VT murders last spring, "People don't stop killers. People with guns do."

I suppose supporters of gun control might respond that if guns were banned that we wouldn't have to worry about such massacres. But given that there are literally tens of millions of guns in circulation already that is a fantasy scenario.