(IBD) Lesson Of Sandy Hook, Clackamas Mall — Ban Gun-Free Zones

Gun Laws: Before the tragedy in Connecticut, a shooter at an  Oregon shopping mall was stopped by an armed citizen with a concealed carry  permit who refused to be a victim, preventing another mass tragedy.

In the target-rich environment of the Clackamas Town Center two weeks before  Christmas, the shooter managed to kill only two people before killing himself. A  far worse tragedy was prevented when he was confronted by a hero named Nick  Meli.

As the shooter was having difficulty with his weapon, Meli pulled his and  took aim, reluctant to fire lest an innocent bystander be hit. But he didn't  have to pull the trigger: The shooter fled when confronted, ending his own life  before it could be done for him.

We will never know how many lives were saved by an armed citizen that  day.

From Virginia Tech to a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., to a school in  Newtown, Conn., such mass shootings are usually in venues declaring themselves  gun-free zones.

Other mass shootings — from a high school shooting by in Pearl, Miss., to the  New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., which took place before the  massacre in Aurora — have been cut short when someone retrieved a gun from a car  or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

John Fund, writing in National Review, notes that the Aurora shooter had a  choice of seven movie theaters within a 20-mile drive of his home that were  showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. The Cinemark Theater he chose  wasn't the closest, but it was the only one that banned customers from carrying  their guns inside, otherwise allowed under Colorado law.

On April 16, 2007, there was no one able to shoot back when Seung-Hui Cho  shot 32 people to death on a Virginia Tech campus that, like the theater in  Aurora, had declared itself gun-free. The state of Virginia is not a gun-free  zone, and crime has dropped where guns are allowed.

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