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opinion BACK PA G E BY EZRA LEVANT I Gun free = vulnerable get news headlines on my BlackBerry and usually just skim them. But I've saved one permanently because I just love to look at it. In August, Reuters ran a story entitled "Texas set to defy World Court with execution." You don't need to read any more than that to know all you need to know. There are World Court people and there are Texas people, and there isn't much overlap. My admi- ration for Texans grew even greater when I saw another headline just before school started, from the Associ- ated Press: "I'm OK with gun-toting teachers: Texas governor." At first glance, that sounds ex- actly like the kind of thing a Texas governor would say. But, given the violence that teachers face from their students these days, it wouldn't shock me to learn that fashionably liberal teachers in such cosmopolitan places as New York or Los Angeles whis- pered their agreement in the cloister of the staff room. I'm sure that many Canadians — especially those who would be World Court kind of people — are shaking their heads with all this talk about guns and Texas. For such doubters I have two words: École Polytechnique. Here's two more: Concordia University. And: Dawson College. Each of those schools was the target of a rampaging lone gun- man who mowed his way through a "gun-free zone" — and that's just in Montreal. Schools — and even Greyhound buses — have also been the sites of such massacres. The Texas governor was responding to a decision made by the Harrold Independent School District, which, being 30 minutes from the nearest police station, decided it was vulnerable to a Montreal-style attack. Texas law bans guns from schools unless they are specifically approved by each institution, which Harrold did. Teachers in Harrold still need a concealed handgun licence, they must take training in crisis management and hostile situa- tions, and they have to use special non-ricocheting ammunition. Precisely because Harrold has made such a fuss about its deci- sion, teachers there will likely never have to use their guns and training. It's a log- ical truism that only law-abiding people respect gun laws. Self-righteously adver- tising schools as "gun-free zones" is an invitation to lone gunmen seeking to end their lives in a blaze of infamy. Last year's massacre at proudly gun-free Virginia Tech took 32 lives and made international news. What didn't make the news was an attack at another Virginia university, the Appalachian School of Law. When a murderer started his rampage there, a student ran out to his car to get his own gun. He stopped the killing spree before it started. For every Virginia Tech there are a dozen Appalachians. In fact, U.S. statistics show 90 per cent of the time a gun owner defends himself with- out ever firing a shot. The sight of an armed victim is often enough to dissuade a criminal. Here in Canada, handguns have been restricted for close to a century and automatic weapons are outright banned, but those remain the weapons of choice for criminals. If the bad guys are armed, shouldn't the good guys — with the kind of thoughtful training that Harrold has implemented — be armed, too? Loyal readers will remember that I was the subject of two com- plaints of illegal "discrimination," before the Alberta Human Rights Commission, for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mo- hammed in the Western Standard in 2006. After 900 days and $500,000 of taxpayers' money, the 15 bureaucrats investigating me have dismissed the charges. Unlike a win in civil court, though, none of my legal costs will be paid by the commission or the complainants. What's worse, I was acquitted because I passed the Alberta censor's particular test of "reasonableness," not because of my inalienable freedom of the press. Ezra Levant is a Calgary lawyer. He can be reached at ezra@ezralevant.com McKellar. The first choice for structured settlements. No controversy. The McKellar Structured Settlement™ VANCOUVER 1-800-465-7878 54 OC T OBER 2008 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com Untitled-6 1 EDMONTON 780-420-0897 GUELPH 1-800-265-8381 HALIFAX 1-800-565-0695 USA 1-800-265-2789 www.mckellar.com 9/9/08 9:27:12 AM ILLUSTRATION: SCOTT PAGE