Yes, there is an answer, an almost fool-proof way to make sure that mentally ill people never again have the means to slaughter other people.
Yes, there is a way to end gun violence.
Here it is.
Frankly I am sick of hearing about how much people love their weapons. Adam Lanza’s mother loved her gun collection. Now she’s dead, killed by one of them.
Twenty babies in Connecticut lost their lives. They were ruthlessly destroyed by a man with weapons, each of them legally obtained by Adam’s mother in a state with tough gun laws.
We don’t have to wait until every mentally ill person is cured. We must make sure that mentally ill people are never allowed access to weapons of death and mass murder.
No one other than a law enforcement officer or member of the military should own a gun.
What about hunters? Let them own single shot long guns that must be reloaded after each shot. Nothing more.
Nothing more.
End the violence. Remove the means of mass murder.
The children’s right to live and the parents’ right to peace of mind trumps the right to own weapons of carnage.
I don’t know how something like this could be applied here, given the 300 million or so privately owned guns (not counting the illegal, unregistered ones). I cannot imagine how this Pandora’s gun cabinet could be closed at this point.
Alan, we managed to impose no-smoking bans across the nation because we know that cigarettes cause cancer. Guns cause death. If we want to stop the killing, we have to eliminate the guns and put them in hands of law enforcement and military only.
I am not exactly disagreeing here, I am thinking of the logistics of applying such a gun ban. How would the guns be eliminated? Criminals would ignore the ban and zealous gun enthusiasts would be burying them in the back yard or worse, violently resisting disarmament. Again, I am not saying this is a bad idea, I am saying that I can’t see how to implement it.
“….we have to eliminate the guns and put them in hands of law enforcement and military only.”
Diane, I have to disagree with you on that. Excluding the “Hitler” theory, and how some insane person would be able to just take over if the military and law enforcement bought into it, do you honestly believe that every police officer is sane? That every heroic soldier is sane? The elephant in the room is mental illness, not guns. As a special ed teacher, the post written by the principal who has 6-8 students a year sent to a residential facility said it all. I am a teacher, not a psychiatrist or psychologist or counselor, although I sometimes feel that is more my job than teaching math. We need to have not only a serious discussion, but a solution to this problem.
Let’s start the discussion with the laws surrounding IDEA. A student with an IEP, REGARDLESS of their disability, cannot be expelled without a manifest determination, where it’s decided by a team whether or not the infraction is related to the student’s disability. If the disability is an emotional one (and MANY students with Asperger’s walk that fine line), it’s very difficult to decide “no relation to the disability” when the disability is mental illness. Let’s find a sensible solution to this, in addition to banning the assault weapons.
Like in chiana where the cilivian ownership of anything over a .117 Cal. air rifle is aginst the law?
Then how dose this happen?
http://www.voanews.com/content/man-stabs-22-children-at-chinese-elementary-school/1564820.html
Humans will kill no matter what.
But if you want to stop the school shootings, maybe you should look at a country that has delt with the problem of school shootings since the 1970’s. Isreal.
“A terrorist opens fire with an automatic weapon in an Israeli school. What could have been a mass murder on the scale of Columbine or greater is limited to a very short casualty list when Israeli parents and grandparents, who have provided volunteer armed security after receiving state training, open fire and kill him with their concealed pistols.”
“Israel began the program of armed citizen guards in the schools after the Maalot massacre in the 1970s, when a large number of children were slain in a terrorist incident. The volunteer parents work in plain clothes, armed with concealed semi-automatic pistols, and are trained by Israel’s home guard. It is significant that in the more than a quarter century between Maalot and the incident mentioned above when the citizen guards shot down the terrorist in the school in 2002, not a single child was murdered in an Israeli school! ”
Maybe you don’t want to stop these killings, maybe you just want to impose your will on others, but none of this even matters anyway because you can not undo technology and thats just what firearms are a technology. Pass all the laws you want but it will only have the same impact as the war on drugs and prohibition. Which gives organized crime another way to make money.
Maybe you should check your facts. There is a requirement to serve two years in the military in Israel. Only certain people like former captains in the military can have certain weapons not every citizen. Only few educators in the West Bank areas carry weapons. An armed society is not a polite society; it is a frightened and suspicious society.
Never said the israel had good gun laws, just that after the Maalot shooting in the ’70’s instead of thinking that a “Gun Free Zone” sign would stop a killer, they armed the pearents and grandpearents of students along with the teachers. Also yes you can get a gun permit without ever serving a day in the IDF, but that dose not matter much since military service is mandatory in Israel. Also you do not need a firearms permit to be part of the civil gaurd that protect the schools. You only need one if you want to own one. Almost any civilian can go to there local police deparpment and check out a gun.
1. Applicant must be a permanent resident of Israel for 3 consecutive years prior to making application for a firearms permit.
2. Applicant must be 21 years of age.
3. The permit request must be for personal use, not to engage in the business of firearms sales.
4. Applicant must fall into one of the following categories:
a. Part-time reservist (volunteer) for 3 years.
b. Such a reservist (volunteer) is a member of a gun club.
c. Professional, licensed public transportation driver, transporting a minimum of 5 passengers.
d. Licensed animal control officer.
e. Full-time dealer of jewelry or large sums of cash or valuables.
