The Daily Hatch

Will “CARRYING HANDGUN IS PROHIBITED” poster work?

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute on gun control

On 1-13-13 on the Arkansas Times Blog the person with the username “ArkDemocrat” stated, “I visited a church in another state that allows guns, and there was a sign similar to the “No Smoking” signs (i.e. smoking cigarette with a red line across it) that had a symbol of a handgun with the line across it. If this passes and my church opts to not allow guns we need to buy a bunch of those signs and put them up.”

I responded:

I saw a sign that you might want to get for your church then. It said this:
ATTENTION CRIMINALS: NO WEAPONS ALLOWED!!! THIS IS DEFENSE FREE ZONE!!ALL LAWABIDING PATRONS HAVE BEEN DISARMED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE!!ENJOY!! Here is the link I got that from.

My good friend Elwood responded:

Saline is right but, as usual, he’s a bit of a wimp in the application.

As we all know from centuries of church massacres that prohibitive signs won’t keep killers from church any more than a few pistols in the congregation will stop them.

I replied:

Elwood thanks for the partial compliment.

WILL A FEW PISTOLS STOP ALL THOSE KILLERS IN THE CHURCH YOU ASK.

Let’s look at what happened to Ft Hood where my nephew is currently stationed when Bill Clinton became President and put in his gun control philosophy into action.

I THINK YOU WILL SEE A DIRECT COMPARISON BECAUSE MAJOR NIDAL MALIK HASAN KNEW THERE WERE NO PISTOLS PRESENT IN THE AREA HE STARTING SHOOTING IN AND HE WAS ABLE TO CONTINUE SHOOTING FOR 10 STRAIGHT MINUTES WITHOUT INTERRUPTION!!!!

John Lott wrote:

Shouldn’t an army base be the last place where a terrorist should be able to shoot at people uninterrupted for 10 minutes? After all, an army base is filled with soldiers who carry guns, right? Unfortunately, that is not the case. Beginning in March 1993, under the Clinton administration, the army forbids military personnel from carrying their own personal firearms and mandates that “a credible and specific threat against [Department of the Army] personnel [exist] in that region” before military personnel “may be authorized to carry firearms for personal protection.” …The unarmed soldiers could do little more than cower as Major Nidal Malik Hasan stood on a desk and shot down into the cubicles in which his victims were trapped. Some behaved heroically, such as private first class Marquest Smith who repeatedly risked his life removing five soldiers and a civilian from the carnage. But, being unarmed, these soldiers were unable to stop Hasan’s attack. The wife of one of the soldiers shot at Ft. Hood understood this all too well. Mandy Foster’s husband had been shot but was fortunate enough not to be seriously injured. In an interview on CNN on Monday night, Mrs. Foster was asked by anchor John Roberts how she felt about her husband “still scheduled for deployment in January” to Afghanistan. Ms. Foster responded: “At least he’s safe there and he can fire back, right?” — It is hard to believe that we don’t trust soldiers with guns on an army base when we trust these very same men in Iraq and Afghanistan. …The law-abiding, not the criminals, are the ones who obey the ban on guns. Instead of making areas safe for victims, the bans make it safe for the criminal. Hasan not only violated the army’s ban on carrying a gun, he also apparently violated the rules that require soldiers to register privately owned guns at the post. Research shows that allowing individuals to defend themselves dramatically reduces the rates of multiple victim public shootings. Even if attacks still occur, having civilians with permitted concealed handguns limits the damage. A major factor in determining how many people are harmed by these killers is the amount of time that elapses between when the attack starts and someone is able to arrive on the scene with a gun. …All the multiple victim public shootings in the U.S. — in which more than three people have been killed — have all occurred in places where concealed handguns have been banned.

Later Max Brantley (the founder of the Arkansas Times Blog) came on the blog to address “the gun nuts”:

Again gun nuts: The bill, which is linked and quoted from directly, indeed gives church gun permission power. But it is silent on notice to the public at large that walks through those doors. Huge liability question. A fair reading of the law linked is that those churches that want to prohibit guns best do so as the law provides all others who wish to exercise discretion to prohibit guns. I’d say a visitor with gun who entered a no-gun premises would have an affirmative defense of lack of notice. This bill is shoddily written.

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On 2-1-13 I posted on the Arkansas Times Blog the following:

I don’t know if this particular bill is “shoddily written” or not, but Bill Clinton’s gun control policy attributed to the horrible number of deaths at Ft Hood because the only person who did not obey Clinton’s gun control policy was the shooter and he knew all the other honest soldiers would not be armed and he took all of 10 minutes to mow them all down.

From a liberal point of view Max considers us “gun nuts” but we just don’t think the “CARRYING A HANDGUN IS PROHIBITED” poster will work. However, I have posted a video from Fox News that seems to dispute that idea.

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Private first class Marquest Smith pictured below:

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