On August 18 Gun Owners of America (GOA) highlighted “the lie behind gun free zones” by pointing out that disarming good guys does not disarm bad guys.
The video opens with GOA executive director emeritus Larry Pratt saying, “I don’t want to feel safe, I want to be safe. I want to be able to protect myself, I want other people to be able to protect themselves, and going into a gun free zone is definitely not the way to protect anybody.”
GOA executive director Erich Pratt then speaks, saying, “There’s a whole list of places where killers have actually targeted the places where people can’t protect themselves.” He pointed out how the Aurora movie theater gunman “had several theaters within a 20-mile radius of his home–seven theaters that he could have chosen. He didn’t go to the biggest theater, he didn’t go to the closest theater, he went to the only one that had [No Guns Allowed] signs posted. When he targeted that theater he was relatively positive he was going to be the only one with a firearm.”
Larry added, “We’re not going to make people safe by trying to restrict access to guns. Because bad guys, we have found, get access to guns no matter what. You’ll impede it for the good guys, bad guys will [still] be armed.”
The high number of shootings in gun free zones bolsters GOA’s position. In fact, gun free policies are the single most common characteristic of recent mass shootings in the U.S. From Pulse Orlando (June 12, 2016), San Bernardino (December 2, 2015), Umpqua Community College (October 1, 2015), and Chattanooga military offices (July 16, 2015) to the DC Navy Yard (September 16, 2013), both Fort Hood attacks (April 2, 2014 and November 5, 2009), as well as Sandy Hook Elementary (December 14, 2012), the Aurora movie theater (July 20, 2012) and many others, the tie that binds is not the type of weapon used but the fact that law-abiding citizens were defenseless because of gun free policies.
Erich Pratt stressed that strict gun controls have also turned entire U.S. cities in quasi-gun free zones, where innocent law abiding people are at the mercy of criminals who still have guns and always will. He said:
In places where the government makes it illegal or very difficult to own a firearm for protection. Those are typically the most dangerous places–like Baltimore, like Washington DC, like Chicago. That is where people typically are waiting for police; that’s almost their only option and sadly, a lot of people pay the ultimate price.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.