Gun-free fantasy zones
<p>After the Aurora theater shooting, it was of course inevitable that the jackals at the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy vendor would be trying to make a political meal from the victims&#8217; corpses before they had even had time to cool to room temperature. The usual round of inane honking about &#8220;common-sense gun control&#8221; ensued just as if this psycho (like most others) hadn&#8217;t cheerfully violated several laws well before he pulled the trigger. </p>
<p>But enough about the usual idiots; let&#8217;s talk about &#8220;Gun-free zones&#8221;.  We&#8217;re told the movie theater had a sign up announcing its &#8220;gun-free&#8221; policy.  Yeah, and how well did <em>that</em> work out for ya?</p>
<p>Try as I might, I am unable to comprehend the thinking of people who put &#8220;gun-free zone&#8221; signs in theaters, or on homes, or anywhere.  How do they not get that criminals and madmen will read this as &#8220;Get your tasty defenseless victims, right here?&#8221;</p>
<p>At least &#8220;gun-free&#8221; signs on homes generally only jeopardize people stupid enough to put them up. &#8220;Gun-free&#8221; signs and policies in public spaces are another matter; whatever gibbering moron at Cinemark mandated this one painted bull&#8217;s-eyes on a theater-full of innocents.</p>
<p>Two fantasies caused that massacre.  The obvious one was James Holmes&#8217;s delusional identification with the Joker.  The less obvious one was the pious belief that wishing firearms out of sight will keep bad people from doing bad things.  Holmes is an obvious psychotic who&#8217;s still trapped in the first fantasy; to prevent needless deaths, the rest of us must get free of the second.</p>
<p>For myself, from now on I plan to willfully violate every &#8220;gun-free zone&#8221; policy I run across. If enough sane people do likewise, perhaps the next massacre can be prevented.</p>
