Jacqueline Smetak

Writers' Group

Last summer Alexander Kozak murdered Andrea Farrington at the Coral Ridge Mall. He shot her three times in the back. Stroke of luck he didn't decide to shoot anyone else.

There was no effort at trial to prove Kozak innocent. He did it. Cold-blooded, calculated first-degree murder. What's of interest here, however, is that his lawyer argued “diminished capacity." Kozak didn't kill Andrea Farrington. His borderline personality disorder killed Andrea Farrington.

Sound familiar? It should. It's the Wayne LaPierre Sandy Hook pivot. "Guns don't kill people. Crazy people kill people." So we should focus on mental health by tagging all shooters as crazy. Then what? Round up everybody who fits the crazy person profile? LaPierre never got that far. His solution to school shootings was minimum wage rent-a-cops with guns posted at every school in the nation. Estimated cost? $18 billion. Effective? Probably not. There were two sheriff's deputies at Columbine when that shooting started. One of them ate his lunch in the cafeteria where the students responsible began their rampage. They were going to kill the deputy first. Just dumb luck he wasn't in that room that day.

Scarier yet is an ABC 20/20 report from 2009, “If I only had a gun." In a shooter situation, people go into panic mode. They fumble and freeze and worse, having a gun makes them a target. Even people trained to handle a sudden crisis situation, as any military or police personnel will tell you, screw up.

The kicker here is that a rent-a-cop wouldn't have saved Andrea Farrington. Kozak was the rent-a-cop. How about a random armed shopper? Farrington was dead before anyone knew what happened. More likely, a gun would have made that shopper a second victim. Kozak wasn't in panic mode.

So on to LaPierre's mantra: “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Except the stats are inconclusive. Local police departments are not required to report self-defense shootings to the FBI. It takes researchers going through local newspapers, police beat by police beat, to get that information. Which, by the way, does not support LaPierre's assertion. One thing, however, is certain. There is not one single instance of a mass shooter taken down by a “good guy with a gun." Every single one has been taken down by police or committed suicide. Except Jared Loughner, who was taken out by a little old lady with a lawn chair.

Do guns make us safer? Apparently not. Deaths by firearms track with gun laws and ownership rates. More guns and weak laws equal more people dead. Gun rights proponents point to Illinois' strong laws as evidence that gun laws don't work. Except the death rate in Illinois, 8.67, is lower than that in all but one of its border states. Iowa, population a third that of Greater Chicago Land, has a rate of 8.19. Hawaii has strong gun laws, no border states, and a rate of 2.71. Alaska has weak laws, borders Canada, and has a death rate of 19.59.

But most telling is that the NRA doesn't believe its own line. People attending NRA conventions and meetings are not allowed to bring their guns in with them.

Which means that the NRA is fully aware that guns are dangerous, their primary function is to kill, most gun owners don't hunt and guns are virtually useless for self-defense.

Hypocrisy? But what else would anyone expect from a shill for the gun industry?

Writers' Group member Jacqueline Smetak is a Lone Tree resident.