Did you see the news clip on the 15th of that suicide-bent man who terrorized a school board in Bay City, Florida? The guy brandished a gun and drew a big red "V", for Vendetta, within a circle on the wall. It looked like he fully intended to shoot the school superintendent, but the trigger squeeze threw his aim off. The outcome was not tragic - a security guard was able to shoot the guy in the leg, then the unwelcome guest finished himself off with his own gun. Since the security guard also got shot, but not hurt severely, he got to be the hero.
One educator commented, "This is why we have security." Except that security were the ones who checked all the law-abiding citizens and the school board members for weapons before allowing them to enter the room, leaving them defenseless to the criminal who sneaked a gun in. Security were the ones who were outside the room when the jerk was waving his gun around, and did not know what was happening until he got off several shots, barely missing the superintendent, and forcing the male board members under their desks.
This is why we have Amendment Number Two in our Bill of Rights, which I paraphrase thusly: "Organized training in the care and responsible use of weapons by all citizens being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms in all places at all times, and teach the same to their children, shall not be infringed."
What if the female board member who hit the gunman's gun from behind with her purse had instead concealed a gun in her purse and shot him from behind? What if the superintendent or at least one of the board members had a gun hiding behind their desk in preparation for just such an event?
My educator friend, the one who credited security with the not-so-tragic outcome, had previously mentioned how out-of-control and dangerous things get at some of the high schools here in metro Atlanta. In fact, bullying in schools has become such a problem our state legislature is taking action to prevent it. But I dare say, if teachers were allowed to carry weapons and if students who pass certain levels of training were allowed to carry certain weapons, the wild, unruly behavior at those schools would disappear.
The recent event in Florida was just a lucky break in a long history of such events since the fall of the free state. The Columbine high school and Virginia university tragedies particularly come to mind.
Along these lines, I also wonder if the airports handed out box-cutters, whether airline staff and passengers wouldn't fly more securely and wouldn't need to be groped on the way in. And we would not need to pay tax money or extra fees for TSA and their X-radiation/microwave energy, virtual strip-searching machines!
No security guards or educators were harmed in the writing of this blog post. However, the Second Amendment lies bleeding and dying on the floor. Let's do what we can to help pull it back to life.
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David, I quite agree with the points you are making about what makes us secure as opposed to what infringes upon our rights and makes us less secure. As to weapons rights, particularly firearms, I also greatly agree with you; I was saying similar things myself in the aftermath of Columbine. Also, the TSA is certainly horrible... I can jive with all of your ideas about what's wrong and how we should fix it.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, maybe just by my own subjective value judgment, I must disagree with your assessment that the event was not tragic. A man going crazy, attempting a horrible crime, and killing himself is a tragedy, even if he is not innocent. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have been that crazy man, nor do I ever want to know. I don't think we can do anything more than speculate as to how much control he had of himself-- we can never know his motivation or his state of mind. Perhaps in a better world, his life could have been saved too, and that would be alright.
I'm not trying to nitpick. It's just that earlier this week I was tricked into seeing the footage of the event-- I don't like seeing real violence-- and I was disturbed by it, which I think is reasonable. Of course, we must defend ourselves against such threats, and I do strongly advocate our right to bear arms. However, in my opinion, compassion is not out of the question, even towards a would-be killer. I certainly wonder how the world might have been different for him as well.
Very cool David. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHi David,
ReplyDeleteGood for speaking out. I'd agree with you except for the fact that our government schools have become sociopath breeding grounds. Philosophically I think you are correct. But you know, I was a teenager once and I remember having less that honorable thoughts about my bullies. I was one of the good kids too but I think even I could have snapped and done something stupid back then. I consider myself a pretty reasonable person now but research shows that most people are no to full mental maturity, physiologically, until their early twenties and these day I'd say it is even worse than that in our society. If teachers were allowed to carry weapons I'd say they'd have to keep them on them at all times. If they had them stashed somewhere an impassioned student could get his hands on it. I think that it is tragic that they tell you in school that by setting foot onto a campus you are waiving constitutional rights. At the same time though... especially in regards to bullying... kids should not have to defend their lives and property from other kids. If those situations exist and our schools are nothing but microcosms of Lord of the Flies something is going very wrong. Simply giving kids guns, especially kids who have grown up playing Grand Theft Auto is only adding insult to injury. I think your interpretation of the 2nd amendment is good and would work in a free society but in public schools there are more fundamental flaws that simply adding firepower at this late stage would not help but perhaps even exacerbate the problems. Giving teachers guns to defend against intruders is a good idea... but at the same time being a teacher can be frustrating too. I'd probably know some teachers who might have gone postal on some students had they means :). That being said every year at GA Tech I work the freshman orientation and they have a security session with GT police for the parents. As you know violent crime is a real problem down there. During a Q&A last year one parent asked, in regards to violent crime, why doesn't tech allow their students to carry. I thought it was a brilliant question and a good solution. But GT is a lot different than a public school. I'm telling you man. There is something terribly wrong, from stem to stern, with our public school system. Maybe if we'd thrown in guns 80 years ago things would be fine now. Throwing in guns now would just be like throwing a match in a powder keg.