"Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing [guns in classrooms]."

These words from a Virginia Tech associate vice president appeared in an August, 2006 editorial for the Roanoke Times. He was writing in response to vote by the Virginia legislature to continue a provision that permits college-level institutions to create "gun-free zones"--areas where individuals who possess permits to carry concealed weapons are specifically prohibited from doing so.

This Wall Street Journal op-ed tells the story of how mass murders are often thwarted by responsible people having quick access to weapons. Here are just a few examples:

Virginia Tech thus went out of its way to prevent what happened at a Pearl, Miss., high school in 1997, where assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a handgun from his car and apprehended a school shooter. Or what happened at Appalachian Law School, in Grundy, Va., in 2002, when a mass murder was stopped by two students with law-enforcement experience, one of whom retrieved his own gun from his vehicle. Or in Edinboro, Pa., a few days after the Pearl event, when a school attack ended after a nearby merchant used a shotgun to force the attacker to desist. Law-abiding citizens routinely defend themselves with firearms. Annually, Americans drive-off home invaders a half-million times, according to a 1997 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The editorial closes with a quote cited by Thomas Jefferson:

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."