Photos & Report by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
“Guns Save Lives Day” was underscored by the shooting outcome at Colorado’s Arapahoe High School in which gunman Karl Pierson took his own life as “a good guy with a gun”– the school’s resource officer, Arapahoe County Sheriff’s deputy James Englert—responded to the mayhem.
This bustling crowd was typical of gun shows around the country on the same weekend as Guns Save Lives Day in mid-December.
Pierson shot and seriously wounded one other student, Claire Davis, 17, before taking his own life as the deputy and a school security staffer responded. Davis was in a coma and in critical condition after the shooting with a severe head wound.
Pierson was carrying a pumpaction shotgun that he fired a total of five times, plus three Molotov cocktails and a machete. His body, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was found in the school’s library-media center, where he had used one of the Molotovs to ignite a stack of books.
This was hardly a replay of the Columbine High School attack more than a decade earlier, just eight miles down the road.
It happened on the eve of the anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut, which was already being exploited by the gun control lobby, and two days before the first annual “Guns Save Lives Day,”
held in conjunction with Bill of Rights Day.
While small ceremonies were held around the nation on Dec. 14 to commemorate the Newtown, Conn., attack, hundreds of thousands of gunowners attended gun shows, visited gun shops and shooting ranges, went hunting or otherwise engaged in gun related activities.
In Puyallup, WA, for example, thousands of gun enthusiasts crammed the weekend gun show at the fairgrounds, sponsored by the Washington Arms Collectors. They talked politics, bought and sold firearms, ammunition and accessories, and acknowledged that there will be more efforts to pass stricter gun control laws despite the fact that newly-passed laws in Colorado did not prevent the Arapahoe High School shooting.
“Guns Save Lives Day” was promoted by the Second Amendment Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and several state-level gun rights organizations.
It came on the same day that the New York Times reported that hundreds of sheriffs, including all but seven in Colorado, are refusing to enforce new gun laws enacted in response to the Sandy Hook shooting.
Sheriffs in New York, Florida, California and elsewhere are involved in what amounts to a resistance movement by top elected law enforcement professionals against laws they consider unenforceable and/or unconstitutional.
SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb said “Guns Save Lives Day” was a success.
“While anti-gunners shamelessly exploited Saturday’s somber anniversary of the Newtown tragedy,” he stated, “Sunday’s activities and weekend attendance at gun shows demonstrated that America is a resilient nation, and that its people understand the difference between extremist, agenda-driven ideology and common sense.”
