Mass Murders Do Happen in Other Countries

After the tragic shooting in a Charleston church, it didn’t take long for our President to say that these kinds of shootings don’t happen in other countries.  He went on to push his gun control agenda and used the tragedy to blame Republicans for not passing gun control laws that he agrees with. Well…these kinds of shootings almost *always* happen in *this* country in “gun-free zones”, which means that they exclusively happen where guns are NOT allowed.  So gun control laws don’t work, apparently.  Indeed, 92% of all shootings occur in gun-free zones.  But that misguided thought has been addressed numerous times.

The whopper I will address this time (yes, that’s right, I’m inferring that there are other times when our President tells a whopper…because whoppers are the rule rather than the exception)…is this notion that mass shootings don’t happen in other countries.  Powerline provided a list of countries, dates, and number of individuals killed in mass shootings or killings in the past 28 years.  I have reorganized them in reverse chronological order.  You’ll notice many of the countries listed have extremely strict gun laws or ban guns altogether, yet these shootings still happened…

Sergey (Sergei) Pomazun killed 6, 2013, Russia

Ljubiša Bogdanović killed 13, 2013, Serbia

Mohammed Merah killed 7, 2012, France

Behring Anders Breivik killed 75 (WHOA!), 2011, Norway

Wellington Menezes de Oliveira killed 12, 2011, Brazil

Derrick Bird killed 12, 2010, UK

Huanming Wu killed 9, 2010, China

Tim Kretschmer killled 15, 2009, Germany

Juhani Matti Saari killed 10, 2008, Finland

Bai Ningyang killed 12, 2006, China

Robert Steinhäuser killed 16, 2002, Germany

Friedrich Leibacher killed 14, 2001,Switzerland

Ahmed Ibragimov killed 41 (or 34?), 1999, Russia

Genildo Ferreira de França killed 14, 1997, Brazil

Eric Borel killed 15, 1995, France

Ami Popper killed 7, 1990, Israel

Christian Dornier killed 14, 1989, France

Michael Robert Ryan killed 16, 1987, UK

The bottom line is that mass murderers all seem to have something in common–a personal beef, real or imagined, against those they murder.  They get access to some kind of weapon (gun, knife, lawn mower, whatever) legally or illegally, and they do what they want to do.

In another article, I explored the fact that humans are going to do what they want to do at the end of the day.  Natural law works with human nature–governments that make laws that work with human nature will succeed, and governments that make laws against human nature will fail.  You cannot stop a criminal from committing a crime by making a law against the crime.  The criminal doesn’t care about the law.  That is why he is a criminal.

The purpose of a law is to justify punishment for a behavior, not to prevent the behavior, because nothing can really prevent the behavior save the person himself deciding that he will not do it, or someone physically stopping him from doing so.  A law against murder, for instance, exists so that the government can punish people who murder, and so that if it is possible to stop a murder in progress, they are justified in doing so.  If the point of the law against murder is to stop murders from happening, why would you want to disarm law-abiding citizens, who are capable of stopping murders from happening?  Disarming law abiding citizens who may be allies for law enforcement is like letting a hungry wolf loose in a cage filled with defenseless, cute, fuzzy, declawed kittens.  Guess what’s going to happen?  No number of “Do not eat the kittens” signs will stop the ravenous wolf from chowing down.  It is literally this idiotic to try to protect a school or a hospital with a “gun free zone” sign.

Back to my original point, violence is not localized to the US, where gun control laws are less stringent than in other “developed” countries.  And it is dishonorable, insensitive, and disgusting to use a tragedy like what happened in Charleston to promote an ineffective, idiotic, politicized gun control agenda.  Mr. President, you owe an apology to all of America, and especially to the families of the victims in Charleston.  You should be ashamed of yourself.