The Beslan School Memorial
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
  Thank you for a moment of sanity… Filed under: Firearms Islamism— Jason Hayes @ 4:27 pm
… in an otherwise crazy day.’

Dave Kopel has nailed yet another one.

Follow the Leader: Israel and Thailand set an example by arming teachers.

Islamist terrorists in Beslan, Russia, are currently holding hundreds of children hostage, threatening to execute them. No one knows how this horrible situation will end; but we do know that it could have been prevented. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy that swiftly ended terrorist attacks against schools. Earlier this year, Thailand adopted a similar approach. It is politically incorrect, but it does have the advantage of saving the lives of children and teachers. The policy? Encourage teachers to carry firearms.

I know the Brady Bunch and other nanny-state socialists will scream at the thought of teachers carrying firearms. However, we can look at how this hostage taking has escalated to date. Hundreds of people, mostly children, have been killed. As I noted in a previous post, the Islamist terrorists actually shot into crowds of fleeing children. Further reports have indicated that explosions and gunfire are still being heard through the city as Russian forces search for the remaining terrorists. This group came prepared for (and clearly expecting) violence and they did not shy away from it for a second.

Additionally, as we look at the recent history of hostage takings and Islamist terrorism, we can clearly see that Islamists are happily stepping up the intensity of their violence against non-Muslims. For example, one can look at this hostage taking, the 9-11 attacks, the genocidal attacks on Christians and Animists in Darfur, the murder of American contractors in Iraq and the mutilation of their bodies, the recent cold-blooded execution of 12 Napalese hostages, the brutal beheadings of Kim Sun-il, Nick Berg, and Paul Johnson, the execution-style murder of Robert Jacob, the murder of 22 non-Muslims in Khobar, or the bus bombings in Israel a few days ago (which prompted this inhuman reaction from Palestinian civilians). This is, of course, a very short and incomplete list. If you cast your gaze to other countries, such as Indonesia, France, the Phillipines or others, you can easily find many more examples.

These examples prove that Islamist terrorists are willing and very likely to kill anyone or anything that gets in their way. Worse, they appear to take a perverse delight in commiting these attrocious acts of violence and they do so in a manner that typically targets the unarmed and/or innoncent.

When faced by a gleefully violent attacker, an attacker who sees your death as a means to ensuring their entrance into paradise, an attacker who prays for your forced conversion to their hate-filled religion or your death, you have little choice other than to protect yourself with lethal force. In that light, concerns that children might be put in dangerous by a teacher carrying a firearm can be seen as laughable.

As Kopel noted in his article, armed teachers in Isreal proved to be a threat to no one but the murderers who were trying to kill their students.

“When the message got around to the PLO groups and a couple infiltration attempts failed, the attacks against schools ceased.”

This is not to say that Palestinian terrorists never target schools. In late May 2002, an Israeli teacher shot a suicide terrorist before he could harm anyone.

On May 31, 2002, as reported by Israel National News, a terrorist threw a grenade and began shooting at a kindergarten in Shavei Shomron. Then, instead of closing in on the children, he abruptly fled the kindergarten and began shooting up the nearby neighborhood. Apparently he realized that the kindergarten was sure to have armed adults, and that he could not stay at the school long enough to make sure he actually murdered someone.

Unfortunately for the terrorist, “David Elbaz, owner of the local mini-market, gave chase and killed him with gunshots. In addition to several grenades and the weapon the terrorist carried on him, security sweeps revealed several explosive devices that he had intended to detonate during the thwarted attack.”

In the face of increasing Islamist violence against non-Muslims, no one can seriously argue that free citizens should not be able to protect themselves, if faced with a life and death situation such as is occuring in Beslan right now. As Kopel noted,

Adults have a duty to protect children. In Beslan at this very moment, seven people are dead, and hundreds more are in deadly peril, because the teachers lacked the tools to stop the evildoers. If we are really serious about gun laws that protect “the children,” then it seems clear that - whatever other gun laws a society adopts - every civilized nation at risk of terrorist attack ought to ensure that armed teachers can protect innocent children.

All blog content is used by permission, cited, or is © 2003-2004 Jason Hayes - hh@hayz.ws 
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