West Bank and Gaza Strip Settlers:
1. A resident in a militarily strategic buffer zone, essential to the security of the State of Israel.
2. A business owner in these geographic areas.
Veterans:
1. Veterans of the Regular Army honorably discharged with the rank of non-commissioned officer, and veterans of the Reserve Army with the rank of regimental commander.
2. Retired law enforcement officers with the rank of sergeant.
3. Retired prison guards with the rank of squadron commander.
I was simply pointing out the ineffectivness of “Gun Free Zones”
In General Introduction to Psychoanalysis , Freud wrote, “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
Why do we need semi-automatic guns? I grew up on a farm surrounded by guns. Any hunter who cannot hit a running jackrabbit, or coyote, with a single shot 22 is not much of a hunter. Hunting is not a justification!
Look at the statistics! This is a good question for an advanced mathematics class to address. How often has a privately owned semi-automatic weapon saved a life in the US due to the fact it was semi-automatic? Has it happened once this year? How often has a privately owned semi-automatic weapon murdered a person in the US, and turned a disaster into a multiple death disaster due to being semi-automatic?
The following is from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
“Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands.
The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings.
In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half. “
Yet we have no choice. We have to ban assault weapons, so there aren’t any more. Remember the Virginia Tech massacre? That severely mentally ill man was able to buy automatic weapons. Imagine if he were unable? i mean, there wasn’t even a reliable background check, on this individual with a paper trail. Imagine if he weren’t able to purchase them at all.
Change has to start somewhere.
What about the millions of assault-type weapons that are already out there? They do not disappear because they become banned. I share the sentiment, but this is closing the barn long after the horse got out.
And I hate to be pedantic, but that Virginia tech guy used neither an assault rifle nor an automatic weapon. He did use a weapon with a high capacity magazine. Those could be banned again (and that is a good idea), but there would be plenty of pre-ban ones circulating out there still.
I am not some rootin’ tootin’ reincarnation of Charlton Heston by any means. I am just trying to think of the practicalities and logistical problems of making meaningful, real gun bad and restrictions in a country with a very zealous gun culture.
Yes, it will be very difficult to remove all private guns at once — probably impossible. But that still doesn’t mean that we can’t STRIVE for elimination of as many private guns as possible. For example, this killer’s mother — a law-abiding citizen — probably would have turned in her guns if the law was changed. Every gun taken off the streets — every ‘starfish thrown back into the sea’ — represents progress.
“I do not love the bright sword for it’s sharpness, nor for the arrow for it’s swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
The average response time for my city’s PD is 5 minutes, in a situation where seconds count.
You people forget that if you ban guns, ANY guns, including assault rifles, then only criminals would have them.
Imagine you’re a law-abiding citizen with only a bolt-action .22, and all of a sudden, a criminal with an illegally obtained assault rifle bursts in. You fire at him, but it only seems to anger him. Then, he takes his assault rifle, and blows your whole family away.
I believe your hearts are in the right place, but there are too many guns in the world.
There’s no way in hell a ban would do anything except hurt the law-abiding citizen.
If someone wants to shoot a school/mall/movie theater, etc, he WILL find a way.
And no, you can’t have my assault rifle (And I DO have one.) until you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Nothing trumps the constitution, Diane. If two thirds of each house of congress proposes a repeal of the 2nd amendment and three quarters of the states approve that amendment, your approach will come into being. What do you think the likelihood that’s happening is? IN THE MEANTIME, what would your proposal be?
Short sited. Protection is what guns are for! I am law enforcement and gun control kills! These killers are cowards, they only go where guns are NOT! Except for them!
CHICAGO, D. C., PHILADELPHIA….. Just 3 examples of gun control laws failure! Some of the largest murder rates where it’s illegal to carry a gun to protect yourself! Guess who has the guns? Bad guys! We have guns for protection!
You don’t understand the issue. Your heart misleads you!
The fact that we can’t make all existing guns disappear immediately is NOT an argument for walking away in resignation and doing nothing.
That’s an excuse. That’s a cop out. That’s showing weakness and irresponsibility.
Guns can’t do damage without ammunition. Ammunition is easier to control, track and withhold. If we can do it with narcotics, we can do it with bullets.
What’s that you say? Some narcotics get out on the street anyway, no matter what?
And you’re right: no matter how many laws and regulations regarding weapons and ammunition we pass, there will STILL be some guns and ammo on the black market.
And it will equal a very small percentage of the weapons and ammo available today, and be much, much more difficult and expensive to obtain. It will obviously result in dramatically fewer deaths.
If you argue otherwise, you’re not to be taken seriously.
Look at the United Kingdom and the ultra-restrictive gun laws that were passed after a similar shocking slaughter of children in 1996. It only took months for the Conservative government to pass these sweeping laws, with almost no serious dissension. When Tony Blair was elected, shortly thereafter, his government essentially did away with the last remaining vestiges of private gun ownership.
Do the Japanese and British love their children more than we Americans? I don’t think so. But the majority of them appear to be more attuned to reality.