BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Eight more innocent
Americans have been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness at
Omaha's Westroads Mall this week, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to
Keep and Bear Arms said today that the real outrage of this crime is that it
happened in a "gun free zone" where law-abiding private citizens are disarmed
by mall rules and state statute.
"In the wake of this horrible crime," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, "gun
control extremists are already demanding more useless gun control legislation.
A prohibition on firearms at Westroads Mall did not stop Robert Hawkins, but
it did give him a risk-free environment in which to unleash his rampage."
Gottlieb, co-author of the recently released America Fights Back: Armed
Self-defense In A Violent Age, said the common link between virtually every
mass shooting in recent history in this country is that they all happened in
so-called "gun-free zones" such as shopping malls and college campuses. He and
co-author Dave Workman detail the colossal failure of this "Gun Free Folly" in
their new book.
"What happened at the Westroads Mall can happen anywhere that political
hysteria results in victim disarmament," Gottlieb stated. "Blaming firearms
for this crime is like blaming cars for drunk driving. The argument doesn't
wash. Published reports all suggest that Hawkins was troubled and had
emotional problems, and he reportedly had a felony drug conviction on his
record which prohibited him from owning firearms. This proves that restrictive
gun laws do not prevent determined perpetrators from getting their hands on
guns, but they do prevent law-abiding citizens from having the tools to defend
themselves.
"Remember that a similar shooting at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square earlier
this year was interrupted by an armed, off-duty police officer from another
city," Gottlieb said. "In essence, that man was an armed private citizen. In
Tacoma, Washington two years ago, an armed citizen confronted a gunman at the
Tacoma Mall and although he was seriously wounded, his intervention brought
the shooting to a halt.
"Gun owners, the gun industry, nor our constitutionally-protected individual
right to keep and bear arms are at fault for the Westroads outrage," he said,
"and the gun control lobby knows it. Restrictive laws that disarm honest
citizens and provide risk-free environments for criminals and lunatics are at
fault, and so are the people responsible for passing such laws and enforcing
such prohibitions.
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens
Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the
nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the
Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active
lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun
rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation
Alan Gottlieb of Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,
+1-425-454-4911
