Media fails to mention Omaha mall's Gun-Free-Zone rule

[Little-Acorn]

Apparently the mall where a madman killed 8 and wounded many more yesterday, had signs in various places saying "No Guns Allowed".

There is no truth to the rumor that they also said "Attention criminals: We guarantee that all law-abiding citizens in this building have been left defenseless for you."

But they may as well have.

The media seems to have carefully avoided pointing this out. You have to wonder why.

-------------------------------------------------

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315563,00.html

Media Coverage of Mall Shooting Fails to Reveal Mall's Gun-Free-Zone Status
Thursday, December 06, 2007

By John R. Lott, Jr.

AP-- The horrible tragedy at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb. received a lot of attention Wednesday and Thursday. It should have. Eight people were killed, and five were wounded.

A Google news search using the phrase "Omaha Mall Shooting" finds an incredible 2,794 news stories worldwide for the last day. From India and Taiwan to Britain and Austria, there are probably few people in the world who haven’t heard about this tragedy.

But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn’t one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?

Nebraska allows people to carry permitted concealed handguns, but it allows property owners, such as the Westroads Mall, to post signs banning permit holders from legally carrying guns on their property.

The same was true for the attack at the Trolley Square Mall in Utah in February (a copy of the sign at the mall can be seen here). But again the media coverage ignored this fact. Possibly the ban there was even more noteworthy because the off-duty police officer who stopped the attack fortunately violated the ban by taking his gun in with him when he went shopping.

Yet even then, the officer "was at the opposite end and on a different floor of the convoluted Trolley Square complex when the shooting began. By the time he became aware of the shooting and managed to track down and confront Talovic [the killer], three minutes had elapsed."

There are plenty of cases every year where permit holders stop what would have been multiple victim shootings every year, but they rarely receive any news coverage. Take a case this year in Memphis, where WBIR-TV reported a gunman started "firing a pistol beside a busy city street" and was stopped by two permit holders before anyone was harmed.

When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred? While the media has begun to cover whether teachers can have guns at school or the almost 8,000 college students across the country who protested gun-free zones on their campuses, the media haven’t started checking what are the rules where these attacks occur.

Surely, the news stories carry detailed information on the weapon used (in this case, a rifle) and the number of ammunition clips (apparently, two). But if these aspects of the story are deemed important for understanding what happened, why isn’t it also important that the attack occurred where guns were banned? Isn’t it important to know why all the victims were disarmed?


(Full text of this article can be read at the above URL)

[theHawk]

Hey, all these wacko kids are just enforcing Darwinian Law -the weak and old die off, liberals wouldn't have it any other way. How dare you suggest a little old lady be allowed to carry an Equalizer in her purse!

[diuretic]

I think I know what Lott's getting at, that armed citizens would have taken out the shooter and saved lives. Speculative at best, as is taking place elsewhere here.

He should be calling for all citizens who possess firearms to undergo training in law, firearms use and tactical procedures. Then when those citizens attend the mall with their firearms they can be given standing instructions as to what they should do if a shooter appears. Perhaps one citizen can be designated field commander and others who would all be there together at the same time of course, could be given specific duties such as evacuation, treating the wounded, ensuring emergency services were coordinated while others could be put into the mall to coordinate the search for the shooter. Of course someone would have to be designated sniper so that could be worked out on entry to the mall as well.

It would be a bit of problem if armed citizens just walked in without announcing their presence of course. I mean, they could be freelancing while the citizen team would be fanning out searching for the shooter. And they'd have to be given tactical vests to mark them out because when the cops arrived on scene eight minutes after the first report of the shooter they wouldn't want to have to shoot any of the citizens trying to get the shooter.

But on the other hand I can see mall owners all over America getting ready for evacuation training. Shoppers must be prepared to head for the nearest exit or shelter the moment the bullets start flying. On entry to the mall for shopping you will be herded into the training area and given ten minutes on the nearest exists, what to do when you hear shooting and how to avoid being shot by a jumpy armed citizen responding to gunshots.

[Dilloduck]

I think I know what Lott's getting at, that armed citizens would have taken out the shooter and saved lives. Speculative at best, as is taking place elsewhere here.

