But You WILL See Things Like THIS in the National Media

Four people, including toddler, fatally shot in Indiana home

GARY, Indiana (AP) -- A woman returning from a shopping trip found her young son seriously wounded and his father and a married couple dead in what police believe were drug-related shootings.

The boy, 23-month-old Anthony McClendon Jr., died a few hours later at a Chicago hospital.

Ronyale Hearne, 23, had taken her son to visit his father Friday evening and then went shopping with a cousin, returning just after midnight Saturday.

The women found the door open and came upon Hearne's son in the arms of Laurice Jones, 47, who was already dead, apparently from multiple gunshot wounds.

--

Deputy Chief Jeff Kumorek said it appeared that someone in the house was processing crack cocaine.

Yes, this was a horrible crime. Yes, it's most probably national news because of the age of the youngest victim. However, it illustrates something that the anti-gun forces never really seem to want to dwell on: the overwhelming majority of murderers aren't law-abiding citizens one minute, and slavering killers the next. And their victims often have long criminal records as well.

Murder in this country is tremendously high, without question, but the "gun control safety" effort isn't directed at the people who commit murder and armed robbery, it's aimed at John and Jane Q. Public - who are not the perpetrators of, nor the usual victims of homicide.

"But wait!" cry the anti's, "That means you don't need all those guns to protect yourself! So, HAH!"

We're still the victims of burglary, robbery, carjackings, rape. Just because our risk is low, does not make it non-existent. Yet the efforts of the anti-gunners only work to disarm us. As England has proven, disarming the general populace has not stopped the criminally inclined from acquiring weapons up to and including machineguns and hand-grenades, and we've got a large population of the criminally inclined.

Are incidents of armed self-defense rare? Statistical aberrations? John Lott says two million people a year use a firearm to defend themselves against a human or an animal attacker. You can take Mr. Lott's conclusions with a grain of salt (I do), but even at the rock-bottom absolute minimum estimate of 64,000 annual defensive gun uses, that's 175 a day - and that was only through 1990 - before Florida began the avalanche of states that have adopted "shall-issue" concealed carry. (Edit: Florida's shall-issue law passed in 1987. The next state to pass it was Virginia in 1988, but modifications of the law continued through 1992) And who would "gun control" disarm? The people who are willing to obey the law, even if it puts them at risk, like the eight victims of this New York City diner shooting, or the victim of this gang rape.

I'm sorry these people died, especially the infant, but the gun was not the cause, and "gun control" would not have saved them.

And we will continue to see incidents like this one in the national news while incidents like the one below will never get beyond the local fishwrap.


UPDATE, 1/21/04: I looked for this map, but couldn't find it. Thanks to Ravenwood, here it is - the animated Right-to-Carry map, 1986-2004.