Charles Mudede (courtesy youtube.com)

Over at thestranger.com, socialist and freelance journalist Charles Mudede offers Why Mass Shootings and Gun Accidents Happen Rarely (If at All) at Airports. The answer’s pretty obvious: there are a whole lot of armed police and their TSA watchdogs on site. It takes Mr. Mudede a while to get there. And where he goes from there is where all arguments for gun control end . . .

. . . the right is right: Gun-free zones are pretty stupid. We should not even bother with them. No one who has it in their mind to pop people before popping themselves is going to notice, let alone be dissuaded by, a sign that says you’re in a gun-free zone. Those are just words on a wall.

But what would happen if a gun-free zone was rigorously, actively, physically enforced? Would it have more substance than mere words? Would it be effective?

Prison is the ultimate example of a “gun-free zone,” a place where a firearms prohibition is “rigorously, actively, physically enforced.” While there are examples of prisoners getting a gun while behind bars, the more you make the outside world like a “gun free” prison, the less likely it is that someone will shoot themselves and/or others.

This is what gun control advocates seek: a society where only police have firearms and [supposedly] no one gets shot. Gun rights advocates see this “utopia” for what it is: a prison state. The strange thing is, gun control advocates don’t see the logical endpoint of their agenda even when they do. Like this:

So, the kind of thing that happened yesterday at the Renton movie theater (a woman was shot while watching Michael Bay’s new Benghazi movie, 13 Hours) appears to never happen in gun-free zones that enforce their words.

I don’t like living in a world where stupid and/or evil people hurt others. But I prefer it to the world where the state proactively limits my freedom in the name of safety — and stupid and/or evil bureaucrats and police hurt others. Because that’s the world that murdered my grandparents and made my father a slave. Never again.

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46 COMMENTS

    • How many airport attacks have there been in Israel? Ben Gurion International, I believe, attacked with grenades and automatic weapons, despite the police and military forces there. Oh yeah, it was:

      While Ben Gurion Airport has been a target of Palestinian attacks, the adoption of strict security precautions has ensured that no aircraft departing from Ben Gurion airport has ever been hijacked. On the other hand, airliners hijacked from other countries have landed at Ben Gurion, contributing to two major incidents in the airport’s history. In the first, on 8 May 1972, four Palestinian Black September terrorists hijacked a Sabena flight en route from Vienna and forced it to land at Ben Gurion airport. Sayeret Matkal commandos led by Ehud Barak stormed the plane, killing two of the hijackers and capturing the other two. One passenger was killed.[9] Later that month, on 30 May 1972, in an attack known as the Lod Airport Massacre, 24 people were killed and 80 injured when three members of the Japanese Red Army sprayed machine gun fire into the passenger arrival area. The victims included Aharon Katzir, a prominent protein biophysicist and brother of Israel’s 4th president. Those injured included Efraim Katzir and a group of twenty Puerto Rican tourists who had just arrived in Israel.[10] The only terrorist who survived was Kozo Okamoto, who received a life sentence but was set free in a prisoner exchange with the PFLP-GC.

  3. Not to mention the actual logistics of such a thing. Imagine building a high security prison the size of the US?

    Oh, and not only do prisoners get a hold of guns every now and then, they also can find other things around to commit their mayhem.

    Oh and one more thing. We can make guns from the simple pipe and shotgun shell to securing a mill and making an AR-15 from scratch. Are they to enact mill control then next? And books, you can’t be passing around information about how to make a gun.

    Something about the genie and bottle occurs to me.

    Oh, and there’s also that pesky second amendment thing aside from the actual physical world issues involved here.

    These people are truly insane.

    • A prison doesn’t necessarily need to have physical walls; they are trying to build a prison/police state with surveillance, thought control, indoctrination, “health-care” (doctors as informants), militarized law enforcement units for every alphabet bureau, etc etc.
      And they’ve been succeeding, mainly because so many people are complacent, afraid of everything, and are totally unwilling to take responsibility for their own security/defense & lives.

