At Fox News: "Scalise shooting and knee-jerk calls for more gun control - here we go again"

Dr. John Lott's newest piece at Fox News on the tragic attack this morning in Alexandria, Virginia starts this way:

Before the facts were even known about Wednesday morning’s 7 AM shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, gun control advocates were already calling for more stringent laws. 

■ David Frum, senior editor for the Atlantic, called for background checks, gun licensing and registration, long gun permits, limits on magazine size, and restrictions on open carrying of guns. 

■ Windsor Mann, a columnist for USA Today, blamed “easy access to deadly weapons.” 

■ Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe blamed the attack on “too many guns” and immediately called for more gun control. 

We don’t even know yet whether these laws could conceivably have made any difference in preventing this attack. And Frum is already correcting his posts for misstating Virginia’s gun control laws. 

After each mass public shooting, President Obama would call for expanded background checks on private transfers of guns  — even though not one of the shootings would have been prevented by such a law.  Indeed, not a single attack since at least 2000 would have been stopped. 

“News” coverage of these events also shows the same knee-jerk biases for more gun control.  Guns are often referred to as “assault weapons” even if they function exactly the same as a hunting rifle.  Nowhere do the news reports mention whether an attack occurred in a gun-free zone. They never examine the thought process of attackers who want defenseless victims. 

One thing is clear.  As Rep. Mike Bishop, R-Mich., told WWJ radio in Detroit, “The only reason—the only reason—why any of us walked out of this thing: By the grace of God, one of the folks here had a weapon to fire back and give us a moment to find cover. Because we were inside the backstop and if we didn’t have that cover by a brave person who stood up and took a shot themselves, we would not have gotten out of there and every one of us would have been hit. Every single one of us.” 

It is a lesson that we have seen over and over again.  The longer that it takes for a good guy with a gun to arrive on the scene, the greater the carnage. 

Since only congressional leadership has personal security, Fox News anchor Jon Scott speculated today that the shooter “did not expect someone to return fire.” . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.