< Changing Worldviews.Commentary >
Words are powerful - Thoughts
shape - Ideas have consequences
David Krive
15 Year Old Law Student
Posted October 6, 2003
Protecting the Second Amendment
To bear or not to bear, that is the question
Well, now that Aahr-nold has been elected governor of Calleeeeefornia, we
can safely assume that Sacramento’s addiction to gun control laws won’t
be ending anytime soon. However, I believe we can count on Tom McClintock,
the pro-life, pro-second amendment, true conservative who garnered 14 percent
in yesterday’s election to continue to hold the line to protect our right
to bear arms.
Revisiting Columbine: The Case for Guns in Schools
On Wednesday, Oct. 1, 1997, Luke Woodham shot his mother and drove her car
to school, where he proceeded to shoot several students. Joel Myrick, the Vice
Principle, being an upstanding, law abiding, gun owning citizen, got a pistol
from his car and managed to subdue the gunman. Had Vice Principal Myrick had
his handgun with him in his office, in which case he might have saved the lives
of those students, he would have been in violation of federal and state law.
In this situation, who did the gun control laws stop? The criminal, or the
victim? And likewise, who knows how many lives could have been saved in Colorado
if teachers had a choice other than just having the students hide under their
desks?
The answers to all these questions do exist, in fact. They come out of the only democracy in the Middle East; Israel. Editorialist Vin Suprynowicz of the Las Vegas Review Journal stated that, "In Israel, teachers and parents who serve as school aides go armed at all times on school grounds, with semi-automatic weapons. Since this policy was put into effect, terrorist attacks in Israeli schools have dropped to zero. The only recent exception was the tragic case of a group of schoolchildren who were murdered by an Arab gunman as they visited the 'Zone of Peace' on the Jordanian border. The Jordanians specifically requested that the Israeli teachers and chaperones leave their weapons behind ... which they did. American schools are, on the other hand, 'gun free zones.'"
Rule of Thumb: More Guns, Less Crime
Professors John Lott and David Mustard, of the University of Chicago, in their
landmark 1996 study, "Crime, Deterrence and Right-to-Carry Concealed
Handguns” examined crime in the more than 3,000 U.S. counties from
1977 to 1992 and discovered that states legalizing the concealed carrying
of handguns (even with permit requirements) reduced murders by 8.5 percent,
rapes by 5 percent and aggravated assaults by 7 percent.
The United States cities with the most murders are, not so coincidentally, also the cities with the most restrictive gun control laws; Washington DC, famous for its murder rate (approximately seven times higher than the national average) enforces an almost complete ban on guns; you’d have to get a permit to move a gun from your living room to your kitchen. Small wonder.
International Gun Rules: He Who Has the Guns, Rules
Mao Tse-Tung, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin. These men all provided
great examples for the young dictators and communists being trained in our
public schools:
Do we sense a pattern here?
This Is a Gun-Free Zone: If you Insist on Killing People, We’ll
Ask you to Leave.
Switzerland, long known as a bastion of neutrality, and the home of the famed
Geneva Convention (which, as is widely known, was created primarily for the
benevolent protection of north Alaskan elks) enforces a superficially ironic
law, requiring all adult males to own and keep in their home an automatic assault
rifle. As a result, Switzerland enjoys a murder rate of 2.7 per 100,000. In
Israel, where owning a rifle is merely a matter of necessity, the murder rate
is 1.4 per 100,000. The United States enjoys, or rather, does not enjoy, a
murder rate that has, during the past few decades, risen to over 10 per 100,000.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) reported in 1998 that England’s crime rate is now higher than its United States counterpart, and rising. “You are more likely to be mugged in England than in the United States," stated the Reuters news agency, summarizing the DOJ study. What was England’s mistake? It began with the enforcement of a near complete ban on… guns.
A popular argument of the anti-gun crowd is the example of Canada or Japan, both of whom impose a near-complete ban on guns, and enjoy rather low murder rates. Truth be known, the United States non-gun murder rate is higher than the total murder rate in either of those two countries. In other words, Americans (those bloody uncivilized people, always drinking their tea without milk) kill each other more often with weapons other than guns – knives, fists, the occasional baseball bat and lead pipe or two. A pity.
But WHY?
The nagging question that the Terminator can’t answer is why Americans
kill, maim, and otherwise destroy each other so much; why has our crime rate
skyrocketed over the past forty-one years? 1962 was a landmark year, when rules
(ten of them) were removed from our public-school system. While teachers used
to complain of chewing gum in class, papers scattered throughout the school,
and the occasional cutting line for the drinking fountain, they now find that
murder, robbery, teen pregnancy, and drug use are their biggest problems.
There’s only one answer for the incredible amounts of crime in America. (Hint: gun control isn’t it.)
David Krive is an incredible young man of 15. Having been homeschooled most of his life and wondering why a 'normal' child takes twelve years to get through public school, at twelve years of age he graduated high school by passing the CHSPE (California Highschool Proficiency Exam). He recently finished Oakbrook College of Law's paralegal course, and is in his first year in their Juris Doctor program. If all goes according to plan, he'll be liscensed to practice law by the time he turns 19. David has competed in the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association's National Tournament for three years, and as an exclusive writer for Changing Worldviews, he is one of the youngest columnists in America. Not afraid to take on the toughest issues David is a fresh voice to his generation, and to readers of all ages. You can contact him at db8ingdave@yahoo.com