LETTER: Guns are our last defense

Editor,

It saddens all of us to see the recent news of shootings at schools across the country. There seems to be a new trend for suicidal individuals to not only kill themselves but to go out in a “blaze of glory” taking innocent lives with them hoping for some for some kind of lasting fame or final revenge.

This has happened more than once and, unfortunately, will happen again. These incidents of rage and murder bring up some very serious questions about such issues as gun control and concealed-carry licenses. Most realize that an all-out gun ban would not solve the problem because the only ones who would truly be disarmed would be law-abiding citizens.

According to his campaign adds, Mr. Dave Thomas – a Democrat – believes the answer is to ban legal concealed-carry weapon permit holders from being able to legally carry a concealed weapon on a college campus. Would such a law help? To answer that question, let me ask another. If someone “flips out” and decides to go on a shooting spree where is he going to go? Recent events would suggest he will not go to a police station where he knows everyone else is armed. He will pick a place where he has reason to believe no one else will be armed, like a school.

Would the fact that it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds stop him from committing his mass murder? Of course not! Therefore, such a law would only put a larger target on college campuses and leave all those on campus utterly defenseless; at the mercy of a crazed man with a gun. I would like to suggest that maybe at the University of Arizona and maybe even at Columbine there was at least one gun too few. Perhaps if one concerned student or teacher in the classroom at the University of Arizona had been “carrying,” two teachers would not have had to stare down the barrel of a murderer’s gun, their lives in his treacherous hands.

Please don’t leave us defenseless victims.

Alma Cole