Heard this story this morning when driving to work. Jennifer did too, and thought of me and emailed me the same story. (Thanks Jennifer!)
A French teenager who held 20 nursery school children and their teacher hostage in Besancon, eastern France, for more than four hours today is now in police custody, the interior ministry said.
France has lots of gun control laws, and I’m sure there are further restrictions of having guns around schools….
The 17-year-old-boy, who was “depressed and suicidal,” according to BFM TV, walked into the Charles-Fourier nursery school at 8:30 a.m. local time, armed with two 30 centimeter- (12 inches) long swords.
Thankfully nobody was hurt, but we can easily see the futility of gun control laws, and also the power that such laws give to people even with very crude weapons. How long do you suppose this hostage situation would have lasted if an adult in the school had a personal firearm and the will to use it?
As I said, nobody got hurt, but we’ve talked before of VERY similar cases in China where they didn’t.
Remember gun control laws without any actions taken against the criminal element simply throws good people at the mercy of a class of people who by definition are not known for mercy.
And of course if you control the criminal population why do you care if the good guys have guns?
