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By John R. Lott, Jr.

Gun control advocates look desperate. Last Friday night, on April 10,
ABC aired a heavily promoted, hour long “20/20″ special called ** you don't have permission to see this link ** advancing to eliminate gun-free zones at universities, perhaps this response isn’t surprising.

The show started and ended by claiming that allowing potential victims
to carry guns would not help keep them safe –- not even with hundreds
of hours of practice firing guns.

No mention was made of the actual multiple victim public shootings
stopped by people with concealed handguns nor did they describe who
actually carried out such shootings. Instead, ABC presented a rigged
experiment where one student in a classroom had a gun. But sometimes
even the best editors can’t hide everything the camera sees.

The experiment was set up to make the student fail. It did not resemble
a real-world shooting. The same scenario is shown three times, but in
each case the student with the gun is seated in the same seat –- the
center seat in the front row. The attacker is not only a top-notch
shooter –- a firearms expert who teaches firearms tactics and strategy
to police -– but also obviously knows precisely where the student with
the gun is sitting.

Each time the experiment is run, the attacker first fires two shots at
the teacher in the front of the class and then turns his gun directly
on the very student with the gun. The attacker wastes no time trying to
gun down any of the unarmed students. Thus, very unrealistically,
between the very first shot setting the armed student on notice and the
shots at the armed student, there is at most 2 seconds. The armed
student is allowed virtually no time to react and, unsurprisingly,
fails under the same circumstances that would have led even experienced
police officers to fare poorly.

But in the real world, a typical shooter is not a top-notch firearms
expert and has no clue about whether or not anyone might be armed and,
if so, where they are seated. If you have 50 people –- a pretty typical
college classroom –- and he is unknown to the attacker, the armed
student is given a tremendous advantage. Actually, if the experiment
run by “20/20″ seriously demonstrated anything, it highlighted the
problem of relying on uniformed police or security guards for safety:
the killer instantly knows whom to shoot first.

Yet, in the ABC experiment, the purposefully disadvantaged students are
not just identified and facing (within less than 2 seconds) an attacker
whose gun is already drawn. They are also forced to wear unfamiliar
gloves, a helmet, and a holster. This only adds to the difficulties the
students face in handling their guns.

Given this set-up the second student, Danielle, performed admirably
well. She shot the firearms expert in his left leg near the groin. If
real bullets had been used, that might well have disabled the attacker
and cut short his shooting spree.

Nevertheless, even terrible shooters can often be quite effective.
Despite all of ABC’s references to the Columbine attack, the network
never mention the armed guard at the school. He had an ** you don't have permission to see this link ** –- indeed it is reported that he couldn’t even hit a target. Yet, his
bravery still saved many lives because his poorly aimed shots forced
the two killers to engage in gunfire with him. This slowed down their
killing spree and gave many students a chance to escape the building.
The guard was only forced to retreat and leave the school himself
because of the homemade grenades that the Columbine murderers had.

The Columbine murderers ** you don't have permission to see this link ** and actively opposed passage of Colorado’s right-to-carry law,
particularly the part that would have allowed concealed handguns being
legally carried on school campuses. What goes unnoticed is that the
Columbine attack took place the very day that the state legislature
scheduled final passage of the concealed handgun law.

Time after time the attackers in these multiple victim public shootings
consciously avoid areas where people might be able to defend
themselves. In the attack on the Jewish community center in Los Angeles
in which five people were wounded, the attacker had apparently “scouted
three of the West Coast’s most prominent Jewish institutions—the Museum
of Tolerance, the Skirball Cultural Center and the University of
Judaism—but found security too tight.”

In the real world, even having a gun and pointing it at an attacker has
often convinced the attacker to stop shooting and surrender. Examples
include high schools in ** you don't have permission to see this link **. Street attacks in Memphis to Detroit ended this way, too, without any more shots fired.

Even if the cases don’t get much attention, gun permit holders stop
these multiple victim attacks on a regular basis. Ironically, ** you don't have permission to see this link **,
the day after ABC’s broadcast, a permit holder in Columbia, Texas
stopped a mass robbery by fatally shooting the criminal. Some Web sites
have started collecting these and other defensive gun use cases (e.g.,
see ** you don't have permission to see this link **).

ABC’S “20/20″ exaggerates “the danger of accidentally hitting a friend”
when confronting an attacker. The show cites as an example is a man who
mistook his wife for an intruder. Obviously that case is a tragedy, but
those cases are exceedingly rare. But why didn’t they present a single
multiple victim attack as an example? Simple, because it has not
happened.

** you don't have permission to see this link ** the notion that gun show regulations, rather than arming potential
victims, can stop these attacks. But very few criminals get their guns
from gun shows: a U.S. Justice Department survey of 18,000 state prison
inmates showed that ** you don't have permission to see this link ** raises the number to just 1.7 percent. There is not a single academic
study showing that regulating private individuals selling their own
guns — the so-called “gun show loophole” — reduces any type of violent
crime. What the regulations have accomplished is cutting the number of
gun shows ** you don't have permission to see this link **.

The show ends with this claim:
“If you are wondering where are all the studies about the effectiveness
of guns used by ordinary Americans for self-defense, well keep
searching, we could not find one reliable study and the ones we found
were contradictory.”

Yet, “contradictory” is an overstatement. There have been ** you don't have permission to see this link ** find large drops in crime. Some find no change, but not a single one shows an increase in crime.

You would think that if gun control worked as well as ABC implies,
there wouldn’t be these multiple victim public shootings in those
European countries with gun laws much stricter than those being
publicly discussed in the United States or by ABC. Yet, multiple victim
public shootings are quite common in Europe. In just the last few days,
there have been a ** you don't have permission to see this link ** are in Europe.

Given the ** you don't have permission to see this link ** that have been spent annually in the United States for police officers
on campus and other programs, one would hope that this relatively
inexpensive alternative, where people are willing to bear the costs
themselves to protect others, would be taken more seriously.

ABC never mentions a simple fact: all multiple victim public shootings
with more than 3 people killed have occurred where permitted concealed
handguns are prohibited. Rather than studying what actually happens
during these shootings, ABC conjured up rigged experiments aimed at
convincing Americans that guns are ineffective. Unfortunately, ABC’s
advice, rather than making victims safe, makes things safer for
attackers.

Yes, it has already aired. April 10, IIRC.