He should be calling for all citizens who possess firearms to undergo training in law, firearms use and tactical procedures. Then when those citizens attend the mall with their firearms they can be given standing instructions as to what they should do if a shooter appears. Perhaps one citizen can be designated field commander and others who would all be there together at the same time of course, could be given specific duties such as evacuation, treating the wounded, ensuring emergency services were coordinated while others could be put into the mall to coordinate the search for the shooter. Of course someone would have to be designated sniper so that could be worked out on entry to the mall as well.

It would be a bit of problem if armed citizens just walked in without announcing their presence of course. I mean, they could be freelancing while the citizen team would be fanning out searching for the shooter. And they'd have to be given tactical vests to mark them out because when the cops arrived on scene eight minutes after the first report of the shooter they wouldn't want to have to shoot any of the citizens trying to get the shooter.

But on the other hand I can see mall owners all over America getting ready for evacuation training. Shoppers must be prepared to head for the nearest exit or shelter the moment the bullets start flying. On entry to the mall for shopping you will be herded into the training area and given ten minutes on the nearest exists, what to do when you hear shooting and how to avoid being shot by a jumpy armed citizen responding to gunshots.

The fear factor alone is enough to provide way more deterrent than exits now.

[Little-Acorn]

I think I know what Lott's getting at, that armed citizens would have taken out the shooter and saved lives.
Wrong as usual. He was "getting at" what he actually said: That the media has consistently avoided mentioning that most of these mass killings have taken place where the victims were forbidden to defend themselves.

Apparently you want to avoid discussing it too, trying instead to change the thread into a weird rant about turning shopping malls into army training bases. Sounds like the author has hit a nerve. I know it can be uncomfortable, for either you or the media, discussing something that discredits their desire that law-abiding citizens be disarmed. But don't you owe it to the people around you, to at least try to examine something that might wind up saving their lives?


and how to avoid being shot by a jumpy armed citizen responding to gunshots.

This may be the crux of your problem. You seem to believe - or at least want to spread the impression - that people responsibile enough to carry a weapon for self-defense, will be completely incompetent in its use. You have of course ignored my rebuttal of this a few posts ago, and seem determined to keep repeating it no matter how wrong it is.

Your acts seem to match those of the media Lott writes about. Any particular reason why?

[diuretic]

Wrong as usual. He was "getting at" what he actually said: That the media has consistently avoided mentioning that most of these mass killings have taken place where the victims were forbidden to defend themselves.

And that's how ridiculous his article is. A mass killer will seek out masses of people. And places were people tend to congregate in large numbers sufficient to provide a mass killer with a target-rich environment tend to be places where the carrying of firearms is prohibited or at least not encouraged. They also tend to be places where security on entry is lax. Perhaps Lott should be encouraging mall owners to have security on all entrances so that they can herd shoppers through metal detectors like they do at airports. That would ensure that no-one gets into a mall with a firearm. If that had been available in this instance then the shooter would never have been able to do what he did.



Apparently you want to avoid discussing it too, trying instead to change the thread into a weird rant about turning shopping malls into army training bases. Sounds like the author has hit a nerve. I know it can be uncomfortable, for either you or the media, discussing something that discredits their desire that law-abiding citizens be disarmed. But don't you owe it to the people around you, to at least try to examine something that might wind up saving their lives?

I'm not fussed about people being armed, I'm concerned that arming people who haven't been trained to deal with random shooters could cause more harm than it apparently seeks to ameliorate. If armed citizens are going to be expected to take out a shooter in a mall - or any other place for that matter - then they need to be trained to do so. And they must be trained as a cohort or it will be a shoot-a-thon.




This may be the crux of your problem. You seem to believe - or at least want to spread the impression - that people responsibile enough to carry a weapon for self-defense, will be completely incompetent in its use. You have of course ignored my rebuttal of this a few posts ago, and seem determined to keep repeating it no matter how wrong it is.

There's a world of difference between being able to safely and competently use a firearm and using the firearm as an aid to incapacitating a shooter. People need to be trained to hunt an armed human being, it's not like hunting deer. If you want an effective armed citizenry then they will have to be trained in the tactics needed to keep themselves and others alive while seeking to kill the shooter.



Your acts seem to match those of the media Lott writes about. Any particular reason why?

It's just your impression, it's wrong but you're entitled to it.

