Reply #31: Do you feel this incident provides a rationale for increased gun control? [View All]

[Irreverend IX]

Guns are used defensively by civilians millions of times each year, and in most of those cases the aggressor simply runs away after seeing the gun and no one is hurt. And if you want to stop incidents like this one with legislation, nothing short of a total gun ban will so much as put a dent in the crime figures. But you can bet that a black market will flourish following any such ban, and even today anyone who has a hookup for hard drugs will have little trouble finding guns for sale on the black market.

It's interesting to note that many (probably the majority of) companies forbid their employees to carry concealed guns in the workplace, and in many cases even in their cars. Such policies do nothing to stop people bent on murder and mayhem like the guy in the story, but they do help ensure that no law-abiding gun owners will be able to resist maniacal shooters in the workplace.

Gun control is a farcical social experiment that does nothing to stop crime. If the politicians decided to look into increasing mental health care funding instead of blaming everything on a piece of metal, they might actually make some headway toward reducing incidents like this.