Letter to the Editor: Talking about school shootings and gun violence
Having a productive conversation on possible solutions to stop school shootings and gun violence is nearly impossible because most people are intolerant of listing to ideas that oppose their own views. As a result of this intolerance, we have created false dichotomies to attack our opponents. The false dichotomy says, “If you do not agree with my way of trying to stop school shootings from happening, then you are for school shootings!”
Let’s get real here. The bottom line is that people, regardless of their political agendas, want their children to be safe, especially at school. So the first thing we need to do is stop accusing others of being in favor of gun violence and school shootings because their personal beliefs about guns are different from our own. It’s ok to debate the pros and cons of a specific idea. One should look for merit or lack of merit in each idea. It is ok to say that you do not like an idea and don’t think that it has any merit; but it is not ok to personally attack someone’s character because you don’t like or agree with them. Not to mention that this kind of mudslinging does nothing to help find solutions to problems.
That being said, I am going to give some of my personal ideas on what I think will help curtail the violence. I will also comment on popular ideas that I do not think will be of much help. I speak from my own life experiences as a veteran and as a retired school teacher.
For starters, we need to make sure that the current gun laws are enforced to their fullest extent. Beyond that, we need to understand that regardless of what we do, there will always be people who want to do harm to others. If someone really wants to kill others, they will. Therefore, the first thing that we need to do to keep our children safe is to hire trained armed guards at all schools that can engage and stop an active shooter. Everything else that we can do to help curtail the violence will take time to implement and have a lag time for results. Hiring trained armed guards is something that can be done immediately and have immediate results.
I emphasize “trained” guards, because unless a person has been involved in an active shooter incident, they do not know how they will react. The only way you can counteract that uncertainty is with training. This is why I think that having teachers conceal carry is a bad idea! Teachers should concentrate on being mentors to their students and teaching the curriculum that they were hired to teach. An untrained person with a gun in an active shooter incident can increase the danger of the situation. However, if there are teachers willing to go through the same tactical shooting training as the armed guards, let them conceal carry.
As I said earlier, there will always be people who want to do harm to others. The tool of choice is usually a gun. Let’s be totally honest here, guns are tools, and like all tools they have been designed to do a specific job. The job that guns have been engineered to do is to make it easier for humans to kill. Guns are designed to kill!
I defend the Second Amendment and believe that all responsible citizens should be allowed gun ownership. However, there are clearly people who should not have guns! You can call them criminals, mentally ill, crazies, irresponsible citizens, or whatever you want. They should not have guns! The question becomes “How do you insure the right to keep and bear arms for responsible citizens and at the same time keep guns away from those who should not have them?”
There is no way to completely remove guns from those who should not have them, but that does not mean that there is nothing that we can do. There is actually a lot that we can do. It will involve responsible gun owners to make some concessions, but I believe that these concessions are reasonable and do not infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms, unlike some other ideas that I disagree with such as banning guns.
Banning guns is a really bad idea. Not only will the old cliché “If guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns” become true but any citizen that has a gun, by definition of the ban, will be a criminal. Not to mention that if the government tries to confiscate all guns from all citizens, a civil war will be the most likely result.
Doing partial bans such as banning “assault rifles” is a naive idea. A military-grade assault rifle is capable of full automatic firing (as long as you hold down the trigger the gun will continue to shoot bullets), burst firing (every time you pull the trigger the gun will shoot up to three bullets), or semi-auto firing (each time you pull the trigger the gun will only shoot one bullet). They cannot be purchased by the general public, so for all intents and purposes these guns are already banned.
The “assault rifles” that are for sale to citizens are only capable of semi-auto firing, which means that you have to pull the trigger for each bullet shot from the gun. This is no different than any other type of gun. You can take any semi-automatic hunting rifle, remove the wooden stock, replace it with a military-looking plastic or Kevlar stock with a pistol grip, and it has now become an “assault rifle.” Only the cosmetics and the appearance of the gun have changed. The function and lethality of the gun have not changed at all. I don’t know how someone could honestly think that it would be better to get shot by a high-power hunting rifle that can kill an elk at a thousand yards as opposed to getting shot by a lower-powered assault rifle. I don’t want anyone to get shot with any gun! All guns are lethal!
Because all guns are lethal, it is not unreasonable for our society to demand that gun owners be trained in proper gun use and safety. Let’s require a gun license to buy or carry a gun. To get a gun license, a person needs to have a background check. They also need to take a gun safety course and pass a gun safety test. In this course, they also need to demonstrate that they can shoot a gun with at least a marginal degree of accuracy. The gun license should be renewed every 4 or so years. Law enforcement officers who see citizens with a gun should be allow to ask to see the gun license. If the citizen does not have a gun license, their gun should be confiscated. If a gun is confiscated, the gun owner should be given a reasonable amount of time to get a gun license and reclaim their gun. If the gun owner does not get a gun license and reclaim their gun in a reasonable amount of time, the gun should be destroyed.
I understand that the gun license idea is an imposition on gun owners, but it in no way interferes with the right to own a gun. It simply requires citizens to demonstrate that they are responsible gun owners. It also gives law enforcement another means of removing guns from the people who should not have guns. I believe that the gun license idea will be more affective in curbing gun violence than trying to profile and identify potential shooters.
Trying to identify potential shooters is a good idea in theory, but in reality I don’t see it working. It’s easy to use hindsight to look back on the history of a shooter and say, “Look at all of the warning signs!” The problem is that there are hundreds of people that exhibit the same warning signs who never become shooters. The other problem is what should be done with people who are believed to be a potential shooter. Law enforcement cannot arrest them, because they have not committed a crime. What interventions are possible? I’m all for better mental health care, but can you force someone into a mental health facility based on the exhibited warning signs? I can see the ACLU jumping all over this one, although I do believe that anyone who brandishes a gun on social media and threatens gun violence should be arrested, have their guns confiscated, and have a mandatory mental health evaluation.
Let’s look at all ideas for stopping gun violence and carefully evaluate each idea. Take the ideas that have the greatest potential and implement them.
—James Langston
The viewpoints expressed above do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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