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Chadron City Council Member considering removing Gun Free Zones.

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NE Bull:
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/communities/chadron/council-considers-removing-gun-free-designation/article_b3d862ce-7766-11e5-9721-87f4e1a4866a.html

MartyB:

--- Quote ---Miles Bannan -- “I’m more comfortable knowing there’s not a bunch of guns in the room.”
--- End quote ---

Criminal?  That's exactly the way they think!

depserv:
The council is looking at the issue from the perspective of bearing arms being a privilege instead of a right, and that's the root of the problem.  Some government official is "more comfortable" when law-abiding citizens are unarmed?  Well what if someone on the council is more comfortable when there aren't a bunch of people in the room openly disagreeing with him?  Can the council make it illegal for citizens to disagree with the council? 

And while there is some truth in the argument about police maybe having more trouble distinguishing between a good guy and a bad guy when responding to an active shooter (given the right circumstances), that problem is more than offset by the fact that the civilian is able to respond much more quickly than the police and so is far more likely to save lives.  And the problem of identifying the bad guy exists even when civilians are not allowed to bear arms, since a bad guy does know how to hide his gun and pretend to be a good guy.  And don't forget that Anders Brevik, who killed 77 people in Norway, wore a police officer uniform while he was committing his mass murder; pretending to be a police officer is not an uncommon thing for criminals to do, and they are usually pretty good at presenting a false image of themselves.  In other words, disarming the good guys does not magically make it possible to distinguish with absolute certainty between the good guys and the bad guy, even though given just the right circumstances it might make it easier; what it does do for certain though is make one very important distinction between the two: the bad guy has the power to kill the good guys, and they do not have the power to stop him. 

There are cases where armed civilians have stopped mass murders, but if there have been problems caused by armed civilians when police responded to an active shooter situation I haven't heard about them, so it looks like a theoretical problem is being used to override something that has been proven to be a very real solution.  And the same thing applies to some nitwit feeling safer among disarmed sheep (just like the active shooter feels safer that way).  Those are not valid things to base laws on.     

So a rational analysis makes their arguments fall flat.  But that isn't even the point, because it isn't as simple as just balancing one against the other: citizens bearing arms is a right, and that carries far more weight than some claim that it might be easier for the police to do their job or because some fool feels "more comfortable" when citizens are denied that right.  It'd be a lot easier for the police to do their job of keeping us safe if the 4th and 5th Amendments could be treated like privileges instead of rights, but that isn't being done (yet anyway).  Or how many lives could be saved if all nonessential driving was made illegal?  And driving isn't even a right.  But citizens are denied a Constitutional right, because doing so makes some people feel "more comfortable," and under just the right circumstances it might make it easier for a police officer to do his job?  This shows absolute contempt for the right, and the body of law it's part of.   

Both our state and federal Constitutions make crystal clear that bearing arms is a right, but local governments still get away with treating it as a privilege.  That's the root of many of our problems, especially this one.  And the state legislature needs to put a stop to that abuse of power, because elected officials will break the law to whatever extent they are allowed to do so.  The state not putting an end to that abuse amounts to complicity.   

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