By Bill Fishburne

 I find it hard to think about the tragedy at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., without having difficulty catching my breath. It makes me want to cry and, at my age, I might be forgiven for so doing. But tears and knee jerk reactions aren’t going to solve the problem.

As we know it today, subject to change as more information is discovered and released, a 20-year old male with social issues stole legally owned guns from his mother, killed her, then went to the school and committed the most heinous crime imaginable: He murdered innocent children.

That has been a favorite tactic of tyrants and mass murderers through the ages. From Japanese soldiers in China throwing babies from their bayonets, to Saddam Hussein using nerve gas on Kurdish villagers, men have killed the most innocent for any and no reason.

So what do we do?

The only solution for the Japanese was World War II. It took a few years but when the aggressor finally attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor our pacifists shut up. Many actually got religion. We had a war, 400,000 Americans died (both theaters) and Japan today is one of our staunchest allies.

The killings at Sandy Hook have brought the battle between gun controllers and the pro-gun supporters of the 2nd Amendment into conflict again. So what is the truth? Are mass murders by guns an epidemic? Can we eliminate guns and put an end to it? Should we repeal or otherwise abrogate the 2nd Amendment?

Ezra Klein, a left-leaning columnist for The Washington Post, recently wrote a column titled “12 things you should know about guns and mass shootings in the U.S.” In his opening paragraph he admits that his column is a form of politicization of the issue. But of his 12 items only four tend to support more gun restrictions. Four others are measures of public opinion and two are simple surveys that show various social issues can lead to gun violence no matter where the shooter lives. The other two items are essentially irrelevant.

What’s missing in Klein’s complex and nuanced column is any discussion of how many instances of violence are prevented by guns each year versus those that a committed with guns by criminals.

This blinders-on study is unfortunately typical of those produced by otherwise rational anti-gun activists. In 1986, researcher and highly regarded physician Dr. Arthur Kellerman produced the first of a series of studies that individually and in summary dammed the keeping of guns in the home. Kellerman’s initial report claimed that guns in a home were 43 times more likely to be used to kill or injure a family member than a home intruder. In 1993, Kellerman revised that figure to 22 times more likely. A later revision brought the figure down to 18.

Kellerman’s flaw (and he is admittedly biased against guns) was that he only studied situations in which the gun was actually fired against the intruder. Law enforcement statistics show that “only .1 % to .2% of defensive gun usage involves the death of the criminal. Any study, such as this, that counts criminal deaths as the only measure of the protective benefits of guns will expectedly underestimate the benefits of firearms by a factor of 500 to 1,000.” (Dr. Edgar A. Suter, Journal of the Medical Society of Georgia, “Guns in the Medical Literature-A Failure of Peer Review," March 1994, p. 134.)

In the face of his biased “research,” Kellerman’s taxpayer-funded National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, a branch of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, was specifically de-funded by the House in 1996. The funds were immediately restored by the Senate in a compromise that states no CDC funds will ever again be used to support gun control issues.

As for what could or should be done about mass school and theater shootings (Sandy Hook, Aurora), my thought is simply this. The Constitution doesn’t grant rights it only affirms them. The right to self defense, in any form, is as clearly God-given as are a man’s fists. And just as you don’t take just your fists to a knife fight, you don’t take your knives to a gunfight. Self defense, and the right to keep and bear arms, is fundamental to a free society.

When we declare any zone to be gun-free, from our borders to our universities, theaters and schools, we are simply defining the killing ground for those with evil in their hearts and demons in their minds.

Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47, the heroic, unarmed female principal of the school is said to have attacked the murderer of her children with her bare hands, with all her fury. She was shot and killed. What would have happened if she, and perhaps other trained and qualified teachers, had been in possession of their own guns?

As we pray for those who died and for those who have suffered such grievous loss, we should also pray for wisdom in determining our future. Will be become an unarmed people subject to government and criminal tyranny, or shall we recognize that just as our airports are protected from terror, so must we accept the responsibility of active deterrent in our schools.

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Bill Fishburne is a Realtor living in Hendersonville. He served in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces A-Team leader 1968-1970 and is a Life member of the National Rifle Association.