No easy fixes to gun violence

by | Feb 21, 2018 | Editor's Blog, Gun Control | 7 comments

The legislature is forming a new committee to consider how to keep our schools more safe. Among the considerations is arming teachers. Speaker Tim Moore made sure to emphasize that no decisions have been made about what to do and that a lot of options are on the table.

I’m not ready to criticize Moore or the GOP for looking for solutions, even if I might not agree with everything that’s proposed. On school shootings, everything should be discussed. We need a broad discussion led more by parents, teachers, students and experts than by advocacy groups on either side. The instinct to retreat to ideological talking points on too many issues is part of the problem with our political dialogue.

I don’t believe more guns is going to reduce gun violence and I don’t believe heavily armed teachers will make our schools safer. However, if an active shooter came into my one of my kid’s schools, I would want somebody with the ability to shoot back. Maybe that would be a cop assigned to the school. Maybe it’s designated school personnel. I don’t know, but having somebody in the school with access to a firearm doesn’t seem crazy to me.

On the other hand, I don’t think we need to have legal assault weapons or clips that shoot thirty rounds. I don’t think a ban would stop mass shootings. I do think it would reduce the carnage. If the assault weapons ban had stayed in place, I don’t believe 50 people would have died in Las Vegas or 49 would have died in Orlando even if the shootings had taken place. I doubt that as many would have died in school shootings in Newtown or Parkland.

As for the saying “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” I don’t buy it. People may carry out the acts but assault weapons with high capacity clips kill more people than other guns. They are offensive weapons meant to maximize casualties. They’re going to kill more people than a deer rifle with a larger caliber.

The goal of this commission should be to open up a conversation that’s been restricted largely by the campaign money of the NRA. That said, it also shouldn’t be ceded to the people who believe the only problem is access to weapons. Republicans are correct that we need more mental health services. They should fund them. Gun rights activists might be right that we need to enforce the laws that are on the books. We need to make sure there’s money to do that, too.

We’re not going to ban guns. The Second Amendment is not going to be repealed. That said, a decision by the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia makes clear that certain restrictions on guns, including banning certain types, is constitutional. There’s no silver bullet to ending mass shootings. It’s going to take a lot of effort including looking at our country and our values to solve this problem, and we’ll never end it altogether.

7 Comments

  1. Morris

    A very well thought out article.
    But a couple of observations from a gun owner that is as horrified as anyone over this tragedy:
    *The AR was invented in the 1950’s by a company called Armalite (what AR stands for), but Colt started making them in large scale in 1959. That was nearly 60 years ago. If AR’s were really the problem, why did it take 60 years?
    *”Assault weapon” is a made up name. All guns can be assault weapons. In fact an “assault weapon” bans generally name the brands of weapons, which is therefore easy to skirt. An AR operates essentially the same as most firearms sold in the last 50+ years. It is really 100-year old technology.
    *Higher capacity magazines (they are not “clips”) MIGHT help, but what you don’t realize is with today’s technology, it is relatively easy to 3D print a magazine. In fact I have even seen 3D printed lower receivers (the part that you must get background checked to buy). It is after all 2018.
    *How do you ban a gun that in today’s world many – if not most – people build from components? I have built several (and yes I was background checked for the lower). This is what makes the AR so popular. Most AR’s are no longer sold or made by Colt. The patent has long expired.
    *I am sitting in an airport as I type this. As the guy at the townhall said, I couldn’t bring a water bottle in with me, but this monster brought in a gun. There are guns on officers walking around right now. We can protect an airport – even a small one – but we can’t protect a school?

  2. Jeff Bryant

    I can understand that parents “feel” more secure when someone in their child’s school is armed. I’m a parent too. But it’s a false sense of security. There were 2 armed guards at the Parkland FL high school. There were 2 armed guards at Columbine. There’s simply no evidence that armed personnel in schools prevent mass shootings. Instead, more guns in schools furthers the impression that places of learning are becoming more like prisons and adds to the potential for accidents. It would also be expensive. Does anyone think Republicans in the NC General Assembly are going to pass new tax legislation to pay for a huge influx of guns in schools and the training needed to ensure teachers know how to handle them? No. They would pass an unfunded mandate and call themselves heroes while in the meantime money that would have been spent on books and art supplies goes to arming teachers. Finally, teachers don’t want to bear arms or have guns stockpiled in their schools. That’s not why they signed up for the job and it’s what they know would make them less effective as teachers. So are we going to make them?

  3. MyTurnNC

    Isn’t it amazing that at a time when we might have that much needed conversation about reducing gun violence, the national experts on researching issues of threats to public health at the CDC have been forbidden by the federal government to keep any records on the subject and to research what could work to identify potential shooters? The researchers on all manner of public hazards cannot even acknowledge there is a problem. This by itself is a national disgrace imposed on the U.S. by the pressure from the NRA and Gun Owners of America primarily. In the 21st century in the United States of America, scientific researchers should be the experts on what.constitutes dangerous trends that could impact public health and that need study, not politicians. And certainly not groups lobbying Congress with their dollars who represent big, profitable and largely unregulated corporations.

