I'm sorry to be posting this so soon after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado -- please know that my heart goes out to the victims and their loved ones -- but I'm angry.I'm angry because, according to news reports, the movie theater where 12 people were murdered and another 59 wounded had a "No Guns Allowed" policy. It may well have posted signs like this one.
This sign kills.
Make no mistake -- even if one or more moviegoers had been lawfully carrying firearms in that theater this morning, there's no guarantee that they could've stopped the shooter or reduced the number of casualties. But we do know two things for sure.
First of all, permitting lawful carry just might've given those theater patrons a fighting chance. More important, signs like this -- and the policies they represent -- advertise to the world that the facility on which they're posted is full of unarmed people, potential victims, fish in a barrel.
It makes no sense.
Today's massacre was an act of evil, carried out by a madman. Everyone knows that madmen are shadows and evil is a fact of life, and yet some among us still suggest that we can prevent such violence by restricting or outright banning some or all firearms -- leaving innocents outgunned at best, disarmed at worst.
That's the equivalent of posting this sign on our houses and on our cars, tattooing it on our foreheads. And it makes no sense.
Madmen and criminal predators always -- and I mean always -- will find a way to get 'hold of the tools of their trade, and incidents like the one in Colorado this morning demonstrate that they sure as hell don’t obey laws and policies, much less signs. Disarming law-abiding citizens by statute, then, can have only one result.
Innocent people will die. When will we learn that?
I see signs like this on businesses every day. Uncomfortable as I am to be entering an "unarmed victims zone," sometimes I patronize the establishment anyway, rationalizing my choice in one way or another.
Not any more. It makes no sense.
