Mass-murdering terrorists and other forms of cowards seek out “soft targets.”  This means situations and conditions where victims are least likely to fight back or even resist.  Key to the evildoer’s determination of this is the ease in which access and control can be imposed on the most vulnerable with the least amount of risk.  Large groups in confined spaces with limited and easily controlled methods of egress form the perfect situation for those hell-bent on delivering evil.  The workplace, schools, places of worship, restaurants, malls all fit the bill.  When these places identify themselves as “Gun-Free Zones”, this indicates to the assailant an even softer target.

To the lunatics and wannabe killers of this world, Gun Free Zone is a declaration of defenseless, a maniacs all-you-can-kill buffet.

The madman has the element of surprise.  This is combined with overwhelmingly superior offense, not only in the planning, but also in the form of firepower.  A madman with guns in an otherwise Gun-Free Zone is a recipe for a massacre.  Once commenced, this assault generates over-powering fear in 99% of those targeted.  This fear results in panic, which causes confusion and mayhem, freezing some into inaction, scattering others into flight and powering that 1% into action in response.

There are two distinctive schools of thought on a solution to this matter and they debate each other every time a mass shooting takes place.  The cries for “common-sense gun laws”, closing the so-called “gun show loophole,” and banning “assault weapons” are all regurgitated up again, the same arguments as the last time.  The other side argues that guns don’t kill, people do, that the mentally ill are too often left untreated, and that the right to arms is ensconced in the nations founding documents.

Declaring a need for common-sense gun laws infers that guns are unregulated or that current laws are nonsensical.  This is patently false.  Every gun purchaser must submit to a federally regulated application process that includes a background check.  Only federally licensed dealers can sell guns either wholesale or retail and obtaining that license is very difficult, requiring stringent reporting obligations.  Weapons dealers at gun shows have the same legal obligations regarding the sale, application and background check federally required.  Violating firearms laws are severe felony level crimes invoking harsh prison sentences.  In addition, this only addresses the federal component of the law.  Each state has their own overlapping regulations, in many cases making gun ownership much harder or even next to impossible.

Over time, the anti-gun media has successfully convinced the public that “assault weapons” are available to the public, which is also false.  Those in media know this lie full well, but they play on the fact that a growing segment of society is ignorant to actual firearms facts and gullibly reliant on their published words.  By repeating the lie over and over, to the ignorant, it has become the truth.

True assault weapons are available only to law enforcement and the military, characterized by fully automatic operation.  The civilian versions of these firearms are not automatic, and are no different in operation from common hunting guns.  What confuses the public is that many firearms companies have produced these civilian rifles to look like the military version.

Same gun as to the right

However, just as you can buy a Lotus sports car body to replace that of a Volkswagen Beetle, that cosmetic modification does not magically render it a racecar.

Correspondingly, civilian rifles made to look like their military versions are not assault weapons.

As for accusing the media of being anti-gun, here is a great example.  Yahoo Sports writer Jason Owens wrote in an article published just today the following quote.  “In Norway, it’s really strict to buy weapons,” bronze-medal biathlete Tiril Eckhoff told USA Today. “I think that’s the main thing in America. Everyone can buy a gun, and that’s totally wrong, I think.”

Certainly Owens and the editors of USA Today knows that the statement by the Norwegian athlete is just plain wrong in proclaiming the ..”everyone can buy a gun,” yet they quote him and print it because it reinforces their preconceived notion and narrative, even at the expense of being totally refutable and completely incorrect.  This is not an oversight on their part; this is a straight up lie that supports their position.  When lies are necessary to justify ones thinking, those afflicted have gone from reasoning to propagandizing.

Emotion is what motivates the anti-gun crowd.  The Wall Street Journal reported just yesterday, that 150 people have been killed in school shooting since 1990.  150 people in 28 years.  While tragic and unacceptable, the fact is that means students are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than struck with a bullet.

The Left and their anti-gun friends peddle mis-information and out and out lies on the backs of emotionally charged images of grieving parents and crying children, not in order to get to the solutions, but to create from whole cloth a narrative that is inaccurate; hatred of guns.

Renowned criminologist, John Lott, in his book, “More Guns, Less Crime” proves, with real-life crime statistics and information about legal firearms ownership throughout the country, that indeed there is a determinate correlation between the presence of legal firearms ownership, possession and the commission of crimes.  While criminals may be stupid, they are just smart enough to distinguish between committing crimes in areas where gun ownership and the right to carry a weapon is prevalent as opposed to the softer targets located in Gun-Free Zones.

Evil is real, it exists in this world and it cannot be eradicated.  The solution isn’t the softening of the entire world, dreaming of a Utopian understanding, the solution is to harden ourselves against evils incursions on our lives.

Let’s not forget, in every instance of mass shootings, the story always ends with dozens or even hundreds of people showing up with dozens or hundreds of guns that either stop the event from continuing or otherwise insure the public’s safety.  Moreover, not one single proposed new law would have changed any of the outcomes.

We need to systematically harden our softest targets because in that critical moment of a horror about to be unleashed, the only solution to a maniac with a gun is a brave man with one.