I'll summarise.

Learning to safely use a firearm is a good thing. Anyone who uses a firearm, even occasionally, should be trained to a high level of competence both in the use of the firearm and in safe handling, that goes without saying. People may even be highly trained in combat shooting which is an extremely useful shooting discipline.

I'll make the point again, going around a Hogan's Alley may well develop very effective shooting skills, but those skills are not immediately transferable in a random shooter situation. The skill-set is very different. It's like taking a highly competent street driver and putting them in a Formula One race, the skills may look similar but the standard require to effectively perform is higher and the context is very different.

The moment an armed citizen decides to go into a shooting zone and begins to hunt down and confront the shooter, that citizen is putting his or her life on the line. It's not something that's easily done.

You may have some illusions about the heroic individual entering the fray ready to take out the shooter but the reality is significantly different.

Aside from anything else there's the possibility that said armed citizen may, when it comes to the decision to pull the trigger to kill the shooter, may hesitiate sufficiently for the shooter to actually kill the citizen. There are ways of overcoming that natural tendency and they're best learned through appropriate training. If someone has never had to make that choice then they won't know how they will act. Training, preferably using a FATSII simulator with simunition, will at least prepare them for the possibility, after all, that's what training does.

If a couple of citizens get together to go after the shooter then they need to know how to operate as a team in doing so. Again that requires training.

You have put forward a set of simplistic responses. You've used John Lott's strange article as some sort of justification for your responses. I'm not arguing for prohibition, which would make me a natural target for Lott, I'm arguing for better training for armed citizens so that their response to a shooter won't end up in a bloodbath.

[Hagbard Celine]

That's garbage Acorn. I've already chewed you up and spit you out on this issue so I don't know why you'd want to beat a dead horse.:lol:

[Little-Acorn]

I'm not fussed about people being armed, I'm concerned that arming people who haven't been trained to deal with random shooters could cause more harm than it apparently seeks to ameliorate.
Who is "arming people"? I called only for laws forbidding concealed carry, to be repealed. People can then arm themselves... or not arm themselves, as they choose. And I pointed out that most people still would not.

And when you started making wild predictions about those who arm themselves, suddenly losing control and blasting away at anything that moves, I asked why you felt that people who took on such an onerous responsibility, would uniformly turn out to be so incompetent to exercise it. And I further asked how you reached the conclusion (from no evidence that I could see) that they would not seek out such training as you described. Have you any idea how many ordinary gun owners practice regularly at static and combat ranges, even in an environment where they are not allowed to carry their weapons where they will do the most good?

Finally I pointed out that merely repealing CCW restrictions, would give potential mass murderers the word that they would probably fail in their missions, and thus deter a number of them from trying it in the first place... thus saving most lives before any law-abiding citizen even picks up a gun.

You carefully ignored all of it, and merely kept ranting on about military coordination at Bloomingdale's, metal detectors at doorways, and other such paranoid tripe. Do you still wonder why I keep pointing out your nickname?

Let me know when you feel like answering the points I made. You might even find your objections were answered before you made them.

[PostmodernProphet]

I don't understand what all the hoopla is about....I think the "getting blown away by a random psychotic" factor is just one of those aspects of life that you have to live with.......along with the "getting hit by a falling airplane" factor, the "getting cancer from leaking gases from your refrigerator" factor, and the "oops, I forgot to keep on breathing" factor.....

[diuretic]

Who is "arming people"? I called only for laws forbidding concealed carry, to be repealed. People can then arm themselves... or not arm themselves, as they choose. And I pointed out that most people still would not.

Be fair and keep it in context - I wrote "I'm not fussed about people being armed, I'm concerned that arming people who haven't been trained to deal with random shooters could cause more harm than it apparently seeks to ameliorate. If armed citizens are going to be expected to take out a shooter in a mall - or any other place for that matter - then they need to be trained to do so. And they must be trained as a cohort or it will be a shoot-a-thon."

My point was that if there's going to be an expectation that armed citizens will intervene in such a situation that they should be trained appropriately. I also made the point that merely being competent and safe with a firearm is one thing, knowing how to apprehend or kill a shooter is a completely different ball game.



