I've known for a few days that I probably should say something about the firearms debate that is taking place after the mass shootings Newtown Connecticut. As a life member of the NRA and a proponent of the right to keep and bear arms, I am squarely in this controversy, whether I want to be or not.
I understand the anti-gun sentiment in the aftermath of this shooting. It defies logic to say that guns are not part of this problem. Not just this problem, but a whole lot of other deadly problems, too. Suicide in the US is most frequently done with a firearm, to the tune of about 15,000 people a year. Violent crime claims another 10,000. That's 25,000 deaths a year where firearms are involved.
Do things need to be done about guns? You bet. The question is, what, exactly, should we do. What results do we hope to achieve? If we really want to solve this problem, it's going to take a multi-faceted approach. We don't have the luxury of only examining the parts of this problem that we already have preconceived notions about, while trying to exempt the parts of the problem that we identify with.
Firearms proponents will immediately point out in the aftermath of a situation like this, that if somebody else had been armed, that the shooting spree could have been shortened. This response seems to draw a great deal of condemnation from those who are simply disgusted by gun-violence.
Allow me to ask this question, though. In the Newtown shooting, the principal of the school saw the shooter and ran at him headlong. The consensus appears to be that she was trying to attack him. To disarm him, perhaps. Mostly, she was trying to do something to him, physically, that would prevent him from harming those little kids.
If you ask me, there's Medal of Honor courage, and then there's a step higher, which is what this principal did. I can't imagine the level of bravery and selflessness that would be required for a person to attack a heavily armed man with nothing more than your bare hands. To run straight at him. To know that you have only about a one-in-a-million shot, but that saving yourself by running away is not an option at all.
As we know, unfortunately, she never got to him. She was shot and killed rather easily.
So, my question is this: Imagine if she'd been armed. Or ask yourself this: in those heroic, yet futile moments as she charged at the attacker; during that time when she knew that she absolutely had to do anything she possibly could to stop him in his tracks; even if it meant losing her life; would she have even killed him if it meant saving the lives of the students? At that precise moment, what would she have given to have had a gun in her waistband?
Or, imagine if right next to the fire alarm, there were an active-shooter alarm that she could activate. That alarm not only blared within the school, but immediately sent an active-shooter notification to the police department. With the utmost respect, I am saddened to say that her sacrifice really accomplished nothing. If she had been able to run to an alarm? Could have meant a police response that was one or two minutes faster.
Imagine if, strewn throughout the school, there were half a dozen active-shooter responders who were tactically trained. People who had to go through periodic mental health assessments. People who had to regularly qualify with their weapons. People who, when they heard that alarm, had the same reaction the principal had: that they had to act immediately to stop some very evil person from hurting the kids.
Except imagine that they were not going to try and assault him with their bare hands. Imagine if they were armed.
Is the idea of "more guns in school" so crazy, now? It's not "guns in schools" that are the problem. Schools all over the country have both police officers and armed guards in them, now. It's not the guns of the protectors we need to worry about.
Nor is a proliferation of guns in schools the problem. The problem is isolated incidents of very bad people bringing guns into a school. The problem isn't that there are 50 shooters in a school. The problem is when there's only one and he is intent on hurting the kids.
Right now, the tagline for the gun-control folks is, "Guns in school are the problem. More guns in schools is not the solution."
Well... to put a finer point on it, bad guys with guns in schools are the problem. Good guys with guns could be part of the solution.
To me it would make no sense to say, "Bad teachers in schools are the problem. More teachers is not the solution!"
Well... yeah, but more GOOD teachers is absolutely part of the solution. To ignore the difference between bad and good teachers is foolish. To ignore the difference between armed good guys and armed bad guys is absolutely stunning in its depth of stupidity.
Now, the other issue that's coming up is mental health. Just as quickly as some dismiss the idea of protective weapons in a school, others immediately dismiss the idea that mental health is an issue. But let's be frank, here. A mentally ill person shot up Gabby Giffords. A mentally ill person shot up the theater in Aurora. A mentally ill person shot up Virginia Tech. A mentally ill person shot up Newtown.
Mental illness and firearms are a very, very bad combination. I am told, and have no reason to disbelieve, that mentally ill people undergoing treatment are no more violent than people in general. However, mentally ill people not being treated have a greater possibility of being violent. To me, a person who is one missed dosage away from being violent has no business owning or keeping firearms. People who live in a house with a mentally ill person have no business having them, either.
Whatever laws are keeping us from identifying people who have conditions that could lead to violent behavior need to be changed. If that means amending HIPAA, so be it. If that means amending doctor-patient confidentiality laws, then that's what we need to do. If the public wants to be protected from avoidable dangers, we have a right to know who is dangerous and restrict their access to firearms.
Now, on the positive side of the equation, for the first time in my lifetime, I'm hearing dialog about committing more resources to mental health. If that's part of the solution, we should be pursing that, too, and the benefits would be widespread throughout society.
However, ultimately, if we're talking about mass shooters, the argument seems to be: mentally ill people cannot responsibly be trusted with firearms, therefore nobody should be trusted with firearms. I don't see that it's reasonable to give everybody the same level of rights as a mentally ill person.
Lastly, schools need to change the way they do things. Right now, the trend is to turn schools into little prisons. One entry point, one exit point, highly controlled. Is that really the answer? Maybe to some security threats, but not to a mass shooter. If every classroom had an exit to the outside, the prospect of walking from room to room shooting people would be entirely different.
Unfortunately, I think active-shooter drills are going to become part of the school day, just like fire drills. What to do? Get out into the open and RUN. Kids like to do that, anyway. In just ten seconds, a kid can put themselves out of the effective range of a minimally trained shooter with a handgun and in a minute the best pistol shots in the world would have difficulty hitting them. Moving targets aren't easy to hit with a rifle. It can be done, but if experience is any indication, these shootings aren't being done by Navy SEAL at the peak of their powers. They're done by sociopaths with little to no actual tactical training.
Huddling kids in a corner? Not a good idea. Anybody can rack up fatalities when your target is 10 feet wide and 10 feet away from you.
The debate on armed teachers is red-hot right now. It's as controversial as any I can ever imagine. Rest assured that more schools are going to allow teachers to have weapons. I hope that they require intensive training and screening, and that teachers are just as adept at handling an active-shooter as they are responding to somebody who needs CPR. In the ideal world, they'd need certification and training. In my ideal universe, they'd get a modest pay premium to compensate for their off-hours spent in training and practice.
So, to solve this problem, really, it's going to take fixing it from several angles. First, we need to limit access to weapons. We need to make the penalties for illegally acquiring a weapon severe. We need to make gun sellers responsible if they sell a gun without running a valid background check, and that goes for private transactions, too.
We need to know who the mentally ill are, though, to make sure that they are at the top of the list of people who cannot legally acquire weapons.
Lastly, we need to acknowledge the reality that all the prevention in the world may fail. However, we can mitigate the damage of a shooter in our schools by allowing teachers and administrators the right to defend themselves and their kids.
We are all absolutely heartbroken about the events in Newtown. There will be action taken. My only hope is that it is effective at stopping the next shooter, instead of merely being emotionally an satisfying way to lash out against guns.
No comments:
Post a Comment