I am not going to get into a big shouting match over the shootings in Newtown last week. It's horrible. The most awful thing I have had to contemplate since 9/11.
I am lucky I don't have young kids anymore, because I can only imagine the angst I would feel at that.
Let's get to the issues here.
First, there are crazy people. I don't recall exactly when, but my recollection is that in the early '80s or late '70's civil libertarians succeeded in their quest to prevent society locking people who are demonstrably nuts away. It contributed then to the large growth in the homeless population, but it has made it ever harder to put people in asylums where they can hurt no one. All the revenge shooters fit a profile - they are young, male, white, and disassociated from society. Could we have identified the latest shooter and put him away? I think so.
Second, there are guns.
Yes, the easy availability of guns makes this a bit if a turkey shoot for the determined mass murderer. But, this murderer did not buy his own weapons, in fact, was unable to purchase his own guns, so, instead he stole his mother's legally purchased weapons.
Sadly, he had enough training to be proficient with them, and he used that, with his crazed psyched to do what happened last Friday.
I know many (including our president) are itching to start putting restrictions in place on ammunition and "assault weapons." While limiting magazine size may have helped reduce the death toll in Newtown, these were not "assault weapons" by CT state law, and probably not in the defunct federal assault weapons bill that lapsed years ago. Again, that is only a proposal that would have mitigated he death toll here.
NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre was roundly lampooned for suggesting that we stick an armed officer in every school in the country. I heard no one lambast it for the efficacy of such a solution, but for the cost, both in money, and in (I guess) the loss of innocence it portends.
There are, to me , 2 workable solutions to the gun violence problem, and LaPierre's prescription is not that far off from mine. But first, the liberal proscription must be the repeal of the 2nd Amendment and the total banning of guns, with confiscation of 100% of them. Nothing short of that makes much sense to me.
My solution is that we do away with stupid things like "gun free zones" where we don't have the capability to enforce them (like in courthouses or airports equipped with metal detectors). All those do is tell the gunman that he's protected until the cops arrive.
We need to make guns MORE prevalent in our citizenry. Just posit if in Newtown a teacher, a janitor, or a coach had a gun close by. In their car, even. At hand, they may have been able to stop this thing. We rely today on first responders, yet, who are the real first responders? Yes, those are the people who are there, as evens unfold. Law abiding, honest, citizens. And we hamstring them by preventing them from defending themselves and other innocents.
If you tried to develop a situation where it was a certainty the max damage could be inflicted, you could do no better than what modern Liberalism has wrought.
