Letter: "Gun Free Safe Zones" are only safe for criminals
Letter to the Editor
April 25, 2007
The events of April 16 at Virginia Tech were not a day old when politicians and journalists across the country began calling for a legislative response to the killings. Many of these people immediately called for increased regulation on the purchase and possession of firearms. I would like to propose that this response is by and large exactly the wrong response.
Every law needs to be considered in light of the fact that its enforcement cannot possibly be completely effective, and its partial enforcement may cause far more harm than good. The situation created by partial, necessarily imperfect enforcement of the gun control laws of the State of Virginia at Virginia Tech is the worst possible situation; Virginia's laws ensured that the only person in Norris Hall with a gun was the one person who cared least about what the law said, cared least about the lives of other people and had every intention of ending innocent lives. All of the careful, caring people in that building, all of the people who did their best to save lives, the students, the grad students, the professors and the administrators were effectively rendered defenseless by the law, while the attacker was given an incredible advantage.
The cost of further futile attempts to create "Gun Free Safe Zones" will be the welfare and lives of needless victims; criminals and victimizers of all kinds will always have access to weapons be they guns or simply superior physical strength. Police will respond as quickly as possible, but their best efforts are necessarily delayed by the fact that they are not "there" when the shooting starts. The people who are "there," the people whose lives are most in danger, must be allowed the means to defend themselves. Small, effective weapons in the hands of the general populace are the only effective means available for us to defend ourselves.
As a Virginia Tech student, I appreciate the presence of hundreds of state and local police, but once they leave, Virginia Tech will again be, as it was on April 16, a very large community of disarmed and defenseless victims. If there was a way to prevent incidents like Monday's through legislation, then there would be no argument about implementing such legislation; the fact of the matter is that misguided attempts at legislative solutions have, and will continue to cost lives.
Please, let us defend ourselves.
Ed Ware
Civil Engineering Graduate Student
Virginia Tech