{"id":10221,"date":"2015-07-18T13:20:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T13:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10221"},"modified":"2015-07-18T13:20:05","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T13:20:05","slug":"get-rid-of-gun-free-zones-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10221","title":{"rendered":"Get rid of gun free zones? Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Back in 1995, when the Texas Legislature was debating whether to allow Texans to carry concealed handguns, the publisher for whom I worked posed an interesting question to our state senator.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you just allow folks to carry guns on their hips and walk around the State Capitol?&#8221; he asked the late Teel Bivins, a Republican and an avid proponent of gun-owners rights.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot recall Bivins&#8217;s response. Perhaps he thought it was a rhetorical question.<\/p>\n<p>But it comes to mind now as I read this essay about gun free zones in the wake of the Chattanooga murders of four Marines and a sailor.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.politico.com\/magazine\/story\/2015\/07\/gun-control-us-capitol-120310.html?hp=t2_r#.VapPCbnbKt8<\/p>\n<p>Why not allow guns into the U.S. Capitol?<\/p>\n<p>Joel Zeitz, the author of the essay, noted that Donald Trump sounded like a mainstream Republican when he said we need to &#8220;get rid of gun free zones.&#8221; According to Trump, the men who died at the hands of the shooter didn&#8217;t have a chance because they were in a zone where gun are prohibited, which of course didn&#8217;t stop the shooter from sneaking a gun into the place.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Capitol has seen gun violence erupt. People have gotten past security systems with weapons. They have harmed individuals and damaged the structure.<\/p>\n<p>Would guns inside the Capitol stopped the incidents? I have trouble believing they would have worked.<\/p>\n<p>Texas&#8217; concealed handgun carry law, by the way, hasn&#8217;t been the disaster some of us thought it would be when the Legislature enacted it two decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>However, this argument that more guns makes us a safer society has yet to be proven &#8212; at least to me.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 1995, when the Texas Legislature was debating whether to allow Texans to carry concealed handguns, the publisher for whom I worked posed an interesting question to our state senator. &#8220;Why don&#8217;t you just allow folks to carry guns on their hips and walk around the State Capitol?&#8221; he asked the late Teel Bivins, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10221\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Get rid of gun free zones? Really?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,18],"tags":[2025,2028,2037,4544,4593],"class_list":["post-10221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-free-zones","tag-gun-violence","tag-teel-bivins","tag-texas-concealed-carry-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}