RENDELL ADMITS GUN LAWS COULD NOT PREVENT SCHOOL SHOOTING

In a remarkable moment of candor, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell today acknowledged what the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has been saying for years: Stronger gun laws could not have prevented the horrible shooting yesterday at the Amish school in Lancaster County.

Rendell, a staunch gun control advocate, admitted, “I believe with all my heart that we need more gun control” during a live press conference. But he also acknowledged that tougher gun laws would not have prevented gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV from carrying out his deadly attack, noting, “You can make all the changes you want, but you can never stop a random act of violence by someone intent on taking his own life.”

“Welcome to the party, Gov. Rendell,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb. “While the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has been wringing its hands and declaring that ‘somebody has got to do something,’ we have consistently maintained that such crimes are impossible to predict, and equally impossible to prevent with passage of yet another gun law. And finally, Gov. Rendell agrees with us.

“The gunman had no criminal or mental health background,” Gottlieb said, “so he would pass any criminal background check. His family and friends described him as a loving family man. Nobody saw this coming.

“This shooting, and the ones last week in Colorado and Wisconsin, and every school shooting in the past ten years all had one thing in common,” he observed. “They all happened in so-called ‘gun-free school zones,’ where students and adult staff are essentially helpless.

“Gun control extremism has disarmed the wrong people and created risk-free environments for those who would commit murder and mayhem,” Gottlieb said. “It is time to re-consider gun-free school zone laws and the zero-tolerance mentality such laws foster. We can no longer afford the empty-headed Utopian illusion that gun control and gun-free zones will keep children safe. Like all other gun control laws, this one has been a monumental failure, and it is literally killing our children.

“If it saves the life of just one child,” Gottlieb concluded, “abolishing such laws will be worth the effort.”