NYC and Chicago Shootings vs. Second Amendment

Early reports the morning of August 24, 2012 indicate a shooting occurred just outside the Empire State Building in New York City. The initial reports indicate that at least eight people were shot, with three dead,  including the shooter. Those same initial reports state the shooter may have been shot by police who eventually responded after being alerted of the shooting. The motives, at this time, are unclear. Some witnesses indicate the incident may have been over a dispute between two co-workers.

15 years and 6 months ago, on February 24, 1997, there was another mass shooting outside the Empire State Building. That shooter killed one person, seriously injured six others, then shot himself in the head. He was a 69 year old Palestinian man who uttered some unintelligible phrase about Egypt during the incident. It was an act of terrorism, pure and simple.

New York State has some rather restrictive legislative violations of the Second Amendment  enacted. New York City is even more restrictive, joining cities such as Chicago, Boston, and San Fransisco in the top ten cities that despise the Second Amendment. Yet, statistically, those cities with the harshest and most restrictive anti-gun laws are also highest in gun-related crime. The reason is simple. Criminals do not care if they break a gun law in the process of breaking another laws, like attempting mass murder.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, an additional 19 people were shot, 13 of them early the morning of August 24th in less than 30 minutes. Chicago is the US city with the gravest Second Amendment violation, requiring a state permit just to keep a firearm, and not allowing anybody to bear them. The city banned all handguns except for police until the US Supreme Court found Mayor Daley's executive order a violation of the Second Amendment. Yet criminals have shot 19 people, including 14 year old teenagers. This is violations of the second amendment and tyrannic disarmament hard at work. 

In contrast, cities that comply with the Second Amendment and do not restrict non-felon, law-abiding, adult US Citizens from carrying concealed firearms have some of the lowest violent crime rates. The reason why is simple. Criminals in those cities cannot know who and how many of their potential victims are capable and prepared to shoot back (or shoot first). Criminals are cowards. They use guns against the defenseless because they need that security blanket. If that security blanket is removed, by and large, the criminals are too cowardly to risk their lives. If they were valorous and brave individuals, they wouldn't prey upon others in the first place. They wouldn't be so selfish as to take what others spent portions of their lives to accrue or create. Instead, they would defend such people, placing them above their selfish and childish desires.

Again we have a shooting incident that leaves open the questions:  "What if there were people with legally concealed firearms? Could this criminal have been stopped earlier? Could the damage he caused have been mitigated or stopped by an armed law-abiding citizen?". Granted, the large and chaotic crowd may have prevented a clear shot preventing collateral damage or stray rounds. However, the questions still persist.

The tyrants who want to disarm the average law-abiding citizens will try to spin this shooting as an excuse to pass more legislation or enact additional executive orders that violate the Second Amendment. However, even permits, concealed or otherwise, are already violations of the very clearly stated "Keep [own] and bear [carry] arms" that should "not be infringed". In reality, this event, just like the terrorist attack in 1997, is yet another statistic proving those violations of the Second Amendment need to cease.

The fact is that if guns are taken away from the law-abiding citizens, then only criminals and tyrants will be armed. The rest of us will be screwed. That is exactly what the leftist anti-gun Marxists want.

Molon Labe.