(Published in the Farwell TX/Texico NM State Line Tribune January 3, 2013)
School shootings are, fear-mongering hysteria to the contrary, rare. I have seen the statistics that show your chances of being murdered in one are less than one in two million. Your risk of being killed in a car wreck on the way to school is much higher. You have a higher chance of being killed by a police officer, or of choking to death on a pen cap. Of course, even one murder is too many.
The recent tragedy in Connecticut will result in more anti-gun "laws" being proposed. "Laws" just like the ones that failed to prevent the massacre, and in fact make events like that one more likely. Connecticut has some of the worst- and by that I mean most restrictive- anti-gun "laws" in America. How'd that work out?
There are other meaningless displays that some will propose. Such as lock-downs. The school in Connecticut was "breached" violently. No lock-down prevents that. Lock-downs only increase other risks- risks that are actually more likely to really happen.
I realize no one in government or in the touchy-feelie "we can legislate our way to Utopia crowd" wants to hear it, but the truth is that arming teachers and school employees again is the only thing that can work. It isn't "radical"- it's a return to common sense that seems to have been lost in recent decades. It doesn't even require new "laws"; just the elimination of some very bad ones that are currently enforced.
Fortunately, events like the one in Connecticut will still be highly unlikely even if reasonable measures are passed over in favor of "feel good" security theater. But when the next massacre happens in another of those "gun free zones" take a moment and think about the lives that would have been saved if the decision-makers had listened to me.
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