A Firearm in Every Home.

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Gun Free Zones are Victim Only Zones.

Time to Put An End to Army Bases as Gun-Free Zones


It is hard to believe that we don't trust soldiers with guns on an army base when we trust these very same men in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Shouldn't an army base be the last place where a terrorist should be able to shoot at people uninterrupted for 10 minutes? After all, an army base is filled with soldiers who carry guns, right? Unfortunately, that is not the case. Beginning in March 1993, under the Clinton administration, the army forbids military personnel from carrying their own personal firearms and mandates that "a credible and specific threat against [Department of the Army] personnel [exist] in that region" before military personnel "may be authorized to carry firearms for personal protection." Indeed, most military bases have relatively few military police as they are in heavy demand to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unarmed soldiers could do little more than cower as Major Nidal Malik Hasan stood on a desk and shot down into the cubicles in which his victims were trapped. Some behaved heroically, such as private first class Marquest Smith who repeatedly risked his life removing five soldiers and a civilian from the carnage. But, being unarmed, these soldiers were unable to stop Hasan's attack.

The wife of one of the soldiers shot at Ft. Hood understood this all too well. Mandy Foster's husband had been shot but was fortunate enough not to be seriously injured. In an interview on CNN on Monday night, Mrs. Foster was asked by anchor John Roberts how she felt about her husband "still scheduled for deployment in January" to Afghanistan. Ms. Foster responded: "At least he's safe there and he can fire back, right?" -- It is hard to believe that we don't trust soldiers with guns on an army base when we trust these very same men in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, most of CNN's listeners probably didn't understand the rules that Ms. Foster was referring to.

The law-abiding, not the criminals, are the ones who obey the ban on guns. Instead of making areas safe for victims, the bans make it safe for the criminal. Hasan not only violated the army's ban on carrying a gun, he also apparently violated the rules that require soldiers to register privately owned guns at the post.

Research shows that allowing individuals to defend themselves dramatically reduces the rates of multiple victim public shootings. Even if attacks still occur, having civilians with permitted concealed handguns limits the damage. A major factor in determining how many people are harmed by these killers is the amount of time that elapses between when the attack starts and someone is able to arrive on the scene with a gun. Ten minutes must have seemed like an eternity to those trapped in the attack at Ft. Hood. All the multiple victim public shootings in the U.S. -- in which more than three people have been killed -- have all occurred in places where concealed handguns have been banned.

For several days now, some in the media and various gun control groups have focused on a so-called "cop killer" gun that Hasan used. The five-seven is a conventional semi-automatic pistol. In fact, the bullets that it fires are relatively small, only being in the .22 caliber class. Unlike rifles, even higher caliber handguns don't fire publicly available ammunition at sufficient velocity to penetrate a police officer's vest. There is a special type of handgun ammunition that can penetrate some types of body armor, but under federal law it is not legal to manufacture or import that ammunition for sale to the public.

For the safety of our soldiers and citizens, we hope that this simple fact about the Ft. Hood attack and the role that gun-free zones played in allowing yet another multiple victim public shooting becomes part of the news coverage itself. The political debate about guns would be quite different if even once in a while a news story clearly explained that there has been another multiple victim public shooting in a gun-free zone.

John R. Lott, Jr. is a FoxNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of "More Guns, Less Crime."

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Fort Hood should not have been a gun free zone.

Israelis Baffled by News of Defenseless US Soldiers

Many Israelis want to know: why didn't the soldiers attacked by a U.S. Army major-turned-terrorist return fire?

When a Muslim goes, well, Muslim in Israel he is typically shot to death by someone--say, a reserve soldier--within seconds of screaming "Allah Akbar."

In contrast with the Israeli experience, it took 10 minutes before a civilian police officer at Fort Hood was able to shoot and stop Muslim fanatic Nidal Malik Hasan.

How could that happen? How could so many people trained in the strategies and tactics of modern warfare be so defenseless?

The answer--and this may astonish many Americans--is that the victims were unarmed. U.S. soldiers are not allowed to carry guns for personal protection, even on a 340-acre base quartering more than 50,000 troops.

So it goes in brain-dead, liberal America.

Fort Hood is a "gun free" zone, thanks to regulations adopted in one of the very first acts signed into law by anti-gun President Bill Clinton in March, 1993. Click here for the file.

Contrary to President Obama's crocodile tears, his Islamist-appeasing administration is bent on further disarming the U.S. military, and all Americans. Obama and his Communist crowd will not rest until every American is a sitting duck.


POSTSCRIPT: Israeli teachers, from kindergarten on up, are also armed; so, a Virginia Tech-type slaughter is highly unlikely at an Israeli university.

Israelis, who have had to combat terrorism all their lives, are not afraid of guns. They are an armed people, ready, willing, and able to defend themselves and their country.

Unlike indoctrinated Americans, paralyzed by fear and political correctness, Israelis understand that people, not guns, kill people.

American Jews, for the most part, are nothing like their Israeli co-religionists. American Jews--as this American Jewish journalist well knows--are disproportionately liberal and anti-gun. This is especially true of elitist, intellectual/professional Jews in Manhattan and the New York suburbs. They pride themselves in their masochistic, near-suicidal "tolerance" of Jew-haters and violent criminals.

The lessons of the Holocaust are lost on these Jews. They relish victimhood. Proud, tough Jews and proud, patriotic Americans make liberal Jews--and liberals in general--nervous.

Perfidy!

[Catty1]

OT - I don't think I could afford the money to own and maintain a firearm!