Barack Obama and his allies jumped on the recent mass shooting in Oregon the way ghouls throw themselves on fresh corpses. The crime provided Obama, Hillary Clinton, Shotgun Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Joe Sestak, and of course Ed "Never let a dead child go to waste" Rendell an opportunity to avoid real issues (such as the economy, skyrocketing health care costs, and national security) by offering empty platitudes and flat-out quackery. They want us to believe that enough legislation can turn the nation's guns into rainbows and unicorns, and violent criminals will suddenly sing Kumbaya with their former prospective victims.

Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats want gun control to become a front and center issue in the 2016 election. We need to oblige them to the extent that Mikhail Kutuzov accommodated Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Russia. Note how Clinton's own proposals are clearly empty platitudes:

• Clinton, like the equally dishonest Andrew Cuomo of New York, thinks gun manufacturers should be legally responsible for criminals who misuse firearms. The same standard would make General Motors liable for any drunk driver who kills somebody while driving a Chevy. Clinton and Cuomo are both attorneys who know that gun manufacturers sell firearms only through dealers who are licensed by the Federal government. This denies them the excuse of ignorance, and leaves only willful dishonesty as the explanation for their statements.
• Clinton also knows that the Federal government can already revoke the license of a gun dealer who breaks the law.
• Clinton also says violent individuals and domestic abusers should not be allowed to buy guns. Violent felons and people convicted of even misdemeanor domestic violence are already prohibited from buying guns. With regard to the latter, though, I recall how the legislation's originators scrambled to address the issue of police officers who had misdemeanor domestic violence convictions.

We also need to ask Ms. Clinton publicly and frequently how much 501(c)(3) tax exempt money she plans to divert to her campaign next year the way she helped the Million Mom March divert 501(c)(3) funds to Al Gore's campaign as well as those of Democratic House candidates in 2000. Her sole objective is to get elected by any means necessary rather than to deliver any realistic or viable response to violent crime.

Rolling Stone's Amanda Marcotte: Poster Child for Gun Control's Intellectual Bankruptcy

The bankruptcy of the anti-Second Amendment side is underscored by a Rolling Stone article that claims, "No mass shootings in the past 30 years have been stopped by an armed civilian." The Rolling Stone journalist who wrote this piece either failed to check her facts or flat-out lied, which is standard operating procedure the anti-Second Amendment camp. Here are but a handful of situations in which a potential mass shooter failed to complete an intended massacre because of the presence of armed citizens.

• "Right-to-Carry permit holder interrupts shooting spree in Georgia liquor store" reports, "The attacker shot and killed the store owner and a customer. However, Right-to-Carry permit holder Todd Scott was inside the store during the attack, drew his firearm and fired at the criminal. The armed citizen’s gunfire prompted the shooter to flee."
• Clackamas Town Center Shooting: "The Clackamas Town Center has a posted policy of prohibiting firearms on the premises" but, fortunately for the innocent people present, at least one customer treated this policy with the disrespect it deserved. Nick Meli aimed his weapon at the shooter, but did not fire because of innocent people behind him. The shooter nonetheless retreated, and committed suicide before he could take any more lives.
• The Pearl High School shooting was terminated by assistant principal Joel Myrick who went to his truck, retrieved an automatic pistol (the kind Cuomo and Obama don't like), confronted the shooter, and held him for the police.
• Volunteer church security guard Jeanne Assam shot a would-be mass murderer before he also could gun down dozens of churchgoers at New Life Church.
• Another prospective mass shooting was cut short by a concealed carry permit holder in Winnemucca, Nevada.
• The Parker Middle School dance shooting was terminated by a law-abiding citizen and his "little friend."

See this link for even more examples. I think it is safe to say, though, that these examples have not only turned Rolling Stone's credibility into rubble, they have (to paraphrase Winston Churchill's observation about nuclear war) made the rubble bounce.

The Only Thing that Stops a Bad Guy with a Gun is a Good Guy with a Gun

Of all these mass shootings that have occurred over the past thirty years, how many took place within purported gun-free zones? The answer will consist of a tiny minority, if not actually zero.

• Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan chose a gun-free zone.
• Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza chose a gun-free school zone. Note incidentally the idiocy of Federal "gun free" school zones that make anybody who carries a firearm within 1000 feet of a school into a felon even if he or she makes no attempt whatsoever to carry the weapon onto school grounds. In other words, you could be arrested for otherwise legally open-carrying a sidearm more than a block from a school. Shotgun Joe Biden was, by the way, the genius who introduced this legislation.
• Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed four Marines at a recruiting office where a bullet-riddled sign declared plainly that firearms were not permitted.
• James Holmes shot up a "gun free" movie theater in Aurora, Colorado instead of selecting a theater that did not prohibit firearms.
• Alleged killer Dylan Roof selected a church where he expected, and rightly so, the attendees to be unarmed.

Even a killer who expects to commit suicide if he is not killed by police doesn't want to confront somebody who may end prematurely what he hopes will be his blaze of glory. This is why "gun free zone" signs should be replaced with "free fire zones," because that is what they are.

Gun Control in Boston

Boston is living proof of the absolute bankruptcy of the gun control camp's quack solution to firearm-related violence. Deep blue Massachusetts has exactly the kind of background checks, limitations on so-called "assault weapons," licensing for gun owners, and everything else that Michael Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Sestak want. One little piece of garbage, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was able to lock down the entire city of Boston with a couple of firearms along with pressure cooker bombs, at a cost of roughly a billion dollars. The message is clear: if you are willing to die for your cause, you can cause the United States ten figures in damage by playing guerrilla in a city like Boston or New York (Tsarnaev's next alleged target) with "sensible gun laws." It's easy to imagine how a terrorist with even one illegally-acquired firearm, or a small knife-armed band, could execute dozens of New York City's Eloi without interference by police, although I am not going to mention it lest a terrorist act on it. Israel, on the other hand, has finally realized that concealed carry by its citizens might be effective in reducing the recent spate of terrorist attacks.

There is little we can do to convince Eloi to be anything other than Eloi, but we need to draw the line when they tell us we also have to be Eloi so the Morlocks of the world can eat us as well. This means voting, with few exceptions, straight Republican for the presidency, House of Representatives, and U.S. Senate in 2016.

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.