by John Lott

You know you’re doing something right when two New York Times columnists, Gail Collins and Nicholas Kristof, attack your research on the same day. Kristof followed up on criticism leveled earlier in the week by others writing for The Times. I must have said something substantial enough to warrant this attention. Let us check the facts.

Gail Collins worries that law-abiding citizens carrying concealed handguns can’t be trusted:

One can only hope that Saturday’s horrible attack in Tucson encourages more citizens to carry concealed handguns,” wrote John Lott, Jr. . . . on Wednesday. As a model, he pointed to Joseph Zamudio, . . . Lott’s theory was that Zamudio was able to lend a hand “because his legally carried 9 mm semiautomatice offered him protection.” He neglected to mention that while Zamudio never fired at the gunman, he almost drew on an innocent man by mistake.

No, it was not my mere speculation. Zamudio himself told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that he though that carrying a gun made him willing to run towards the shots while almost everyone else was running for cover. As to the possibility of shooting an innocent man, that possibility didn’t occur because Zamudio used caution and observed from the gun’s slide that it was out of bullets. While gun control advocates like to view his composure as extraordinary, it actually happens again and again.

The Outdoor Wire has learned the United States Department of State is reconsidering last year’s decision to block the importation of World War II rifles from the Republic of Korea.

Citing concerns over the proposed demilitarization and disposal of 850,000 surplus M1 Garand rifles and M1 Carbines, the State Department had rescinded authorization for the transfer, saying the decision was based on the “collective Administration’s effort to analyze the impact of this potential transfer.”

The “collective effort” included an ATF protest supposedly based on the “ease with which an M1 Carbine, in particular, can be converted into a fully automatic rifle.”

The other bugaboo was “significant law enforcement concerns associated with the movement of small arms across U.S. borders, especially the Southwest Border.”

Seems when a political position is taken, it is defended to the death. Some members of the current administration have doggedly maintained the fallacious position that unscrupulous U.S. firearms dealers were responsible for supplying military weapons directly to Mexican drug cartels. Because of that position, the importation of M1 Carbines from South Korea simply couldn’t be permitted.

Enter Gary Marbut, President of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.

by Gerard Valentino

The tragic events in Arizona are an unfortunate litmus test to see if the anti-gun community will truly use any tragedy for political gain. Based on the actions of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, it is clear the anti-gun community failed such a test in a horrible fashion.

Just a few hours after the massacre in Tucson the OCAGV, which is led by Toby Hoover, sent a mass email blaming the National Rifle Association and other gun groups for pushing an agenda of death. Just as sad was the choice made by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence when they posted a message on their website expressing sympathy for the victims of the tragedy and tainted it with a call for more gun control.

Josh Horowitz, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, also chose to dance in the blood of the Arizona victims by posting an article to the Huffington Post that blamed right-wing ideology, militia groups, the National Rifle Association and a host of unrelated groups for the actions of one deranged man. His article was posted so quickly, it makes us wonder if he saw anything but political gain in the moments after the news broke.

The anti-gun movement is always quick to blame the gun as well, but don’t see that doing so is the equivalent of blaming the airplanes or the box cutters for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Unanswered questions about why accursed murderer Jared Lee Loughner was not given the help he clearly needed are sure to be answered, and there will a time to dissect the events that led to the death of six innocent people. But, that time is in the future.

Now is the time to support the victims, because they were thrust into the situation against their will.