  4. Rick gunter

    You have to know that the country is in trouble when a teenager can buy a weapon of war easier than he could purchase, say, an alcoholic beverage.

    Yet, because of Florida’s lax gun laws, the 19-year-old shooter in last week’s school massacre that claimed at least 17 lives was able to purchase an AR-15 legally.

    To argue that this weapon of war should be allowed in civilian hands, especially in the hands of a teenager with a troubled psychological past, is nothing but BS.

    I once knew my way around powerful weapons of war. If you had told me all those years ago that the heirs of my trusted M16 one day would be available in civilian circles, I would have been horrified.

    Some people like to say that guns, not people, kill. Again, this argument is BS. If people cannot get their hands on guns such as the AR-15 used in the Parkland massacre, then the slaughter, at the very least, would be minimized if not thwarted.

    It also is argued that teachers and school administrators should be armed. Again, I consider this a very bad idea. Being the cop on the beat should not be part of the job description of educators. Statistics show that the number of people saved by other shooters is miniscule. In addition, still more firearms placed in our communities mean more accidental gun deaths, possibly more gun suicides, more firearms to be stolen used in more crimes. The idea of arming teachers to engage in gun battles simply strikes me as a very, very bad idea.

    At the end of the day, nothing will be done to stop this slaughter by President Trump, the Republican Congress and others. The President did not even mention guns when he offered a timid and belated response to the Florida massacre. To talk about that carnage and not mention guns is akin to speaking about the Titanic and not mention the iceberg.

    Like all the other gun massacres, the Florida carnage will fade as did the slaughters in Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Orlando and the other infamous and growing list of places where such outrages have occurred in recent years.

    The Republican Party is too deeply interwoven with the National Rifle Association and the arms lobby to take action.
    The Democratic Party has less blood on its hands from the needless deaths of children and others in gun violence than does the GOP, but it is not blameless either. But given the choice between the two parties, the country has a much better chance to enact three needed gun safety measures under a Democratic House and Senate and Democratic president than it does with the GOP in control. This is another reason why I will not vote to any Republican for Congress in the foreseeable future.

    At a minimum, three actions need to be taken immediately.

    First, assault-style weapons should be banned. Nearly 80 percent of the country agree with such a ban.
    There should be no question about this. These weapons should not be allowed in civilian populations. Yet, gun manufactures provide 1.5 million AR-15’s annually because these weapons of war are expensive, ranging in price from $600 to $2,500.

    Second, there should be stronger background checks, an initiative supported by large majorities of Americans. For crying out loud, those with mental illness should not be allowed to be within three inches of a firearm. Yet Congress allowed this outrage and President Trump signed it into law.

    Third, bump stocks should be banned. A bump stock allows a semiautomatic weapon to fire faster than normal. Again, most Americans support the banning of bump stocks.

    The Founders who wrote and approved the Second Amendment granting the right to own and bear firearms would be horrified to see how their words have been twisted in the modern era. The amendment was written in an era of muskets!
    I learned a valuable lesson in my youth after George Corley Wallace said in his inaugural address as governor of Alabama, “…segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

    His words motivated the civil rights movement to keep pounding the rock. Regardless of the setbacks, those who sought change kept pushing for it. They ultimately achieved a measure of racial equality and justice.

    Much the same approach is needed today regarding guns. Our children’s lives depend on as many of us as we can rally together to make sure that they are safe from the domestic terrorism of gun violence in schools and other places.

    No one ever will convince me that something is not very, very wrong about our country’s approach to guns when we are the only nation on the face of the earth that has as many gun deaths annually as we do in America. Not to put lives ahead of the crazy fixation with firearms is nothing less than immoral.

    • Caryl Brt

      Rick,
      Thanks for that insightful and comprehensive view of the issue. It was especially welcome after Mr. Mills milk toast reaction. The time for equivocating is over. We have been held hostage by the NRA and their handmaidens for way too long. When an overwhelming percentage of American agree to the changes you suggest and all we hear is crickets from our supposed representatives, that is called dictatorial.
      Time is up for these apologists!

  5. Bob

    I absolutely agree with you about weapons bans. They won’t end school shootings, but they will reduce the number of casualties. I disagree about armed faculty and staff in schools. There will be more shooting incidents (but with low casualties) that way because a student is going to get hold of the teacher’s or guard’s gun; it will go off accidentally; someone with a high capacity firearm will make the school personnel no match for them anyway; it’s distracting to the purpose of education; some “adult” in charge is going to use it to threaten unruly children; school personnel will be subject to lawsuits for not firing correctly when it was needed; malpractice insurance premiums for school systems will go through the roof; I could go on. Arming school personnel is typical American overreaction and overreach. Even one death or injury related to school gun violence is a tragedy. But the chances a child will die due to gun violence at school is very, very low and not worth the wholesale cultural, financial, and emotional shifts that mandating armed school personnel will bring.

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