A few weeks ago, a shooting at a college was stopped by three courageous men. But as Paul Harvey would say, let's hear the rest of the story. Two of the three Virginia law students who overpowered a gunman in the fatal school shooting were armed, and used their weapons to disarm the shooter. Yet, of the 280 stories written about the shooting, a mere four mentioned the fact that the heroic students were armed and used their guns to halt the rampage. That's according to Dr. John Lott, a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute and the author of the widely acclaimed book "More Guns, Less Crime." Writing a few weeks ago in the New York Post, Lott reported the shooting at Appalachian School of Law. Noting that the rampage was widely covered in the world's media, Lott wrote: "As usual, there were calls for more gun control. Yet in this age of gun-free school zones,' the vast majority of the news reports ignored the fact that the attack was stopped by two students who had guns in their cars. The quick response by two of the students, Mikael Gross, 34, and Tracy Bridges, 25, undoubtedly saved multiple lives." According to Lott: "Having just returned from lunch, Gross was outside the law school building when Odighizuwa began shooting. Bridges was inside, waiting for class to start. When the sound of shooting erupted, panic ensued. 'People were running everywhere. They were jumping behind cars, running out in front of traffic, trying to get away,' Gross said.

"Instead of joining in the chaos, Gross and B )-idues ran to their cars and-ot their guns. Joined by an unarmed Ted Besen, an ex-Marine and police officer, the three men approached the shooter from different sides. 'I aimed my gun at him, and Peter tossed his gun down,' Bridges recalled. What is so remarkable is that out of 280 separate news stories (from a computerized Nexis-Lexis search) in the week after the event, just four stories mentioned that the students who stopped the attack had guns. Only two local newspapers (the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Charlotte Observer) mentioned that the students actually pointed their guns at the attacker."

By Phil Brennan

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