      • You are spot on…the social pressures to suppress free thought are every bit a prison as physical walls. The end result is the same; “they” control the outcome of behaviors.

        They’ve also been succeeding at this due to:

        (1) They control the schools. And, so many parents willingly send their children TO those schools.

        (2) They control the media.

        (3) They control, or exert considerable control over, the financial system. Thus, there is the smoke-n-mirrors ‘distraction’ of acceptable (or desirable) ways to live one’s life. If people are ‘too busy’ chasing various carrots on sticks, well, they just don’t notice stuff.

        Etc.

  4. To address his question, it would be effective only if there were so many police that everyone else lived in absolute poverty just to support them.

  6. The socialist vision of a police state to control “guns” — street thugs/gangs, who use machetes when guns are not available, are the actual problem the gun control nuts don’t want to talk about — is actually required even without guns. Socialism requires a police state in order to keep everyone down at the same level; otherwise the rich and the productive will all flee, leaving the poor, infirm and improvident to suport each other. Guns in the hands of the productive and provident are the best defense against a police state, which is why socialists and their wannabe-socialist liberal kin want to ban them.

    • Bingo. The thing about socialism/communism is that it’s not economically natural, and without a government to keep it in place, the system will automatically revert back to capitalism. Thus, a large, powerful, centralized government is not a bi-product of socialism, but the most important part of it.

      • The purpose of socialism is to support the large, powerful, centralized government in great wealth, the higher you are in the government, the wealthier you are. Socialism is for the people, not the socialists.

        Caring for the poor has nothing at all to do with it. Redistributing wealth only exists to distribute it up the food chain to the elites. The people only get that barest minimum that the state thinks they can get away with.

        And you may note, that pretty well describes the system we live under now in the US.

        • Except for the fact that you can still be upwardly mobile economically in the US without being in government. You know, the complete opposite of socialism.

        • “Yawnz says:
          January 24, 2016 at 17:42

          Except for the fact that you can still be upwardly mobile economically in the US without being in government.”

          So what? You can still be upwardly mobile economically in ‘socialist states’ without being in government also.

          Socialism is a matter of degrees, there is no such thing as a complete socialist state, unless you include totalitarian communist states where there is no such thing as private property.

          So what’s your point anyway?

        • “So what’s your point anyway?”

          My take on his point:

          That because the US does not fit some idealized, textbook definition of every aspect of socialism in theory, the US must therefore not have any socialist component or similarity to socialist states.

          Which is (if that is indeed his point), completely false. “Socialism” is not a binary state, yes or no.

        • Milton Friedman has said the US is mostly socialist, he should know. Plus it’s gotten worse since he died.

    • Yeah when the Gorbachev instated his “openness” reforms in the 1980s and the idea was that they wouldn’t just immediately kill or imprison you for not following Soviet dogma, the whole thing began to crumble. Of course they were still collecting names in case things tightened up again, but that never really happened.

  7. He’s correct. If you’re going to have a gun-free zone it must be enforced otherwise you’re just ringing the dinner bell for all of these psychopaths. Now since the cost to maintain such a zone would be prohibitively expensive the logical alternative would be to remove them entirely.

  8. Sure we could be like escape from New York/LA. Just call it “Escape from USA”. Does homie make any $ writing this tripe?

  9. So it’s clear that crime doesn’t generally happen where there is a prominent security force. Unless you consider the terrorist attacks directly on said security forces. It’s also clear that all gun free zones (why they are “crime free” or “violence free” surely is odd) can’t be staffed for deterrence.

    Where could I get a group of persons who are, statistically, among the most law abiding persons, to create such a presence in these zones? Is there a group of people, who would be in these places anyway, and would be armed of their own free will, with arms purchased with non tax dollars?

    Sure would solve this guys problems. If only such people existed. /sarc

  10. I’m pretty sure that 99% of murders are committed by stupid people, so all we need to do to end crime is give stupid people high-paying jobs as journalists.

    Bonus — we’re halfway there.

