As I wrote in a previous article, no law presently being proposed would have prevented the tragedy at Newtown but the question that remains is if laws are uncapable of preventing Newtown, what can? Let make one thing clear; there will be future massacres just as there were massacres in the past. There are steps that can be taken to minimize the damage done and save lives. They are the unexpected and don’t require further restrictions of our rights but founded in common sense.
Personally, I am not enthusiastic about putting an armed guard in every school for the simple reason, it is impractical. It will take valuable resources away from high crime areas. No matter how horrific Newtown was, many communities experience violent crimes including murders every day. Any weekend in Chicago could produce numbers similar to what was seen in Newtown so the idea of shifting resources away from where there are needs doesn’t make sense. The odds that a school would be a victim of a Newtown massacre are slim compared to being killed in many cities. There are neighborhoods in Chicago that on any weekend, you have a close to 6% chance of being robbed, mugged or murdered. So, it is important to put resources where they belong.
Larry Correia, a Utah gun instructor, observed that when a shooter went an on murderous spree, 5.6 times as many people were killed when waiting for the law enforcement to arrive as opposed to when a shooter was confronted by civilians with guns. As Correia observed, “The armed civilians were on sight when the gun bout started.” Time is important and every second victims are left unprotected means more people could die. Corriea notes, “The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.” Having teachers’ armed sounds counterproductive but Correia points out that an armed adult can buy time until law enforcements arrives. Correia observes, “But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps.”
Nor does Correia suggest that a teacher be forced to carry guns but notes, “In my experience, the only people who are worth a darn with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and carry a gun. Make it voluntary. It is rather simple. Just make it so that your state’s concealed weapons law trumps the Federal Gun Free School Zones act. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now.”
There is risk but then it is just as risky to have armed guards and we already know the risk if we don’t allow teachers to be armed. Nor does it mean students will not be killed in a future massacre only that having armed teachers could save lives by reducing the numbers that would be murdered while waiting for the police to arrive!
As for declaring anything a gun free zone, I remember in the early 1980’s when the nuclear freeze movement was at its peak and various cities declared themselves nuclear free. It was as if declaring yourself a nuclear free zone would prevent a nuclear weapon from landing on you. A gun free zone is like saying, “Please hunt humans here.” It makes you feel good until some mad man start shooting at you. As one writer noted, the only people who obey a gun free zone are law-abiding citizens.
Larry Correia observed that the week of the Newtown massacre, shooters in Oregon and Texas attempted to start a shooting spree only to be thwarted by a gun owner with a permit in Oregon and an off duty cop in Texas with very few casualties. Least one forgets that same week, a Chinese attacked 22 people with a knife and there are very strict gun control laws in China. The Chinese attacker adopted and used what was available, a knife.
When one compares states with carry and conceal, there is evidence to suggest that conceal and carry actually reduces violent crime. (While many researchers dismiss the link between carry and conceal and violent crime reduction; there is no doubt that violent crime overall have decreased. No one can make the case that carry and conceal laws lead to increased violence.) What can be shown is that stricter gun control will not lead to a decrease in violence but it is a vehicle in which some will use to either restrict or possibly confiscate weapons. It is a case of whether liberty will be respected or restricted.
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Every policy requires balancing the positive and negative components to determine if the final position is a net positive decision. I believe that arming teachers is far from a net positive. First of all, if guns were allowed in schools, they would logically need to be secured in such a manner that they would not be readily available in case of an event. Second, since research shows that even trained law enforcement officers involved in a gun fight with bad guys hit their targets only 18% of the time, lightly trained teachers, with children added to the scenario, would probably hit their target approximately 0% of the time, or would hit innocent children/bystanders instead. Furthermore, we can only guess what the result would be from introducing large numbers of guns into our schools as far as accidental shootings, shootings involving emotional distress, etc., but I suggest that it would be a number much greater than zero, and would likely greatly exceed any life savings. I agree that we should consider all options to make our children as safe as possible, but it seems likely that doing something this lame will only make the situation worse and quite possibly will result in a greater number of innocent deaths. When will a little logic prevail? We have the highest per capita private gun ownership on earth and by far the highest rate of gun deaths and injuries on earth. Around 100,000 Americans are shot and injured or killed each year accidentally and/or intentionally by their friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers and/or themselves. When 3,000 Americans died in a horrific terrorist attack 11 years ago we agreed as a country that no one could even take a bottle of water on an airplane ever again, yet 1 million Americans have been shot since then by other Americans and we have done nothing to reduce or prevent military-style battlefield weapons from being easily available to mentally disturbed individuals. It is time to address the 2 real parts of this issue: rational gun safety laws and regulations and our mental health crisis. It is not time to flood our schools with millions of guns.
David, you make some good points but my thesis is based on two premise. The first being and this most important, not one proposal pushed forward would have prevented Newtown. The second is that as Larry Correla and you observed, teachers may be not as accurate in their shooting compared to police officer but the key is as Correla noted, they can buy time and in the process, save lives. As I noted, this is not a perfect solution but let simply assume that using Larry Correla data is correct and there is enough evidence to support his data; then instead of 28 deads; maybe we would have seen only 5. 5 is too many,but it is better than 28.
Tom, even if we assume that in a perfect parallel universe some kindergarten teacher would have been able to retrieve his/her gun from a locker, then confront a “man with a plan” wearing body armor sporting a .223 Bushmaster, and finally managed to do something to reduce the death toll in a particular incident, that does not address what the unintended consequences/death toll would be from introducing millions of guns into our schools. As I said, we should consider all options to protect our children. I have weighed this one and it just makes no sense in the real world. As I friend of mine who is a hunter and owns several rifles said to me recently, we can’t prevent tragedies like Newtown from ever happening again, but we can save a few children if we implement rational policies. I know that in Florida you can walk out of a mental hospital or a prison and buy as many guns as you want from a gun show, or a private party, 10 minutes later and the seller is not required to check to see if you are a felon, or an escaped mental patient, or a terrorist. We cannot ensure that a Newtown-type incident will never occur again, but we can take sane steps to limit the death toll in the future. At least we can save the lives of some children, even if we can’t save all of them. Why should we make it so easy for dangerous people to acquire battlefield weapons? Who could possibly defend the system we have now? My starting point for discussion would be, in deference to the 2nd Amendment, to allow rifles for hunting and handguns (revolvers only) for self protection (I used to carry a Sigsauer 9mm handgun when I was a LEO and could easily fire 27 rounds in less than 11 seconds, that type of firepower is not necessary for self protection, it is only necessary to kill a lot of innocent people). I would also require ALL sales or transfers of firearms to be subject to a criminal history/mental health database check. If we can mandate that the sale of every can of beer in America is subject to an ID check, we can certainly do the same for the sale of lethal weapons if doing so will save the life of even one child.