In Part 1 of this piece, we began looking at practical ways to address mass shootings and how common ground might be found to address this horrific phenomenon without alienating either side of the gun debate.
In this, the second and final part, we will be addressing some of the proposals put forward by the current administration and exploring why these might not be the best solutions to the problem.
The argument: "But we don’t need to address gun control, the President is talking about arming teachers."
Wow!
Just wow!
Let’s disregard, for a minute, the fact that the vast majority of teachers did not pursue the profession in order to become paramilitary bodyguards engaging in shoot outs with heavily armed monsters.
Instead let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that some ex military or law enforcement personnel, who are now teachers, are prepared to take up this burden.
We heard, after the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Florida, about an off duty police officer who tried to return fire but was forced to retreat as the shooter was more heavily armed.
A number of law enforcement personnel have expressed the same frustration upon responding to these sorts of shootings. While they are armed, they are simply outgunned.
Despite this being the sentiment of trained and experienced law enforcement professionals, one of the first suggestions made by the President is that teachers be armed. For some reason, it is believed that teachers with some previous training, armed with handguns, will apparently be more effective than the aforementioned professionals were.
In an effort to be polite let us just say that this is, at best, unrealistic.
Perhaps the next suggestion will be to give teachers assault rifles too.
Of course, in the event of a school shooting the teachers will be in the classroom, surrounded by students. By the time teachers become aware of a shooter on the premises and can react, the shooter will be amongst the students and people will already be dead and dying. This means that any counter fire from teachers will be also be amongst students.
This is like saying, “Oh look there is a bull running rampant in the china shop. Quick, go out to the field and bring in a bigger bull to stop him ... Ummm, and try not to break any more china”.
Additionally, teachers will not have the communication capabilities of the professionals either. When the football coach opens fire, the history teacher will hear gunshots and think the shooter is still active. She will return fire, which leads to the principal emptying another clip of suppressing fire, resulting in the football coach reloading and starting the whole cycle again.
What could possibly go wrong in such a highly volatile environment!?
In that situation, irrespective of good intentions and with the best will in the world, it is almost certain that students will become casualties of (and I cannot believe that I am saying this about teachers in classrooms), “friendly fire”.
Research has been done to quantify the accuracy of trained law enforcement officers in real shootings.
In one study, New York City officers were found to have an overall accuracy rate of only 34%. Even at ranges of a mere 0 to 6 feet, their accuracy rate was only 43%.
This means that, in a best case scenario, for every 5 bullets fired approximately 3 of them are going to hit something other than the target aimed at.
Even if the teachers are as proficient as trained, full time, professional law enforcement officers, 3 bullets will fly wide of their intended target. With students all around, this is not a viable option, it is just a recipe for an even greater disaster.
If there must be armed security in schools (and this also, in my opinion, is in no way a solution), surely it makes sense to have that security permanently posted at the entrance to the school so that any potential issues can be addressed before the shooter gets anywhere near the students?!
It is the same principle as posting guards at the gates of a military base, and not having them just wander around the barracks inside.
The current US president has also made it clear that his belief is that shooters will not go to schools where they know there are armed people.
This, along with comments made by other political leaders who seem intent on proposing anything except actual gun control and regulation of owners, begs the following question.
Are they stupid, or some special kind of stupid?
These proposals are so ill conceived that one wonders how they merited more than passing thought,
(a) Relying on a mass shooter to be deterred by the knowledge that there may be armed people at his proposed target is not a solution, in any way, shape or form. The very fact that they are intent on mass murder does not mark them as arbiters of rational thought or deductive reasoning.
(b) As these shooters often commit suicide, the broad assumption could be drawn that a fear of their own mortality does not necessarily feature highly on their list of priorities when they finally snap.
(c) Just to cite one example, the most recent shooting took place at a school in Parkland that had a permanently assigned, armed, law enforcement officer.
The shooter was an ex student who would have known this.
It obviously did not deter him. It will not stop anybody who is mentally unhinged. They are beyond the point of rational thought.
Shooting shooters is not the solution! It is merely a band aid on a festering wound; a temporary fix at best and certainly not a cure for the underlying problem.
Anyway, schools are not the only places that people are attacked by mass shooters. In the last year we have seen mass shootings in a variety of places, including churches, at concerts and in offices.
