"All members of the university community are entitled to freedom from suffering, deliberate hurt, injury, or loss," reads Northern Illinois University's code of conduct (PDF). "Access to the university must be available to all in a nonhostile and nonthreatening atmosphere." Yesterday, at least a half-dozen members of the NIU community were killed. Didn't the gunman read the policy? The same code of conduct forbids firearms. People who want to use firearms on people don't abide by such rules. Since prohibitions against murder don't deter them, what made NIU think that its code of conduct would? Regulations of that sort are designed to make people feel good, not keep them safe. What keeps people safe from people with guns are other people with guns--the people such a policy targets. Multiple-victim-public shootings, as John Lott documents in his study, More Guns, Less Crime, disproportionately affect institutions that forbid guns, such as schools. When was the last time, for instance, that you heard of a mass shooting at a gun range? There are a lot of guns there, so by liberal logic a gun range should be a prime site for a mass shooting. But they're not, for the obvious reason that everyone there has a gun. And schools and churches are, for the obvious reason that few people there have guns.

Amen, Brother. You're preaching to the choir.

I remember living in Birmingham ALA. many moons ago and everybody had a hogleg underneath their driver's seat or in their pockets. The people were as civil as people could be to each other bordering on being downright polite. At the time, I asked a native about the gun violence associated with everybody and their little sister packing a piece. Outside of the occasional incident where a shooter and/or a shootee were impaired, it was pretty much nil.

Smart, sane normal people can have guns with little ill effect. But there will always be people who aren't smart, sane or normal who will get a hold of one and misuse it. In that case, you can just hope and pray (as Obama might say) that someone else has a gun to take them down.

Every once in a while I get out to West Texas where my roots are, and it is common to see a pick-up in town or on the road with a full gun-rack in the rear window. Surprisingly, I've never been shot while driving or walking.

"When was the last time, for instance, that you heard of a mass shooting at a gun range? There are a lot of guns there, so by liberal logic a gun range should be a prime site for a mass shooting. But they're not, for the obvious reason that everyone there has a gun. And schools and churches are, for the obvious reason that few people there have guns."

Of course, whenever a shooting does happen, it's always at a place that has at least one gun.

Right. And at a place where the shooter knows that he is the only one with a gun.

In 1976, the Washington City Council passed the nation's toughest gun control law, banning handguns completely and requiring rifles and shotguns to be registered, stored unloaded and locked or disassembled.

The D.C. murder rate was declining before this law; in the next 15 years it jumped 200 percent.

There should be perscription drug control, not gun control, since seems to be a common thread for violence. Take Clemens out of the government investigation (I haven't seen anyone on growth hormones shoot up a school) and put some of the psychiatrists pushing anti-depressants in!

I am pretty ignorant about prescription drugs, and the regulation of chemicals in the body/brain, Rhonda, but I've often wondered about what you discuss. The stories say the problem arose when the shooter went off his drugs. I wonder whether going on them in the first place permanently messes with the body's/brain's chemistry. Again, I know nothing about this individual's situation, but it seems, in general, that too many people are on drugs, legal drugs, and many of these drugs impair basic daily functions.

As a Boomer, it's been interesting and somewhat sad to observe that we have a whole new generation of kids who are on some type of legal psychotropic drug.

Instead of society expecting kids to work to behave themselves and expecting parents do their part to train them accordingly, the generation who had to navigate through a life full of various drugs, were quick to prescribe chemicals to do the job for them. A lot of negatives have resulted from this.

Two points on the legal drug topic:

First its anecedotal but a close friend went through all those various teenager-prescribed drugs and always attested to the way they accentuated his problems by giving him a sense of lack of control over his emotions, in that his emotions were being controlled w/o his will involved. I bet that for some people this sense of oneself losing free will could actually lead to greater problems.

Second, info from doctor friends and in particular a relative who worked in a pharmacy makes it clear that what these various drugs are doing is adjusting the mineral and chemical balance in the body, something that can actually also be accomplished through diet. Now, while one would assume that doing this through mechanical means would insure greater precision in the tweaking and adjusting of one's chemical and mineral balance I highly doubt that is anywhere close to foolproof. Given all the accidental overdoses that doctor's prescribe, and misprescriptions, etc., I bet that the reliance on medication also can lead to serious screw-ups as well.

These concerns don't make me a scientologist yet or anything, but the medical profession and Big Pharma certainly aren't above criticism and skepticism in these sorts of tragedies.

Bottom line though is that as Aristotle told us, the mad have nothing to teach us. Drawing lessons from the actions of a looney is generally a mistake.

i'm goin to the gun range tomorrow.

Mr. Knowitall:

If the murder rate had any trend at all at the time, then it was increasing. After guns were banned, though, it was stable. And it wasn't until ten years later that the murder rate started increasing again.

I suggest you grab this crime data, drop it into a spreadsheet, and generate a graph of the murder rate (per 100,000) over time.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics. They don't negate the facts.

Put that in your spreadsheet.