United States need gun control laws and mental health resources -- time for NRA , politicians and specialist groups to see sense

Commonsense needs to be applied to gun control in US

I was reluctant to do any commentary on this topic. It’s one of those stories that can stand on its own with little opining. But, I’m getting to the point where I simply can’t take it any more. The stupidity…the outright idiocy of clueless, self-serving officials, politicians and special interest groups around the country never ceases to astound me.

In the wake of the horrific child homicides in Newtown, Connecticut the media spectacle continues and opinions abound. Many want more gun control laws; some favor better mental health resources, while still others believe in developing greater security measures for our schools. My guess is most people would like to adopt an eclectic approach which includes a measure of each.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has proposed putting armed security personnel in every school and suggested that if the teachers and administrators had been armed the assassin might have been taken down earlier, thus lessening the carnage.

Last week, one New Jersey official took the NRA suggestion one step farther, when he proposed that each school in his district be provided armed security personnel adorned in full tactile gear. In other words, the official wants all schools to be outfitted with a fully armed resident S.W.A.T. team. This is where I draw the line. This is crazy!

Just imagine. Someone sends their kid to school and an incident occurs. Perhaps the situation is a real cause for alarm; perhaps not. Bullets begin to fly from automatic and semi-automatic weapons through the classroom, or hall, or cafeteria. Some of those bullets may come from an assailant; some from security guards firing their automatic weapons in the name of security.  After the dust settles, how many kids will have been intentionally murdered by an assailant and how many kids will be dead from so-called friendly fire? Or as they say in the military; how many children will simply become co-lateral damage?

Call me crazy, but I certainly wouldn’t feel safe with my kid in any school that had these types of weapons at the ready. I don’t care who’s carrying them.

Which begs the question - What has become of this nation?

I’ll put it simply. Guns don’t belong in schools. Kids don’t need to be educated beside tactical assault teams. This is not what a sane, civilized country looks like. I have visited the Third World. This is what the Third World looks like - soldiers and machine guns everywhere. Why would we want our children to be educated in an environment that appears as though it’s being overseen by Fidel Castro?

Unfortunately, kids like anyone else, can be targets anywhere they congregate. We can outfit our schools to be an armed prison, but what of the school busses? What of the parks, beaches and summer pools? What of the toy stores, party places and game rooms? Won’t all these places need someone riding shotgun too? Won’t they need fully geared tactical assault teams as well?

There is also the question which concerns those who obtain the knowhow to take lives without a gun. Remember Timothy McVey? He figured out a way to kill a lot of people, including children in day care, without firing a shot.

The people who commit these mass murders are usually both smart and mentally ill. That’s a dangerous combination when mass murder occupies a mind. Considering that, our challenge is to make this country a truly safer place, not simply force a venue change for the next tragedy. Nor should we change the lives of our children or rob them of innocence simply by doing something stupid for doings sake.

Answering guns, with yet more guns, simply adds up to even more guns. Militarizing our schools is not a well thought out idea. It is in fact, non-insightfully stupid.

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