And when you started making wild predictions about those who arm themselves, suddenly losing control and blasting away at anything that moves, I asked why you felt that people who took on such an onerous responsibility, would uniformly turn out to be so incompetent to exercise it. And I further asked how you reached the conclusion (from no evidence that I could see) that they would not seek out such training as you described. Have you any idea how many ordinary gun owners practice regularly at static and combat ranges, even in an environment where they are not allowed to carry their weapons where they will do the most good?


I didn't say they'd "lose control". And you're deliberately avoiding my point. Recreational owners of firearms aren't usually trained in the skills needed to apprehend or kill a human shooter.




Finally I pointed out that merely repealing CCW restrictions, would give potential mass murderers the word that they would probably fail in their missions, and thus deter a number of them from trying it in the first place... thus saving most lives before any law-abiding citizen even picks up a gun.

You carefully ignored all of it, and merely kept ranting on about military coordination at Bloomingdale's, metal detectors at doorways, and other such paranoid tripe. Do you still wonder why I keep pointing out your nickname?

Let me know when you feel like answering the points I made. You might even find your objections were answered before you made them.

I think you need to take a deep breath and exercise some self-control when you post. If you can't counter a point or take a point then at least have the common decency not to deliberately mis-interpret my posts.

I'll again make my central point. Recreational firearms users are not trained to deal with human shooters. If recreational firearms owners are to be expected to intervene in a human shooter situation then they are going to need a lot more training, both individually and in cohorts, to enable them to do the job. Think about it. Cops are trained to a certain level but members of tactical units are trained to an even higher level to deal with shooters. Using your logic all that isn't necessary, we should just send them down to the range for a bit of recreational shooting training.

[davidk]

Why are people so afraid of facts? Disarming citizens leads to more crime.
These stats are from 1999 but they still prove the point.

Summary of first-year results (1999) :

* Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent
* Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent
* Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)

In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)

[diuretic]

Why are people so afraid of facts? Disarming citizens leads to more crime.
These stats are from 1999 but they still prove the point.

Summary of first-year results (1999) :

* Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent
* Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent
* Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)

In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)

Please, don't post that rubbish, none of it's true. It's propaganda that has been on the net since about 1996 and it's crap.

For a start gun control in Australia is managed at a state level and firearms are available to those who want or need them although compared to some US jurisdictions there are greater restrictions on what sort of firearms can be used/owned and by whom.

Second point, the statistics on homicide are also rubbish. The best place for up to date national statistics in Australia is here - www.aic.gov.au

From that site -


The Australian Institute of Criminology has collected data on homicides in Australia since 1989. Homicide includes murder, manslaughter and infanticide, but excludes driving-related fatalities unless these occur in the course of a criminal event. In 2004-05 there were 249 incidents involving 267 victims of homicide, the lowest number of homicide incidents and victims in Australia since the AIC began monitoring. The weapons/methods used in the commission of homicide have remained relatively unchanged over the years. The figure below shows that while the most common types of weapons used in homicide in Australia are weapons of opportunity, such as knives or sharp instruments and hands and/or feet, weapon use tends to differ based on the gender of the victim. Females were more likely to be killed with a knife or sharp instrument (37%), followed by being beaten to death with hands and/or feet (27%). This pattern of weapon use was similar for male victims, although the proportion of males killed with a firearm in 2004-05 declined, with a firearm becoming the third most common weapon for male victims (19%). Fewer than one in 10 females were killed with a firearm in 2004-05.

And at the same site - http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/aic.html

This is a good report - http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf - it will come up as a pdf but it's not a huge document.

I know where this comes from so let me put it into perspective. After the 1996 Port Arthur mass/serial (it doesn't fit in either category properly) committed by Martin Bryant the Howard federal government started to monster state governments forcing a gun buyback on them which saw certain types of firearms outlawed (eg semi-auto shotguns). The Howard Government was simply a populist government and its buybacks (the second one was after an incident in a university in Melbourne a few years later and targeted handguns) were bad policy but typical of Howard. The buybacks achieved absolutely nothing except to antagonise legitimate gun owners. There was no explosion of crime, people suddenly weren't defenceles, it has no noticeable effect at all and was totally unnecessary. The 'statistics" quoted all over the net, together with that laughable rubbish from a supposed Australian police officer called Ed Chenei - http://www.rense.com/general69/guns.htm - and elsewhere - is garbage. I don't know if "Ed Chenei" exists even but it doesn't matter, the article is rubbish.

