The vultures are circling.

In 1974, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas made war on Israel by attacking schools and kindergartens. The series of attacks culminated with that on Maalot on May 15th. Three PLO goons shot up a vanload of (arab) workers. They then entered the school at Maalot, killed the housekeeper, his wife and their child. They then took about 100 children hostage. When rescue forces assaulted the hostage takers, the terrorists blew up explosives and sprayed the children with machine gun fire. 25 people died, 66 more were wounded.

Golda Meir said during the Maalot incident, that one does not make politics on the backs of one's children.

That is exactly what the gun control freaks are doing now. Children are dying in what appear to be random attacks on government schools throughout the country. And the victim disarmers are using the tragedy to push their discredited, blood-soaked agenda. Their policies are discredited and blood-soaked because it is precisely the policies that they have advocated that make possible such attacks.

We know from the studies of Prof. Gary Kleck that Americans use firearms more than two million times a year to stop criminal attacks. We know from the works of Professor John Lott and graduate student David Mustard that prohibitions on concealed carry of guns are responsible for approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies every year. Why should schools be any different than the rest of the world?

It is well know that gun control utopias like Washington, D.C. and New York City have much higher crime rates than the benighted redneck "gun nut" states like Wyoming, Nevada and Vermont. Of course, the crime rates are so high because those who obey the law cannot defend themselves from those who break the laws, including the gun control laws. What are the government schools but miniature Washington, D.C.s? They are just as bureausclorotic, just as mind-numbing as D.C., except in miniature. And guns are prohibited -- to the law abiding -- on school grounds. Why not go all the way, and put up signs that say, "Child Murdering Scum Welcome Here" around our schools?

It should be clear by now that the current spate of school massacres are premeditated by the perpetrators. For example, in the Springfield, Oregon, massacre this Thursday (21 May), Kipland Kinkel went armed with three firearms, and, according to police, a "backpack loaded with ammunition clips (sic) and loose ammunition".

And it should also be clear that the police cannot be on duty at the schools at all times to stop these attacks. Nor have they any legal duty to do so. In the Springfield incident, it was students who stopped Kinkel. Jacob and Josh Ryker (17 and 14, respectively) rushed Kinkel with bare hands while he changed magazines on his rifle. Jacob took two 9mm bullets for his trouble. How many more students would have died had not the Ryker brothers taken up responsibility for their own self defense?

It was the "gun culture" which the blood-stained victim disarmament lobby so disdains which made possible the Ryker brothers' brave counter-attack. Their father, Robert Ryker, is a U.S. Navy diver who taught his boys firearms and firearms safety. Linda Ryker, their mother, said, "They know how to respect a gun, and I think all of that did lead to the fact that my boys did not panic when they saw them, and they tried to assist and help." And it was a deliberate, brave act for Robert Ryker to wear an NRA cap at the press conference.

All four of the Rykers are heroes. The brothers, for doing what they did. Their parents, for preparing them to do it. Nor will you ever see any of the Rykers indiscriminately slaughtering children like unarmed fish in a barrel. It is cowards, not brave men, who attack children.

And from this, Charles Schumer, Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and similar sniveling "right-thinking" people, and their sycophants in the press, will conclude that we have to take guns away from Americans.

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After the Maalot incident, the Israelis changed their policies. Strict gun control laws left over from the British Mandate were ended. People in the settlements were issue personal arms. Anyone with a clean record could get a concealed carry permit, and many did. Army reservists continued to keep their small arms at home, as the Swiss do.

Teachers and kindergarten nurses now started to carry guns. Schools were protected by parents (and often grandparents) guarding them in voluntary shifts. No school group went on a hike or trip without armed guards. The police involved the citizens in a voluntary civil guard project "Mishmar Esrachi", which even had its own sniper teams. The Army taught firearms safety and shooting techniques.

These efforts had an effect: PLO attacks became less effective and more costly to the PLO. By the early 1980s, the attacks ceased. As Dr. David Schiller, a former Israeli expert on the attacks put it, "Terrorists and other evildoers don't like risks." Or, as John Lott put it, "Criminals, we found, respond rationally to deterrence threats."

The Israelis also saw a connection between the press and the PLO attacks. The press gave the PLO the media attention they wanted to "promote their cause". Mind you, you have to be at least as deranged as prozac patient Kip Kinkel to think that sort of publicity will help your cause, but that's what they believed. And the press gave it to them. According to Schiller, "Now THAT is the underlying "reason" behind each and every incident that involved killing sprees in schools... from Maalot to Dunblane to Jonesboro."

The time has come to stop risking our children in the name of discredited and bloodstained policies. The time has come to stop whimpering and sniveling in cowardice, and take responsibility once again. It is time to take responsibility for our own self defense, and the defense of our neighbors and community.

Attacks on our children will continue as along as they are defenseless. Those who pursue policies of victim disarmament are accessories before the fact to such attacks because they prevent the victims from responding with full measure. A .25 ACP in the purse of a teacher is a far more effective deterrent to murderers than all the Handgun Control, Inc., pamphlets in the world.

Jacob Ryker is alive in a hospital, not dead in a morgue because he took full responsibility for protecting himself. Are you willing to do less?

Addendum, 1998 06 16: When I wrote that the vultures were circling, I was inadvertently prescient. Shortly after this was published in the Casper Star Tribune, the Vulture in Chief inflicted himself upon Springfield, Oregon, to push his victim disarmament agenda on the backs of dead children. His beak and claws drip with blood for many reasons, not least that he signed into law the federal gun-free schools act.

(c)1998 by Charles Curley