Concealed Carry

Seventeen-year-old Amon Schute is social drek. He's sneering, jeering and hateful. He proves it with ostentatious displays of filthy jeans, long matted hair, body piercings and tattoos. He's exactly the kind of kid you'd expect to spend his entire adult life in lockup. Sixteen-year-old Coy Minyon is a social cipher. He's weak, meek and fearful. He proves it with a timorous mask of ultra conservative clothing, neatly groomed hair, unobtrusive appearance and a permanent muted existence that makes him invisible to the world. He's exactly the kind of kid you'd expect to spend his entire adult life in total obscurity. Amon and Coy are best friends. Together they plan to gun down a bunch of people in a public place and then off themselves in a blaze of everlasting glory.

On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims—He wasn't concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech's status as a "gun free zone," this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire.

Over the last quarter-century, the vast majority of the mass shootings in America—from the recent shooting at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, to the 1984 San Ysidro McDonald's massacre—have occurred in "gun free zones." Though labeling an area "gun free" may make some people feel safer, feeling safe is clearly not the same as being safe.