Update and bump to top: This past Thursday, March 6, a gunman killed eight students and wounded 11 others in a rampage at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem. He was prevented from killing more by an armed student and an off-duty soldier who lived nearby, according to WorldNet Daily:

“Yitzhak Dadon’s [the student - TD] 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.”

Original Post: Not even one year ago, I wrote a post entitled Gun-Free Zones of Death.

I stated then, and we’ve now had this ably demonstrated this past Thursday by one Steven Kazmierczak, there is absolutely nothing that can stop an individual with a gun (or guns, in this case) from committing mass murder except for another person with a gun. And you’re wrong — dead wrong — if you think the police can do anything. From ABC News:

The shooter fired 54 rounds from the weapons, killing six, including himself, and wounding 16.

Kazmierczak, dressed in black, was armed with three handguns and a shotgun, as students took cover beneath desks and ran out of the lecture hall. He was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Carrying the shotgun concealed in a guitar case, and the handguns under his coat, he entered the hall through a door near the front of the room’s stage.
[…]
In all, there were 23 casualties in the shooting, including the gunman. Several of the victims were taken to hospitals, where three died. The others, including the shooter, died at the scene of the gunfire.

Police said he reloaded the shotgun in a shooting that lasted less than five minutes, before he took his own life. Police arrived on the scene within two minutes of the first reports, but it was too late to stop the gunman.

Did you read that last sentence? Police arrived on the scene within two minutes of the first reports, but the carnage was over by then.

The blog at KXMB.com (Bismarck/Mandan, ND) has a post called “Another Massacre At A ‘Gun Free Zone’ College Campus” that largely echoes what I said in my post last year:

If you know anything about guns, or ever fire on a range, take any semi-automatic pistol with, say, two extra loaded magazines, and see how long it will take you to fire every single round in those magazines. It doesn’t take but a few seconds. Then imagine firing into a crowded room filled with unarmed people.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

This one, like some others before him, even stopped to reload. One gun. That’s all it would have taken. But that campus, like all the others, is a “gun free zone”.

To everyone except the killer.

How many more lives will be lost before the progressive idiots of the world progress to seeing the logic of an armed student body and faculty? I’m not talking everyone, only those qualified to hold gun permits under existing laws. I’ll guarantee that had just one or two people have been armed at the Virginia Tech massacre in April, 2007 or at Northern Illinois University this past Thursday, Valentine’s Day, fewer lives would have been lost.

But that’s not the way the “progressives” think. They think that people wouldn’t feel safe on campus knowing that armed individuals strolled the hallowed halls among them. I’ll bet they felt pretty safe Thursday — right up until shortly after 3:00pm, when the gunman opened fire. But that’s the way it is with liberals, you know? If everyone feels good, then it’ll be OK.

I’ll bet come Monday that students would feel pretty good about this announcement on the school’s web site:

“In light of last Thursday’s tragedy, we must conclude that our liberal, feel-good policy of no firearms on the NIU campus was a tragic and stupid blunder on the part of our over-educated-but-too-stupid-to-get-in-out-of-the-rain Sociology Department, who concocted the policy.

“Henceforth, any individual licensed to carry a firearm by Illinois state law may carry one anywhere on campus that they so desire. It is our fervent wish that should they find themselves confronted by a situation such as occurred last Thursday in Cole Hall, that they will feel free to use deadly force to quickly eliminate the threat and protect their fellow students and faculty.”

The deaths of Gayle Dubowski, Daniel Parmenter, Ryanne Mace, Catalina Garcia, and Julianna Gehant can be laid directly at the feet of those who oppose the rights granted to U.S. citizens by the 2nd Amendment.

I hope that whoever those individuals are, they feel good right about now.

Idiots.

TD