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!
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2 comments:
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.
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.
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