This post is going to be long and you will be offended.
I’ve found myself being hypercombative after the Newtown shooting. My heart hurts. I’ve had a pit in my stomach since I first heard about this. Initially it was because people couldn’t wait one single day before opining on the how’s and why’s of the shooting. Before the sun had set, people were using the blood of these kids to advance their own personal agendas. And listen Mr. President, stop telling me about your “thoughts and prayers”. What a terrible thing to say. You are PC’ing this. You are saying that you’re praying (to show that you care) and that you have your thoughts (in the event prayer is offensive). But overall my anger at this found a place due to the fact that everyone is wrong. “Thoughts and prayers” are a canned phrase. It means you have done neither.
You want to know why this happened? It happened because we live in a free country. Occasional chaos is the price is liberty. In a free country people are allowed to own weapons to protect themselves. In a free country we do not eschew due process and involuntarily commit the mentally ill on mere suspicion or the affidavit of a doctor. Freedom isn’t free. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stop thanking the vets so much. We are volunteers. The price of freedom isn’t just our blood. In this case the price of freedom was the blood of children who never got the chance to raise their hand for anything but to ask for a bathroom break. Honor them, thank them, and recognize their sacrifice. I would absolutely hate to be the person to tell this to one of the parents, but on a societal / utilitarian level, their sacrifice is a fair trade.
Everyone is looking for a solution and it nearly always comes down to a singular solution. Arm teachers some say, ban guns say others. There are calls for funding toward mental health issues and increasing metal detectors and police at our schools. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No single thing could resolve this. However, there is a solution: do it all. Let’s ban guns. Let’s put metal detectors in schools. Let’s put cameras everywhere and a policeman in every classroom. Let’s put people in mental institutions for mental issues all the way down to ADHD. Let’s mandate knives have their points blunted. Honestly, this won’t solve school violence completely, but everything is a game of odds, and each thing we do can increase the odds that our children will be safe. You don’t want to live in a police state? Well, then you must accept that sometimes bad things happen.
You want to stop school shootings? Banning guns isn’t going to do it. Guns are everywhere. They are antiquated technology and as we speak they are becoming more and more available to every man. The exciting world of 3d printers will be arming us cheaply within 10 years. Secondly, as the gunnies say, criminals don’t follow the law. Many times these guns are stolen.
But gunnies are every bit as emotionally uncritical in their thoughts when it comes to gun issues. I often hear that prohibition doesn’t work. Well, prohibition DOES work. It just isn’t a silver bullet. It’s part of a solution. Why did this shooter get a gun? Because his mother legally had access to one. Oftentimes gunnies point to the fact that these shootings happen in states with strict gun laws to show that prohibition doesn’t work. But we live in the United States where you can drive across an invisible, unchecked border, oftentimes very close to you, and purchase a gun, then turn right back around and use that gun in a “gun free” state.
But prohibition works to limit quantities and ease of access. A few months ago I watched Ted. My takeaway: I really want to try coke.
I haven’t. Do you now why? Because I don’t have a coke guy. I don’t have a coke guy because if someone put up a craigslist ad for some blow he would go to jail. Drug prohibition hasn’t made drugs go away, but it has limited the quantity and ease of access of drugs. So too would it be with guns. Limiting guns would not deter a dedicated attacker. McVeigh used fertilizer. But you have to remember that most of these people are losers. By definition a loser cannot succeed but for an easy opportunity. Guns provide that easy opportunity.
Gunnies claim that we should arm teachers. Some say that we should mandate arming teachers. I would surely support arming teachers who demonstrated skill and passed certain tests. I would not advocate mandating arming teachers. Teachers need to be teachers. I do not choose cops to educate my children, and I would not choose a teacher to protect my child. Many teachers are boobs, indoctrination machines for the state. I know more than a few people in the gun circles I run in that I do not trust being around with firearms. I don’t trust most teachers with my daughter’s education. I surely don’t trust those same people with her safety.
