Mort Mather Author Writer Organic Farmer Philosopher Thinker Restauranteur

How to improve your life and save the world.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Put an armed person in every school.

     Geraldo Rivera opined that there should be armed guards in every school or, at least, have someone, the principle, a janitor, a history teacher, with a gun. This is a bad idea on so many fronts but take just one.
     Turn Sandy Hook into a video game and give the principle a gun and you play the principle. You hear gun shots, breaking glass and someone coming down the hall. Do you, gun in hand, open the door? Would you be able to shoot the man with the automatic weapon before he shot you? Would you have an automatic weapon, too, and just spray bullets through the door without seeing the intruder, without any care for any other person who might be in the hall?
     Let’s change the game and give the gun to the janitor. He hears shots, grabs his gun and goes running. He sees the principle lying in a pool of blood and hears shots from a classroom. He runs to the classroom and shoots the man with the gun. Good job! Only ten kids dead instead of twenty.
     My idea is to eliminate automatic weapons, that is, weapons that fire continuously as long as you hold down the trigger. If this guy had to pull the trigger each time he fired it would have slow him down. He would not likely have put so many rounds into the principle and each of his victims. Unless he was an excellent shot there would probably have been more survivors and he would not have been able to shoot as many people. Sure demented people and/or people who have been desensitized by shoot-um-up video games will still be around and will still do horrible things. Sure we should try to keep any gun out of the hands of the demented and we should do something about the desensitizing effect of some video games but the number one, hands down, action we should take is to make it illegal to manufacture, sell or own any weapon that fires multiple rounds with one pull of the trigger.
     I have asked the members of my congressional delegation to sponsor such legislation. Now!


Scott Supak said...

Fully automatic weapons, where they keep firing if you hold the trigger down, have been illegal in the US for a long time. What this, and other, shooters have used are semi-automatic weapons where you fire once for every time you pull the trigger.

I have very little hope that gun control efforts will do much to stop this kind of thing. While I support an assault weapons ban, and a ban on big clips, I think there are so many guns within reach for crazy people, or just assholes, that these bans will likely be ineffectual in curbing what looks to be a contagion spreading across the nation.

Matt Yglesias has a much better idea: tax the ammunition. This reminds me of the old Chris Rock stand-up bit about how we need bullet control, and if bullets were really expensive, we'd see a big change in their use.

Scott Supak said...

Also, the idea of having armed people around to respond to these idiots is dangerous. We don't need more crossfire.

A few of the people who were at the Giffords shooting were armed, and one of the armed men almost shot another of the armed men because he mistakenly though he was the shooter.

Yeah, more guns is not the answer.