- July 22, 2011: Anders Behring Breivik kills 77 in Norway at a youth camp outside the capital. The self-styled anti-Muslim militant admitted both attacks.
This terrorist attack happened at a youth camp, where the child victims were sure to be unarmed. Gun ownership is also strictly controlled.
- April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.
This happened on a college campus where guns are banned, thus ensuring that the shooter would carry his crimes out in complete safety, as victims would not have the ability to fight back.
- April 28, 1996: Martin Bryant, 29, kills 35 people in the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia.
Firearms were already strictly controlled in the country, but the killer illegally purchased his weapons without the required license. Due to licensing, his victims, vacation resort guests, were guaranteed to be unarmed and defenseless. Australia virtually outlawed guns in the wake of this incident.
- April 26, 2002: Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, who had been expelled from school in Erfurt, Germany, kills 13 teachers, two former classmates and policeman, before committing suicide.
This killing happened in a country where guns are strictly controlled, in a school where victims are guaranteed to be defenseless.
- Nov. 5, 2009: Thirteen soldiers and civilians were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a gunman walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and opened fire. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.
The incident happened on a military base, where in a seeming paradox, soldiers are disarmed and defenseless.
- March 13, 1996: Thomas Hamilton, 43, kills 16 kindergarten children and their teacher in elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and then kills himself.
Defenseless victims in a school.
- July 20, 2012: At least 12 people are killed and 58 are injured when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, releases a canister of gas and then opens fire during opening night of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises."
Cinemark theaters are posted as off limits to concealed carriers.
- April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school's library.
Another defenseless school where the teachers and students are disarmed by the law.
- June 18, 1990: James Edward Pough shoots people at random in a General Motors Acceptance Corp. office in Jacksonville, Fla., killing 10 and wounding four, before killing himself.
GMAC has a "no weapons in the workplace policy" that ensures that the victims would be unarmed.
- Sept. 23, 2008: Matti Saari, 22, walks into a vocational college in Kauhajoki, Finland, and opens fire, killing 10 people and burning their bodies with firebombs before shooting himself fatally in the head.
Another school in another country that controls firearms. More disarmed victims.
Why don't we hear about mass killings where guns are not off limits? Is it the criminals picking places where killing is easy? Or have their attempted killing sprees been thwarted by an intended victim who was armed? Mass killings make national headlines, but a wanna be mass killer who gets his ticket to Valhalla punched by a person who is legally carrying a weapon don't. That is why I carry.
The only incident I can think of off-hand was the New Life Church shooting that was ended by a parishioner.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Trolley Square, here in Salt Lake. It was a "gun free" area, also.
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