By Abdul Masih —
UPDATED Two mass shootings over the weekend — one at Brown University in the U.S. and the other in Sydney, Australia — demonstrate that gun laws are worse than ineffective, they are counterproductive.
Brown University is a gun-free zone. That didn’t stop a pathological killer, who is yet to be arrested, from going into an engineering class final exam and kill two people and injure nine others.
In Australia, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, father-son terrorists managed to get guns and use them on Jews at Bondi Beach, killing 16.
In the one case, a gun-free zone only works against law-abiding citizens. Thus, a criminal exploits a “soft target” — no law-abiding citizen will serve as a lethal deterrent to the mayhem.
Gun-free zones help prevent accidental discharges and disputes from escalating. They do nothing to deter to stop premeditated attacks. Like most universities that are declared gun-free zones, there are no security checkpoints or scans to actually stop criminals from sneaking weapons in.
If the Brown University attack is teeth-grindingly frustrating, the attack against the Jews celebrating Hannukah at the beach is maddening.
Australia legislated a mandatory gun-buyback in 1996. You can’t buy a firearm for self-defense. But hunters are allowed to legally purchase bolt-action rifles and shotguns — exactly what Sajid Akram, 50, did to get the implements of mayhem.
For about 20 minutes, while Australian police wrung their hands (witnesses says some police froze and did not want to approach the attackers), father and son Naveed Akram fired off 50 rounds — at Jews and only Jews (Naveed is seen in video gesturing non-Jews to go away, he wasn’t interested in shooting them).
If there were one person with a concealed carry, the threat could have been neutralized sooner. Instead, bystander Ahmed al Ahmed had to sneak up on a Naveed, tackle him and wrestled the gun away from him. He aimed Naveed’s gun at Naveed, and he stopped.
It took a gun to stop a gunman.
Police shot and killed Sajid. Naveed is under guard at the hospital.
On Monday, Australian officials vowed to toughen gun laws.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese failed to mention Islam or Muslim once in a 5,000-word speech and question-and-answer, but he did signal the threat of “far right extremists.”
International reporters have noted that the police, including female officers, were slow and unwilling to respond to the attack. It has also emerged that Ahmed el Ahmed was mistakenly shot by cops after he saved the day.
First government tell us there is no need for self-defense, then cops also don’t do the job.