How are armed teachers going to help in those situations?
They’re not.
Is the next step to arm singers and their backing bands so concerts are safe?
Will the clergy be asked to keep firearms in their pulpits?
Will middle management now be required to arm up?
It is simply not possible to arm enough people to protect society as a whole. More guns cannot be the answer. It is a foolish, short sighted and ultimately lazy proposition.
Mass shootings are not a problem that America can shoot its way out of, no matter how much the President and other politicians want to accommodate their gun lobby cronies!
Firearms ownership rates in the USA are amongst the highest in the world. Despite this, few and far between are the instances of a mass shooter being shot at, let alone stopped, by a civilian with a firearm.
The argument: “Ah .. but the proposed ban on gun sales to under 21’s will solve all of this.”
Not even close.
Firstly, here is another example of the 2nd amendment not being immutable. Lawmakers are proposing that the right to bear arms be denied to a select portion of citizens. (N.B. As we will show, this measure will have, at best, negligible results).
Nonetheless, if such a change to 2nd amendment rights can be made to address changes in society and technology, then why not consider other, more effective, changes?
Secondly, It is almost embarrassing to admit that the following data would take approximately 5 minutes to find with a simple google search.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not embarrassed for myself, I am embarrassed that nobody in local state or federal government could be bothered to do the same research and establish how ludicrous this whole “under 21” nonsense is.
The fact that the most recent mass shooting was committed by an ‘under 21’ has no bearing whatsoever on the problem as a whole!
There is no age range restriction that will stop mass shooters! To even suggest this is asinine.
Here are the numbers. This is not opinion. These are the facts for the last 97 mass shootings in the USA.
Before we begin, take a moment to reflect on the fact that this only addresses shootings of 4 people or more. Apparently killing 2 or 3 people does not warrant being called a “mass” shooting (and isn’t it convenient that this categorization really does make the statistics look better when people start asking awkward questions).
Out of the last 97 mass shootings, only 16 of the shooters were under 21. Immediately we see that only circa 16.5% of the mass shootings involved a shooter who would be impacted by the proposed age restriction.
That means 81 of those shootings (circa 83.5%) would have occurred anyway.
Before the Parkland mass shooting, there were 12 consecutive mass shootings by people over the age of 21.
They killed 121 people and injured 586 more.
Restricting gun sales to people under 21 would not have saved a single one of those lives.
Some might say that at least the 16 under 21 shooters would have been stopped but sadly even that is not the case.
34% of mass shootings were committed by people who were prohibited from owning firearms.
Most of those weapons were obtained illegally, but very easily, because only licensed dealers have to conduct background checks when someone wants to purchase a firearm.
The shooters simply bought the guns privately. Without having to provide any license and without having to register any change of ownership, there is no way for anyone to even know they have purchased those weapons.
This means that, statistically, at least 5 of those 16 under 21 shooters would still have committed their crime and even with a restriction on sales to under 21s, at least 86 of the 97 mass shootings would still have occurred.
Politicians and gun lobbyists love to refer to this sort of thing as “a loophole”. That is like calling a shiver of sharks in a feeding frenzy “a tad bitey”.
This ‘loophole’ can only be of benefit to the mad, the bad and the undesirable. It serves no purpose to any law abiding, responsible citizen.
The argument: “If it so bad, why has no-one ever done anything about it?”
This can be answered in one word.
Corruption.
Lobby groups circumvent the will of the people by corrupting politicians.
They call it “lobbying” but by any reasonable definition, it should be called “bribery”.
Bribery is defined as “…offering someone money or something of value in order to persuade them to do something for you…”
Every time the NRA goes to a politician with a “campaign contribution” or a “gift” or a “speaking engagement’ or a simple wink and a promise that they “remember their friends”, they are effectively bribing the officials you have elected to represent you.
In most other countries such arrangements could see both the payer and the recipient prosecuted but in the USA, if it is framed as “lobbying” and not “bribery”, it is legal!
There is no disputing that the NRA is one of the strongest lobby groups in the USA.
To make any headway with gun safety, their power to influence your elected representatives has to be eliminated.
For their own selfish interests, they show reckless disregard for you and your families.
