It has happened again. A second vicious psychopathic teenager has struck. This time at a grade school in Uvalde, Texas, killing a teacher, another school employee and at least nineteen children. This after apparently attempting to murder his grandmother. There may be more deaths to come. He, like the Buffalo, NY shooter was wearing body armor. Immediately, there will be calls for termination of the Second Amendment and gun confiscation throughout the nation. This will add madness to the madness. Before the politicians go off half-cocked, some serious questions must be asked. Here are a few which come to mind.
Have we learned nothing from all the past tragedies of this type? Do we not understand that disarming law abiding citizens will do nothing to stop criminals, crazies and terrorists from committing crimes against the general population? Designating areas as “Gun Free Zones” (and all schools are in that category) just makes them more desirable to those individuals who look for non-threatening places to act out their awful fantasies.
If we can afford to send tens of billions of borrowed dollars to Ukraine, why can we not spend the money required to make our schools hard targets? The simple expedient of making all entrances to the schools totally secure, only accessible from the outside under carefully controlled conditions is critical. CCTV cameras and safe zone double doors with bullet proof glass to restrict movement into, but not out of the school should be mandatory. All schools should have a well trained and armed School Safety Officer present at the main entrance. All other entrances should remain locked to outsiders while students are entering, exiting or present in the building.
Teachers, should be trained and armed if they desire to be so. The same for other school employees. Israel gives us a perfect blueprint of how this can be done. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in this matter.
The next question is why can someone who isn’t old enough to buy a beer, be allowed to purchase firearms without adult supervision? Many young people have been trained at an early age to be respectful and careful with firearms. There are many programs, such as those taught by the NRA, which provide such training to our youth. But body armor and Kevlar helmets? The last I heard, no game animals are shooting back!
Prior to 1994, when the “Assault Weapons Ban” was enacted into law the term “assault weapon” didn’t exist. Because rifles like the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle resemble fully automatic military weapons, it was assumed by many people they were the same thing. Of course they aren’t, but the moniker stuck, and many people assume to this day that “AR” means “automatic rifle”.
The other bone of contention is the extended capacity magazine or “LCM”, which stands for “Large Capacity Magazine”. Some states, notably California, ban them, limiting the magazine capacity of any weapon to ten rounds. Common sense tells you that a homicidal maniac can carry multiple ten round magazines, which are easily ejected and replaced. It isn’t the magazine, or indeed the weapon which is dangerous. It is the individual pulling the trigger.
There are numerous gun control laws in effect. However, none of them would have prevented the Uvalde school shooting. Only a total ban on private gun ownership, and a national enforced confiscation and destruction of all private weapons so seized, might prevent such a heinous act. However, that simply isn’t going to happen. We are not (as yet) a totalitarian state. The hundreds of millions of legal firearms and trillions of rounds of ammunition aren’t going to be given up readily. Any attempt to take them would result in armed insurrection and the destruction of this nation.
What needs to happen is a rational discussion about how to make this nation safer. The recent explosion in gun sales in this country occurred because law abiding citizens of all skin colors realized that in many cases law enforcement was unable, or sometimes unwilling, to protect them from the likes of BLM or Antifa rampaging mobs.
It became abundantly clear that the statement: “When seconds count, law enforcement officers are only minutes away” is absolutely true. Until they get there, you are on your own. Unarmed, you are at the mercy of heartless individuals like Payton Gendron or Salvador Ramos.
Last night, President Biden, as he railed against the “Gun Lobby” instead of trying to bring us together in the wake of the Uvalde massacre, asked why these mass shootings are rare in other countries around the world, and why they didn’t occur forty or fifty years ago in this one? Well, there are several possible answers to that very complicated question.
First, most other countries are not so culturally diverse. Secondly, forty or fifty years ago we had a different demographic than we do now. That demographic had a greater respect for the rule of law than the one which now exists. Finally, most Americans, of all races and creeds, were proud to be citizens of this great nation. They had yet to be pulled apart by a political party determined to divide us into a tribal society, fearful and jealous of others simply because of the color of their skin or what they have achieved in life.