  11. Well, he’s right. To get to that level of gun free safety, you would have to turn the entire country into a prison. Prisoners live in a confined space, are subject to rigorous routines and routine searches of their person and possessions.

  12. We need explosive implants crammed up our noses that keep us in line and from crossing the red lines painted on the floor. This is the solution people. Didn’t pay your auto insurance on time? 5 minutes of unbearable pain each day until you do. Cause a micro aggression in another person? 5 minutes of pain of unbearable pain for corrective conditioning. Try to commit suicide? Unbearable pain until authorities arrive to take you for conditioning. This is the solution people.

  13. So, the “gun free” zone is rigorously & etc. enforced, making it “gun free” except for the enforcers.

    Or at least “violence free” except for the enforcers.

    This is always the palmed card with these proposals. “Force” to enforce the ban doesn’t count. That’s blowing right past the imposed restriction on people’s lives, to make them do what you prefer, vs. what they prefer. Some call that “force”, “violence”, or a “tort”, regardless of how it is done, by whom, or for what purpose.

  15. Actually, Stop and Frisk was this idea put into practice in New York City, with one of the primary purposes of the program being to find and prosecute people who were illegally carrying. Somehow, I have the sneaking suspicion that Mudede isn’t such a huge fan of the idea. I’m not, but then again, I’m not the one arguing for a massive police state.

    • Interesting assertion about “stop and frisk”. Are there any figures on how many people were found guilty of carrying, and how many of those had committed another crime?

  16. I have a right to safety. I would be safe living in a North Korean dictatorship. Children would be safe under a North Korean Government. Kim has stated that North Korea has an advantageous human rights system. Think of the children…

  17. It is always amazing to me how black people can call for a police state. They have swallowed the white European socialist utopian thinking. Most of them have never read any history of Europe and the government ordered mass murders there.

  18. I submit gun free zone exist because the cost to rigidly enforce the area is prohibitive. The signage relies on law abiding citizens compliance while criminals and madmen ignore it.

  19. Is the logic not unassailable?

    If there are no guns in private hands, there can be no gun-assisted suicide.
    If there are no guns in private hands, there can be no gun-related crime.
    If there are no guns in private hands, we will have “done something”…for the children.

    Simple logic as above just might coalesce movement to amend the constitution. Remember, the income tax was passed by a margin of one state. A state where the popular vote was against, but the state secretary certified the vote as being for the constitutional amendment. Wonderful state. Land of Lincoln. Illinois. Champion and paragon of honest politics,

  20. The Progressives want “safe spaces” and “gun-free zones”. Logically, there is only one possible way to create their perfect utopia. After seeing what Progressives have done over the last 7 plus years, knowing what they want to do to us, I am no longer opposed to imprisoning Progressives. It is the only way they can get what they claim they want. And, there is justification for imprisoning them too: Subverting the Constitution is, well, illegal.

  22. NRA is the organization promoting a police state. NRA contract lobbyist for Illinois Donald Todd Vandermyde put Duty to Inform w/ criminal penalties in Rep. Brandon Phelps HB183 “NRA backed” carry bill, NOT Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The anti-gun Chiefs of Police wanted DTI so the police state can implement Stop and Frisk.

    Want to exercise your right to bear arms in IL? Sign your life away with an unlimited privacy waiver provided by the State Police, and give up your right to remain silent and your right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Plus your wife has the option of being disarmed, abducted and raped by serial killers like John Gacy, because the DTI has no requirement that the “officer” be in uniform, much less on duty.

    Promoting rape, murder and the police state, that’s “your” NRA! Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningham should send a bonus to their rat Vandermyde for creating job security for the next twenty years to “fix” their own garbage carry bill. Where can they find more black plaintiffs to recruit and betray now that Otis McDonald is dead?

  23. “Rarely.” That word cuts both ways. Unless you live in a democratically controlled urban center like Chicago, Baltimore, DC, or (in 10 years) NYC, you will “rarely, if ever” have to worry about ‘gun violence.’

    So if you are worried enough about “rarely” to believe in gun-control then I’m worried enough about “rarely” to carry a gun.

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