As you might have guessed, I tend to get a lot of press releases. Most of them are relevant to what I do. Some are not, but are occasionally interesting.  Today, I got what must certainly rank in the top 5 of the most offensive emails I’ve received since starting Calitics over 5 years ago. A group is apparently planning on eliminating a Georgia ban on carrying weapons in a place of worship.

“We are literally one Jared Loughner away from a major massacre here in Georgia in one of our places of worship. Right now, you are in violation of the law, and a criminal, if you carry in your place of worship. Once H.B. 54 is passed, people like Jared Loughner will know that there is at least the potential for someone in a place of worship that would put him down before he could do any damage,” said Mr. Parsons.

This is wrong on so many levels, but let’s start with the biggest piece of faulty logic: more people with guns would prevent the situation. Of course, as we discovered in Tucson, that simply isn’t true. In fact, one of the heroes who disarmed Loughner was almost shot by an armed passerby who thought he was the gunman.

But before we embrace Zamudio’s brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let’s hear the whole story. “I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready,” he explained on Fox and Friends. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this.” Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. “And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!'”

But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. “Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out. (Slate)

Of course, the same debate is going down in Arizona, where legislators are going so far as to say “When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim.”

The sheer lunacy of this is astounding, and fortunately, Senator Feinstein understands that the way to combat gun crimes isn’t to arm the citizenry.  In fact, she’s been discussing the topic of bringing back a regulation that she originally passed in the 1994 assault weapons ban.  It’s a simple, and sensible regulation: limit the size of clips to ten bullets.  Jared Loughner’s clip had 30, and he didn’t need to worry about reloading as he carried out his murderous spree.

Feinstein said in an interview Friday that she was exploring the idea of reviving a law to limit the size of ammunition clips. The assault weapons ban of 1994, of which Feinstein was the principal sponsor, limited clips to 10 bullets, a third of the size of the one Loughner used to kill six people and injure more than a dozen, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, his intended target. (LA Times)

While gun control can split the Democratic party, as the Western libertarian concept likes a wide open gun system, surely we can recognize that our failure to control the proliferation has resulted in higher rates of violence compared to similarly situated nations.  MoveOn is supporting an action by NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns calling for additional gun reform. Perhaps now might be a good time to let our leaders know that America hasn’t given up on controlling guns.