The head of the National Rifle Association today explained
that the only sure way to keep schools safe is by filling our kid’s hallways,
libraries and cafeterias with armed guards.
Gun-free zones like schools, he observed, “tell every insane killer in
America that schools are the safest place to effect maximum mayhem with minimum
risk.” That’s the reason random
shootings have become a sad reality in schoolyards across the country but not
at police stations, military bases or gun shows.
Except for places like Detroit’s Sixth Precinct, where last
year a 38 year old man with apparently no motive opened fire with a shotgun and
seriously wounded four officers. Or police
stations like the one in suburban Deerfield, Michigan, where a 64 year old man,
again with no known grievance against the police, began blasting away at the
cops there with a handgun just last month.
And don’t forget the Johnston, Pennsylvania, police who were attacked this
fall by a shotgun wielding assailant, another “lone gunman” type. Fortunately none of these shooters had
assault weapons or high capacity ammo clips.
The mere presence of guns doesn’t seem to deter madmen. It
may incite them. Mayhem broke out in a gun store on the west side of
Indianapolis this fall when a 26 year old man was killed after beginning to
shoot at store employees. And of course,
mass shootings on military compounds like the one at Fort Hood, where a
uniformed psychiatrist killed 13 and wounded 29 are no isolated incidents. Another “loner” armed with a MAK-90 combat
rifle murdered 5 and wounded 22 at the Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane,
Washington, in 1994.
Do guns guarantee safety?
My wife, a criminal defense attorney, is accustomed to being searched for
weapons each time she enters the court room.
The only person with a firearm in the room is the policeman on duty, there
to guarantee public safety. Ironically,
the only time public safety has ever been threatened was when some criminal grabbed
the cop’s gun and started to shoot. This
has happened more than once over the course of her career.
The NRA’s argument that more firepower makes us more secure
just doesn’t stand up to the facts. Instead
of arming the teachers, guidance counselors, hall monitors and lunch ladies, it’s
time for sensible gun control.
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1 comment:
What I imagine when I think of a place with guns everywhere is Israel, a completely militarized society where uniformed soldiers (18 year old draftees) ride the buses and walk the streets every day, and every store has a guard outside. I don't know the incidence of gun violence in Israel, but I do know that the children there become inured to guns and to violence in really shocking ways. I think that having guns everywhere trains people into thinking that guns, and gun violence, is normal and routine. More insidiously, it trains them into a mentality of besiegment; the reality of guns everywhere creates the fear that justifies the guns.
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