I trust this sets the record straight.

[Kathianne]

I think I know what Lott's getting at, that armed citizens would have taken out the shooter and saved lives. Speculative at best, as is taking place elsewhere here.

He should be calling for all citizens who possess firearms to undergo training in law, firearms use and tactical procedures. Then when those citizens attend the mall with their firearms they can be given standing instructions as to what they should do if a shooter appears. Perhaps one citizen can be designated field commander and others who would all be there together at the same time of course, could be given specific duties such as evacuation, treating the wounded, ensuring emergency services were coordinated while others could be put into the mall to coordinate the search for the shooter. Of course someone would have to be designated sniper so that could be worked out on entry to the mall as well.

It would be a bit of problem if armed citizens just walked in without announcing their presence of course. I mean, they could be freelancing while the citizen team would be fanning out searching for the shooter. And they'd have to be given tactical vests to mark them out because when the cops arrived on scene eight minutes after the first report of the shooter they wouldn't want to have to shoot any of the citizens trying to get the shooter.

But on the other hand I can see mall owners all over America getting ready for evacuation training. Shoppers must be prepared to head for the nearest exit or shelter the moment the bullets start flying. On entry to the mall for shopping you will be herded into the training area and given ten minutes on the nearest exists, what to do when you hear shooting and how to avoid being shot by a jumpy armed citizen responding to gunshots.

I'm very glad I joined Amazon Prime after they gave me a free 2 years. ;)

[Little-Acorn]

Before 1968, concealed carry was much more widely permitted than it is today. And guess what - crime rates were lower. Most people still did not carry, but the scenario I described - bad guys not knowing who was armed but being pretty sure SOMEONE was, out of the crown they were looking at - basically prevailed.

The government used the shootings of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (separate, unrelated incidents) to gin up fear of gun instead of assassins, and began making laws against possession, carry etc. of various types of guns. As years went on, they kept adding more and more, as some states and cities did the same, and as crime continued to increase.

Do you think the government hacks will ever realize their grand experiment - attempts to reduce crime by restricting guns - has been a resounding failure? They've had nearly forty years. How many people have been mugged, shot, etc. in street crime, school shootings, mall shootings, post office shootings, etc., who might be alive today if these ever-increasing restrictions had not disarmed them and all the law-abiding citizens around them?

One day, these legislators who enacted these unconstitutional regulations against guns, may have a lot to answer for.

[Hugh Lincoln]

I think I know what Lott's getting at, that armed citizens would have taken out the shooter and saved lives. Speculative at best, as is taking place elsewhere here.

Yeah, gotta say, I'm pretty pro-gun rights, but this argument in favor of gun rights is nuts. It came up with the VT shootings, and I was like, we want college students bringing guns to CLASS within quick enough reach to shoot down another shooter?

[Little-Acorn]

Yeah, gotta say, I'm pretty pro-gun rights, but this argument in favor of gun rights is nuts. It came up with the VT shootings, and I was like, we want college students bringing guns to CLASS within quick enough reach to shoot down another shooter?

Yes.



http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/ccrkba-say

BELLEVUE, Wash., March 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An armed student at Jerusalem's Mercaz Haray seminary played a crucial role in stopping a gun-wielding terrorist Thursday, but the American press is downplaying his heroism because it proves that armed students can stop campus gunmen, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Yitzhak Dadon, 40, was described as "a private citizen who had a gun license and was able to shoot the gunman with his pistol" by reporter Etgar Lefkovitz with the Jerusalem Post. However, many news agencies in the United States are downplaying Dadon's decisive role in the incident.

"Yitzhak Dadon is a hero," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, "and he is living proof that armed students have a place on college campuses. Thankfully, his quick action was reported by the international press, including Mr. Lefkovitz, so unlike incidents here in the United States where the press was able to completely ignore the actions of armed students or teachers, the truth about this incident will not be suppressed.

"Mr. Dadon is not going to become a victim of this conspiracy of silence," Gottlieb continued. "Elitist American college administrators, the national press, nor anti-gun politicians can sweep this incident under their rug."

