Austin Hill asked me this morning on his KINF radio program to provide legal insight into the DC shootings.
As a lawyer, I enjoy tackling challenging issues. I love displaying my knowledge of the law by analyzing a unique situation in an effort to provide a creative solution or raise an interesting issue.
The DC shooting, however, provides no such challenge. We are not in any way enlightened by this tragedy. We are sitting back watching a bad version of Groundhog Day, with the replay of a criminal killing helpless victims in a gun free zone. While the facts continue to be debated, it appears the killer in this case had a valid pass and security clearance to work on the base. His criminal history was either ignored or not discovered prior to his employment. His psychiatric issues were ignored by those with knowledge of his mental illness. He had prior misdemeanor “incidents”, both involving a firearm. He claimed to have fired his rifle “while cleaning it.” The red flags should have been apparent.
Granted, there appears to have been a failure by individuals “in the know” to possibly have prevented killer Aaron Alexis’s criminal behavior in this instance. However, rather than focus on these individual’s inaction, why isn’t the focus on our government’s deliberate action of taking away the victims’ rights to defend themselves? Are these employees so untrustworthy and incompetent that we cannot allow them to carry a mechanism of defense while on the job?
The gun free military bases render our sworn soldiers and civilian employees as defenseless as our school children. In 2009 at Ft. Hood Texas, unarmed soldiers were killed as they attempted to disarm shooter Nidal Malik Hasan by rushing him with their bodies and their chairs. These unarmed soldier-victims didn’t stand a chance against the criminal with a firearm. Removing guns from citizens did not, and will not in the future, prevent murder. In fact, John Lott’s research (More Guns, Less Crime) shows that gun control increases crime because the criminals do not obey the gun control laws while the law abiding citizens do. The murder rates in the cities with the strictest gun control laws in the country (DC and Chicago) are higher than anywhere else in the nation.
The 2009 Ft. Hood incident should have motivated our leaders to change gun control laws.
Instead, we have a second military base shooting incident, where the employees were rendered defenseless by liberal-backed gun control. Our President’s agenda is empowered yet again by the act of a criminal, as he lost no time in announcing that he will use this tragedy to support his gun control executive orders, executive actions, and his shameless commentary when the citizens’ Congressional representatives stand up to him.
Sheep need sheepdogs to protect them from the wolves. The wolves are not going away, and we cannot predict when or where they will appear. They are at the bank, at the grocery store, and in the house next door. If we pluck the teeth from the sheepdogs, the wolves will simply enjoy a slaughter. And by the way, it’s not the sheepdogs that harm the sheep.