Yes, everyone is talking about it now. Another tragic shooting and people are calling for the banning of guns, or at the very least more control of guns. Now I agree that a world without ANY guns would be great. They are useful but dangerous. Kind of like knives. Knives are very useful but they can kill a person too. Maybe we should ban them as well. What about a pointed stick? OK, this starting to sound like either a Monty Python skit or a George Carlin routine.
"...there are a lot of things you could use to kill a guy. You could probably beat a guy to death with the Sunday New York Times, couldn't you? Suppose you just have really big hands. Couldn't you strangle a flight attendant? Shit, you could probably strangle two of them, one with each hand."
-George Carlin on airport security
Lets look at this seriously. What happens when you ban something that is harmful to people. Look at alcohol. It is fine if used properly, but it can cause accidents and people die. For 13 years this country banned alcohol. From 1920 to 1933 you couldn't buy a drink anywhere...or could you? If people want something bad enough, criminals will find a way to get it and make money from it. It is said that Prohibition gave birth to organized crime. There were good intentions in banning alcohol but it just didn't work out like planned.
"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."
-Rev. Billy Sunday at the begining of Prohibition.
Crime actually increased during the prohibition era. Homicides, drunk driving and thefts all went up. Crime was booming and criminals supplied what people wanted. Eventually the country realized this wasn't the answer to the problem. Yes, alcohol is still a problem and it still kills people but the only answer is to educate and enforce the existing laws.
Education! Hey, there's a novel idea. We could teach gun safety in school instead of suspending kids for drawing a picture of a gun or putting toy solders on their skateboards.
Fifth-graders in California who adorned their mortarboards with tiny toy plastic soldiers to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their tiny little weapons.
Zero tolerance doesn't work. There are dozens of stories like this of children being sent home because their mother put a butter knive in their lunchbox, or pointing their fingers at each other during recess in a game of "Cowboys and Aliens" (Apparently that is more politically correct than Cowboys and Indians)
I think we should educate the kids on guns, how they are used and how to be safe. No, don't give them all guns but instead bring in law enforcement officers to talk about guns, how they can be used to protect and defend and how they can be used by criminals to kill innocent people. I also believe we should train and arm some of the teachers or administrators. Maybe then one of the teachers that dies protecting her students ends up being the one that takes out the shooter.
So we have some choices to make. We can ban all guns in the country and just hope that the criminals obey the gun laws. We can just hope that guns won't be coming in from Mexico (nothing ever gets across that border without us knowing) and we can hope that no one will go on a rampage with some other weapon. Or we can teach people to use guns responsibly and arm our schools. Maybe part of the job application of a school principal should be competence on the shooting range. No, I am not saying we should all go around like this is the wild west with guns on our hips, but lets be realistic and understand that guns are not the problem. The problem is the mental illness that makes someone do these terrible things. That is where we need to focus. Lets pay attention and offer help. Lets not ignore that this is a violent world. People were waging war and killing each other without guns for centuries.
Bottom line is this. Yes, I think we have too many guns. Yes, I think assault weapons are not necessary. A pistol, rifle, shotgun...a lot of people I know have these and are content. They don't need automatic weapons to shoot a deer. However if you take the guns away from the law abiding citizens then only the criminals will have them.
Just my opinion, I could be wrong.
