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http://www.goal.org/articles/victimzones.html

Relishing guarantee of unarmed victims
Heavy spot zoning of gun control
pinpoints perfect prey for criminals

C. D.
The life-lesson began with the armed holdup of a Domino’s delivery man in the adjacent Fort Belvoir neighborhood. This was in the late 1970s, when our family lived outside Washington DC and I was still a dues-paying member of Handgun Control, Inc.

Unfortunately for the stickup artists, the pizza man had a licensed handgun. Without even firing, he put the robbers to flight, later to be apprehended. It made the nightly news.

Proving that no good turn goes unpunished, the driver was promptly fired for daring to defend his own life and (incidentally) his employer’s revenues. The regional Domino’s poohbah appeared on local newscasts, portentously declaring that it was corporate policy that their delivery staff not be armed.

He could hardly have done anything stupider.

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The value of legal concealed carry is not so much to have a gun as it is to worry a criminal that you might have a gun.

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For the next two months, our region was treated to twice-weekly reports in the police log of Domino’s drivers (exclusively) being lured to phony deliveries, where they were invariably relieved of their money and their pizza. It became a family joke: “Your money and your pizza!” (Of course, it wasn’t funny to the drivers.)

When the trend showed no sign of slowing, the corporate suit, realizing his enormous gaffe, appeared again on the air to announce that Domino’s “new” company policy was that their drivers were no longer “necessarily” required to be unarmed.

The crime spree dried up faster than Gary Hart campaign contributions. As Ann Coulter observed in the August issue of George, the value of legal concealed carry is not so much to have a gun as it is to worry a criminal that you might have a gun.

Twenty years later, it appears that our chattering classes have yet to understand this lesson. In the wake of spectacular mass murders in societal “safe havens” like schools, day-care centers, and churches, shortsighted “experts” clamor for ever more restrictive firearms prohibitions in and around those facilities — never understanding that the killers selected these locations precisely because they were guaranteed to be the only armed person there.

A church in Fort Worth, an observation platform in Manhattan, a train on Long Island, a Luby’s cafeteria in 1991, and any school anywhere — what do they all have in common? In the mind of a mass murderer, every one of these places is a government-established “Guaranteed Unarmed Victim Zone.” You want to pass laws to further restrict firearms in these places? Watch his demented little grin widen.

As the father of one of the Fort Worth shooting victims explained, “One place off limits to concealed handgun license holders is a place of worship. This excuse for a human knew where to commit his carnage.”

Recall how the various news outlets have described each attack: “Slowly and methodically picked people out to shoot…” “Calmly continued shooting for five minutes, reloading five times…” “The methodical manner in which he fired shot after shot…” “Methodically killed one-fifth of the patrons over a 10-minute period…” Does it sound like any of these killers was unaware that his personal safety was absolutely guaranteed?

If this observation seems peculiar to you, perform this exercise: try to recall any of these incidents which did not take place at a site where the government had forbidden honest people to possess the tools of self-defense.

It’s tough. There have been several: a Shoney’s in Alabama, an unemployment office in Vegas, even a gun range in California — but you never heard about them on the news. That’s because their perpetrators’ dreams of spectacular, media-worthy death tolls were instantly aborted by the presence of armed victims.

Indeed, neo-Nazi Buford Furrow passed up three other targets before terrorizing the North Valley Jewish Community Center because he feared that the others were defended by people with guns.

While American politicians scramble to further disarm everyone in visual range of a school or church, the Israeli government instead chooses to arm law-abiding citizens who work in those facilities. Only one of our countries is free from seemingly incessant terrorist attacks on schoolchildren and congregations.

It’s time the American people relearned what they once knew: that violence can’t be assuaged by giving the violent more of the advantage that they crave — and that crime can never be curbed by disarming its victims.