The "Gun Free" fantasy

Glenn Reynolds, the InstaPundit, writes that students are safer when some among their number are armed. Reynolds writes...

Police can't be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it's usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. And if they're armed, they might wind up not being victims at all.

"Gun-free zones" are premised on a fantasy - that murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That's an insult. Sometimes, it's a deadly one.

Nearly all gun laws suffer from such delusions. They imagine that those who are inclined to commit rape, robbery, or murder will blanch at the prospect of violating a gun law.