By Lynn Woolley

December 16, 2012

Go ahead.  Let’s have hearings on gun control in the wake of the senseless murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  And you know what we’ll find out if we’re honest?  That it was gun control that prevented teachers and a heroic principal from being able to protect these beautiful children.

Because of laws that prevent guns in schools, principal Dawn Hochsprung and teachers Victoria Soto, Anne Marie Murphy, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach ran toward the gunshots and into battle with the gunman – without any weapons of their own.  The law stacked the deck against these courageous women and they died along with two other adults and 20 children.   No reasonable person seriously believes that gun laws will prevent evil and disturbed people from obtaining guns.  Only people who are law abiding will be affected.  That can only make the situation worse.

Now, big-city mayors, Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media and the anti-gun lobby will do their best not to let this crisis go to waste.  Already, we’ve seen the TV graphic – 13 such mass shooting incidents already this year including Sandy Hook and the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre shootings.  But as tragic as these shootings are – and especially so when precious little children are victims – they do NOT represent some sort of historical trend.  The media is lying to us all through omission.

Bing the phrase “Chicago neighborhood shootings,” and see what you get.  We did and the first headline read:  “Ten shot including four teens Friday afternoon and night.”  That was December 14 – the same day as Sandy Hook.  But you didn’t read about it, did you?  It happens virtually every day in Chicago – the political crime capital of the nation and a city whose leaders are big proponents of gun control.  The aforementioned search phrase got over eight million hits.

How interesting that President Obama, who hails from Chicago and who rarely mentions the nightly bloodbath on the streets there, has already called for action on the gun control issue.  His hometown is the national center of gun violence and always has been.  In the 1930’s, the Chicago mobs were heavily engaged in bootlegging prohibited liquor, and running numbers and protection rackets and prostitution rings.  Their preferred way of eliminating their enemies – usually other gangs that were moving into their territory, or G-men like Eliot Ness – was the drive-by shooting using the deadly machine guns of the day.  Women and children often were killed in the crossfire.

As early as 1929, the gangs were murdering each other.   Al Capone’s gang executed seven criminals while targeting his rival Bugs Moran in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.  This occurred in Lincoln Park – again, Chicago.  Even when President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt was targeted for assassination in Florida, it was Anton Cermak that was killed – the mayor of – you guessed it – Chicago.

Back in Texas, your writer lives within an hour’s drive of three mass shootings – each with a particular nuance.  In the University of Texas Tower incident, the shooter, Charles Whitman, had a brain tumor.   Future State Representative Suzanna Gracia Hupp might have saved her parents from a crazed George Hennard at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen – except that she obeyed the law and left her firearm in her car.  Just up the road at Fort Hood, fourteen people (one, an unborn child) were slaughtered.  They were not allowed to carry guns on post, but a jihadist under the full protection of political correctness was armed to the teeth. 

What now?  We’ll have congressional hearings aimed at taking guns away from people who would never use them illegally.  Ink will be used by the barrel to print stories about the current “epidemic” of mass shootings.   No one will talk about the days of the Untouchables or the situation on the streets of Chicago today.  Few will discuss the culture of violence in video games or in the movies.  We witnessed the massacre at
Sandy Hook and called it “tragic.”  We paid money to see similar violence in the “The Dark Knight” and called it “entertainment.” 

Before we make changes in our gun laws, let’s drop the emotion of a useful crisis and face facts.  We have always had violence and we always will.  But in video games and in today’s movie theatres, we promote it as if it’s innocent fun.  Without calling for censorship, we can ask the entertainment industry to stop glamorizing mass murder. 

Beyond that, the only way to protect our schools is to level the playing field.  We should arm our teachers and principals – by law – and make it widely known that schools are no longer sitting ducks for bad people like Adam Lanza.  Only then will our children be safe.

Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based talk show host.  Contact him at lynn@belogical.com.