Internationally published reports say Dadon studies at the yeshiva, and had his pistol when the shooting erupted. When the gunman emerged from a library, Dadon reportedly shot him twice in the head. The gunman was subsequently shot by the off-duty soldier.

"Yitzhak Dadon's apparently well-placed bullets interrupted a rampage," Gottlieb said. "What a pity that someone like Mr. Dadon was not in class last April at Virginia Tech. What a tragedy that anti-gun extremism would keep him from attending class at Northern Illinois University. He would never be allowed to teach at Columbine High School, hold a job at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, or go shopping at Omaha's Westroads Mall.

"America's acquiescence to anti-gun hysteria has led to one tragedy after another," Gottlieb stated. "This disastrous policy has given us nothing but broken hearts and body counts, and it's got to end. The heroism of an armed Israeli seminary student halfway across the world sends a message that we needn't submit to murder in victim disarmament zones. That's why his actions are getting such short shrift from America's press. It's a story they are loathe to report because it affirms a philosophy of self-reliance that they despise."

[DragonStryk72]

Yeah, gotta say, I'm pretty pro-gun rights, but this argument in favor of gun rights is nuts. It came up with the VT shootings, and I was like, we want college students bringing guns to CLASS within quick enough reach to shoot down another shooter?

Living down here by Virginia Tech, HELLS YES!!!! These weren't just regular students, they actually practiced regular with these guns, they knew the proper care and handling of the weapons. The shootings went on for hours, and yeah he still would have succeeded in killing people, but not nearly as many, if we weren't such wuss-pusses about guns. I learned to use a bolt-action rifle when I was 12, later, in military, an M-14, shotgun, and got my handgun quals.

Removing guns from the law-abiding only creates the exact climate that murderers crave, and has made the gun completely iconic in its use, as opposed to it being looked the same way that bows & arrows are looked at as.

[actsnoblemartin]

the media is about as honest as a teenager


Apparently the mall where a madman killed 8 and wounded many more yesterday, had signs in various places saying "No Guns Allowed".

There is no truth to the rumor that they also said "Attention criminals: We guarantee that all law-abiding citizens in this building have been left defenseless for you."

But they may as well have.

The media seems to have carefully avoided pointing this out. You have to wonder why.

-------------------------------------------------

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315563,00.html

Media Coverage of Mall Shooting Fails to Reveal Mall's Gun-Free-Zone Status
Thursday, December 06, 2007

By John R. Lott, Jr.

AP-- The horrible tragedy at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb. received a lot of attention Wednesday and Thursday. It should have. Eight people were killed, and five were wounded.

A Google news search using the phrase "Omaha Mall Shooting" finds an incredible 2,794 news stories worldwide for the last day. From India and Taiwan to Britain and Austria, there are probably few people in the world who haven’t heard about this tragedy.

But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn’t one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?

Nebraska allows people to carry permitted concealed handguns, but it allows property owners, such as the Westroads Mall, to post signs banning permit holders from legally carrying guns on their property.

The same was true for the attack at the Trolley Square Mall in Utah in February (a copy of the sign at the mall can be seen here). But again the media coverage ignored this fact. Possibly the ban there was even more noteworthy because the off-duty police officer who stopped the attack fortunately violated the ban by taking his gun in with him when he went shopping.

Yet even then, the officer "was at the opposite end and on a different floor of the convoluted Trolley Square complex when the shooting began. By the time he became aware of the shooting and managed to track down and confront Talovic [the killer], three minutes had elapsed."

There are plenty of cases every year where permit holders stop what would have been multiple victim shootings every year, but they rarely receive any news coverage. Take a case this year in Memphis, where WBIR-TV reported a gunman started "firing a pistol beside a busy city street" and was stopped by two permit holders before anyone was harmed.

When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred? While the media has begun to cover whether teachers can have guns at school or the almost 8,000 college students across the country who protested gun-free zones on their campuses, the media haven’t started checking what are the rules where these attacks occur.

Surely, the news stories carry detailed information on the weapon used (in this case, a rifle) and the number of ammunition clips (apparently, two). But if these aspects of the story are deemed important for understanding what happened, why isn’t it also important that the attack occurred where guns were banned? Isn’t it important to know why all the victims were disarmed?


(Full text of this article can be read at the above URL)