Newtown, Conn: The Failure of Gun Control
The nation is unaware of a potential mass murder in Clackamas, Oregon, at the Town Center Mall, where a gunman killed two people, was confronted by an armed civilian with a pistol, and promptly turned the rifle on himself and committed suicide.
In the meantime, no children were murdered in any of the schools of Israel, where teachers and assisting parents are armed to the teeth.
The problem is not the ready availability of guns, any more than an abundance of water is claimed to be the leading cause of drowning. The problem is stupidity.
In every single case of firearms, whether they are obtained legally or illegally, numerous laws are broken in the illegal use of those firearms. In the Sandy Hook shooting, gun control laws at the municipal, the state and the federal level were broken. To say that these gun-control laws were ineffectual is to state the obvious.
What the nation’s media and politicians can’t seem to fathom is that MORE gun-control laws will simply result in an environment where more sick and evil people will pull these crimes off with maximum effect before being stopped.
Gun control laws cause mass murders!
Passing laws against drowning will not reduce the numbers of drowning each year. Educating people will. In the case of guns, educating and arming teachers and college students will reduce the ability of every gunman to kill large numbers of innocent victims.
The time has come to return to common sense – let’s repeal most (if not all) gun control laws, and instead let’s do the following:
- make firearm safety education mandatory, from K-12 in our schools;
- train our children to shoot safely, in voluntary programs, starting in grade one (using cork guns);
- set up marksmanship teams for students in high school, who compete with other schools in tournaments, leading up to state championships, just like we do with football and basketball;
- give bonuses to teachers willing to be armed and proficient in the use of their weapons, including contingency training on what to do when a mad man enters their school building or classroom;
- deputize hundreds, if not thousands of citizens in every county to carry, everywhere, at all times; (These will be responsible citizens with a good record, having passed safety and proficiency tests, and may well require testing every few years to upgrade skills, check etc.)
Will all this prevent more shootings? No, probably not. Will it reduce the damage that a single crazy person can inflict? Without a doubt.
So, how about a War on Stupidity – one the government is not allowed to manage, please! After the War on Poverty and the War on Terror, we know that government is not qualified to make any project turn out right.
With the restoration of what our Founding Fathers considered a right against which no restrictions should be placed (“unalienable”), notably the right to keep and bear arms, responsible and sensible men and women are capable of protecting the children who are under their care.
In other words, a return to Constitutional Law will solve this problem, and the hysteria can begin to subside. More government is not the answer – government is the problem.
© Daniel D. New, Permission to copy, with credits, is hereby granted.-
