Arming school staff could prevent tragedy
February 21, 2018
OPINION by JODY LANGFORD
Predictably, after every mass shooting, most recently the tragedy in Florida, the same anti-gun talking heads spew the same talking points. They call for “reasonable” gun laws and blame the NRA and the “gun culture” for the shooting.
I rarely, if ever, hear these talking heads suggest any new law that would actually work to prevent tragedies such as this. There are over 300 million guns in private hands in the United States. If a law was passed banning all guns and requiring all guns to be turned in, how many of these would stay in private hands? My reasonable estimate would be upwards of 100 million.
Criminals for sure would not turn them in and neither would unbalanced creeps such as these school shooters.
Law-abiding citizens would hide theirs, not wanting to give up their Second Amendment rights or the ability to protect themselves and their families. So a complete gun ban and confiscation scheme would only serve to make innocents easier targets.
Prior to 1934, you could walk into a hardware store and buy a machine gun off the shelf and walk out with it. Prior to 1968, you could do the same with all guns other than machine guns. As recently as the late 70’s and early 80’s, there were trucks in the high school parking lots with guns in the racks. Were there all these mass shootings back then? I don’t remember any.
The problem is not the gun, it is society. God, morality, and basic human decency and normalcy are removed from our schools and from every facet of our society, then people wonder where God is when these shootings happen.
The solution, albeit a band-aid, is to arm school personnel. On a volunteer basis, any school teacher, administrator, custodian…any staff member that can pass a background check and undergo basic training in firearms safety…should be allowed to carry concealed in the school. The anti-gunners don’t like this idea because they spew the erroneous idea that the mere existence of the gun will lead to an increase in gun violence. Or that there is a higher probability for innocents to get hurt. Or any other number of baseless claims.
There are two common threads to all of these mass shootings: The bad guy was the only one with a gun, or it took a good guy with a gun to stop the carnage.
Jody Langford is a retired law enforcement officer living in the North County.
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