BELLEVUE, WA – Tuesday’s shooting of two students at Martin Luther King, Jr. High School in New York is proof that the “Gun Free School Zone” loophole must be closed, said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).
Two students were seriously wounded in the afternoon shooting by another student, now in police custody. The school is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side near Lincoln Center.
“For several years,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “guns have been banned on school grounds across the nation. Juveniles can no longer legally own firearms. Legally-licensed adults cannot carry concealed handguns in a school for their own protection. Schools have eliminated extra-curricular student shooting teams. Zero-tolerance rules have led to youngsters being expelled for playing ‘cops and robbers,’ using their fingers as substitutes for guns. School campuses have been turned into virtual police states, complete with metal detectors at the doors, armed guards and warrantless searches. Yet there is a mile-wide loophole in this law: Gun-toting thugs don’t obey it.
“The suspect reportedly got a gun inside the school, which has metal detectors, by bringing it in through a side door,” Gottlieb noted. “The shooter was described as a ‘longtime absentee student’ and reportedly has gang ties, so this could be a gang-related shooting.
“In every school shooting since the tragedy in Moses Lake, Wash., the incidents at Pearl, Miss., Paducah, Ky., the Columbine massacre in Littleton, Colo., and last year’s shootings in San Diego, Calif., one glaring fact remains clear,” Gottlieb stressed. “Armed killers are not deterred by feel-good laws that prevent qualified teachers, administrators and others from being able to defend themselves and their students from a deadly attack.
“This shoots holes in the long-standing belief among anti-gunners that if we pass just one more law, some teenage terrorist will suddenly obey all the other laws,” Gottlieb mused.
Gottlieb said the Gun Free School Zone loophole “defines itself.”
“This ‘loophole’ exists because current laws have turned schools into target-rich, low-risk environments,” Gottlieb stated. “From Boston to Berkley, the situation is the same. Armed punks have nothing to fear when they go gunning for teachers or fellow students.
“We can close the Gun Free School Zone Loophole,” said Gottlieb, “by re-opening school campuses to the philosophy of self-defense. We can make schools safe by getting rid of specious laws that prevent people from protecting themselves on campus. Until anti-gun lawmakers and anti-self-defense organizations honestly admit the laws they pushed have had no impact, and never will, the nation will continue experiencing the kind of senseless tragedy that unfolded in New York on Tuesday.”