Birthplace of the Second Amendment 1765: Guns in Schools Can Save Lives

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Guns in Schools Can Save Lives

By John R. Lott Jr. - December 26, 2012 9:02 am

USA Today - Has anyone noticed that these mass shootings at public schools increased after the 1995 Gun-Free School Zone Act? Passed with good intentions, banning guns would supposedly make schools safer.

But law abiding citizens, not criminals, obey these bans. Instead of making places safer, disarming law abiding citizens left them sitting ducks.
Killers go where victims can't defend themselves. In the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting, out of seven theaters showing the Batman movie premiere within 20 minutes of the suspect's apartment, only one banned permitted concealed handguns. The suspect didn't go to the closest nor the largest, but to the one that banned self-defense. Time after time the story is the same.

With just one exception, every public mass shooting in the USA since at least 1950 has taken place where citizens are banned from carrying guns. Despite strict gun regulations, Europe has had three of the worst six school shootings.
Sometimes, permit holders save lives. Joel Myrick, an assistant high school principal in Pearl, Miss., used to carry his permitted handgun at school, but stopped after the 1995 act passed. When his school was attacked in October 1997, he ran a mile to get his gun stored off school property, and still stopped the attack 11 minutes before police arrived. Before 1996, he could have stopped it sooner.

More than 8.5 million Americans can legally carry concealed handguns. They are next to us in restaurants, movie theaters and stores. Permit holders are law abiding, committing firearms violations at a rate of hundredths of 1%.

Before the 1995 act, states allowing concealed carry let permit holders carry guns in schools. In four states, they still can. No problems ever reported.

As a compromise, over the past 15 years more than 12,000 former military members have gone into public schools teaching through "Troops to Teachers." Let them carry.

Still in doubt? Ask yourself: Would you feel safer with a sign on your house saying "this house is a gun-free zone"? But if you wouldn't put these signs on your home, why put them elsewhere?

John R. Lott Jr. is a former chief economist for the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the author of More Guns, Less Crime.

(c) Copyright 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.

Birthplace of the Second Amendment 1765

Pages

Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

Preservation and Proposition

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Guns in Schools Can Save Lives

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