Excerpted from an excellent article by Doug Patton in Human Events.com (via NRA-ILA):
At Virginia Tech last spring, 32 people were gunned down in a gun-free zone. At Columbine High School in 1999, 13 innocent people were killed. In a Killeen, Texas, café in 1991, 23 died at the hands of a gunman run amok. And in a Southern California McDonalds restaurant in 1984, 21 lost their lives when a shooter went berserk. These are just a few of the shooting incidents around the world, all enabled by the same failure: there was no way to stop those responsible for perpetrating the killings.
After years of debate, the Nebraska Legislature passed a concealed-carry law last spring. It permits law-abiding citizens to carry a concealed firearm after paying a fee, completing a training course and submitting to a background check. However, as is so often the case with contested legislation, compromise was necessary for passage. In this case, the compromise consisted of allowing communities and businesses to opt out. Of course, this was a victory for liberals, who seem to believe that guns somehow can kill on their own. Unfortunately, for those of us who understand that inanimate objects do not kill people, this left a gaping hole in an otherwise useful law.
The upscale Von Maur store at the Westroads shopping center remained closed following the shootings. If I were the CEO of that corporation, before I authorized the reopening of that store, I would change the signs on the doors to read, “Law-abiding Nebraskans carrying concealed weapons welcome here.”
Update: Minstrel quotes the Nuge on this issue: Gun Free Zones Get People Killed.
“The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all. I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if liberty in America is to survive.” — Ronald Reagan