Many gunnies have a fascination with firearms. I liken this to the dwarves I saw in the Hobbit last night. As they are balancing on a mountain ledge that becomes a giant mountain man who is fighting another mountain you see them with both hands on their little axes when, if they had any sense they’d have long sheathed that thing and grabbed the sides of the mountain. We have a saying the Corps, “One Mind, Any Weapon.” A substantial portion of gunnies, fat, lazy, out of shape, seem to think that that pistol will protect them. That if only there was an armed person there it would stop the problem right there. It’s possible. But it’s unlikely. As I often say, it’s a game of odds. What if the armed teacher is in the bathroom? What if the armed teacher is like one of the cops in New York earlier this year that shot up a bunch of bystanders instead of the bad guy?
But on the flip side my liberal friends, let us assume that we have a mass shooter. He is confronted by (let’s go with a really absurd scenario) 10 armed citizens and they all start blazing away, each hitting and killing 2 innocent people. 20 dead. Well, if we’re talking Newtown, Virginia Tech, etc, I’d say that was a fair trade to stop a mass killer.
God. Perhaps the most absurd argument I’ve heard, and it’s a big one, is that these shooting happen because we have removed God and prayer from school. Mind you, I believe in God, but I actually had a post removed from an Idaho gun facebook group for challenging this position. Is there any answer sillier than assuming that a jealous bearded sky man is the explanation? Let me ask, where was God in 1966 at the University of Texas then? We had prayer in school then. That’s right, he was getting his ass kicked by a mentally ill Marine and his rifle. By blaming this on removing prayer from school, you are effectively saying that you think we should do nothing. Such a position makes you a fool.
Liberals say we should put cops and metal detectors in schools. These same liberals sat next to me and said that I should not be allowed to be armed on campus because they would not feel safe and in a healthy educational environment if they don’t know if I’m carrying. Well dumbass, how well do you think my child is going to learn when his school looks like a prison? How well do you drive when there’s a cop behind you? That’s how well my kid is going to learn when she runs into a half dozen cops on her way to the restroom. And don’t think for a minute that cops in schools wouldn’t translate over to incursions on our children’s health and rights in the expanding drug war. It’d be no different than how the Patriot Act is used not to prevent terrorism, but to expand the drug war.
But instead of looking at the gun itself, let’s consider a non-gun solution that might be more effective. Consider a panic alarm. It sits right next to the fire alarm. Pull the alarm and every door in the school locks, openable only from the inside. This seems more effective at buying time for first responders than hoping that maybe there’s a person carrying a pistol.
Then there’s the impending fears of a gun ban. I just had to sell my AR15 a month ago and now am really regretting it. I don’t think it’s possible to pass an assault weapons ban, but this event has a very 9/11 feel to it. It wouldn’t surprise me if one did get passed. If I had the money I’d buy a few rifles just to ensure that my children will be armed. Now, I’m not saying that this event is part of a gun ban conspiracy, but I would like to point out that gun bans worldwide generally come after a similar event. Surely those that wanted the ban have been waiting for this event in order to take advantage. But also, is it really that difficult to assume that our government would plan or allow such a thing in the interests of passing such a ban?
I would urge this government to take caution. You have half of this country that feels deeply disenfranchised. They feel as if their president is a Marxist. They fear. They fear his social policies will unravel the country. They believe in God and however misplaced their personal religious feeling are, they ARE clinging to their guns and their bibles. They are doing so proudly. Many people see that rifle hanging over the fireplace as the last security blanket. They feel like they can abide the socialism and that all is not lost, because if it gets out of hand, they have that rifle to fix things. I’m not saying whether they are right or wrong. I am only saying that these people will feel backed into a corner and if you come after their guns, there is potential for trouble.
All this said, I come down on the “cold dead hands” position when it comes to guns. Gunnies are often dumbasses. But the Second Amendment exists to protect us from the government. This is a utilitarian position. Occasional chaos is the price of freedom, and that’s a fair price, albeit often quite painful. A few thousand gun deaths each year is an acceptable price to keep the people sufficiently armed to prevent the murder of millions by the state.
And if you think that banning guns will end school shootings, or that the state will never step out of line to fire on their citizens, remember Kent State.