Again and again, political representatives disregard their constituents and vote for the agenda of the gun lobby.
You, as a voter, have the power to change this.
The only thing an elected official fears more than losing their money, is losing your votes.
If you band together with like minded individuals in your electorate and demand that your candidate reject any involvement with the gun lobby, then you can force the hand of your representatives to act in the best interests of you and your loved ones.
This should not be a party specific issue.
Talk to the parents and families and friends of the victims of these shootings. They would not care which party they had to vote for if it could bring their loved ones back.
I truly hope that you and yours are not counted amongst the many families affected by mass shootings and I hope you never will be.
Under the current laws, however, that is nothing more than luck. You cannot be everywhere at once to protect your loved ones.
Right now, you just have to hope against hope that they (and you) are never in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right now, you have to understand that the wrong place at the wrong time may be somewhere as innocent as a school, a church or a movie theatre.
Your best opportunity to actively protect your loved ones is by using your power, as a voter, to band together with other voters and challenge the stranglehold that the NRA have on your representatives.
Again, this is not a party political issue. Frankly, both sides are about as bad as one another generally. In the current political environment it is mainly individual politicians who are resisting NRA coercion. This needs to change and these politicians need their numbers bolstered if they are to effect the sort of changes necessary.
This is not something you do for your party. This is something you do for your family, for your community, for your country!
No doubt the vast majority of you reading this consider yourselves law abiding citizens.
I hope that you can at least consider how a degree of regulation, of both weapons and the people who own them, could make you and your families safer. I hope you can realize that you have the power to demand that your representatives do your collective will without the interference of the gun lobby.
The Last Question: “So what do you really believe?”
What I want and what could be immediately and practically feasible may not necessarily be the same thing.
I believe that stringent gun control is necessary.
As an individual, I hate the idea of greater regulation in any form but as a contributing member of society I recognize that it is necessary in this instance for the greater good.
Technology and society have moved far beyond what the 2nd Amendment was ever meant to address.
I believe that there is no reason for private citizens to own assault rifles. I believe that devices such as bump stocks are designed merely to cynically circumvent laws against automatic weapons. They serve no practical purpose and only play into the hands of the criminal fraternity.
If a lot of people were honest with themselves, they would concede that the guns they own are essentially paperweights, unused and unnecessary.
The 2nd amendment is an important ideal to many Americans. Gun ownership is, for reasons that many of us from other countries simply do not understand, important to many Americans.
Does it need to be more important than the lives of your children, your families, your neighbours ?
Is unregulated ownership of a gun more important than your children being allowed to be young and carefree, as we all were not so many years ago?
Is it more important than your children growing up to have children of their own?
Can a ridiculous piece of metal and carbon have more value to you than your children coming home alive every day?
In World War 2, adult Americans went away and saw the ugliness of combat in foreign lands.
In Vietnam, younger Americans, many barely out of their teens, did the same thing and were similarly traumatized.
At the beginning of the 21st century, we have pre schoolers, children, teenagers, being killed and experiencing the horrors of war without even having to leave their classrooms.
They have watched their siblings, their friends, their neighbours die in front of them. They have stepped over their young bodies to escape a charnel house that was once their school.
Is this the future you want for your children, or for their children?
Can there ever be an acceptable body count just to ensure that gun ownership has no practical controls?
Is there any parent who has lost a child in one of these mass shootings, who views their child’s death as mere collateral damage in the fight to keep their 2nd amendment rights?
Would any of you say to a grieving parent that their child’s death was worthwhile if it prevented simple legislation and regulation controlling who owns firearms and what firearms they own?
In a perfect world, there would be no guns or, for the gun lovers, maybe there would be guns that were freely enjoyed by responsible people who wished no-one else any harm.
In the imperfect world in which we live, there are too many guns and technology has made them far more efficient and deadly than ever before. Practical steps need to be taken. Loopholes need to be eliminated. The self interested machinations of industry lobbyists need to be banished. REAL and practical changes need to be made to ensure the safety of your families and your communities and your country.
America, you can no longer do nothing. Your youth, your society, your country, deserves better than that!
We, who truly grieve the tragic and senseless loss of every child implore you, please, do something. Do anything.
Please just stop doing nothing!