Food For Thought

Commentary by Dan Uffner

Food For Thought re Gun Ownership

Recently, the National Rifle Association (NRA) held its annual meeting in St. Louis; some 73,000 gun enthusiasts attended. It's a safe bet that at least 25% of that number -- over 18,000 individuals -- had concealed weapons permits, yet not one person at the meeting was shot or killed or even threatened with a gun. No one in attendance was arrested.

Even though many from various media were assigned to cover the event, several with the avowed agenda of reporting incidents of undisciplined gun use, no such incidents occurred. At the very least, they expected some action provided by anti-gun protestors. While some reporters patrolled for several blocks around the meeting area, nary a protestor could be found.

St Louis could well have been the safest city in the United States during the meeting.

On the other hand, gun-free zones seem to have an inordinate amount of violent crimes. A few years ago, Virginia Tech's gun-free campus was the site of a tragic episode of a single gunman shooting and killing 32 students before someone with a gun killed the gunman. Other school shooting fatalities have occurred at other colleges and high schools with declared gun-free zones.

More than 5,000 arrests for vandalism, assault, thefts and rapes have been made of Occupy Wall Street protestors in municipalities with strict gun control laws.

It seems we have a lesson to be learned. The more likely the general citizenry are to be armed, the safer we all will be.