Gentlemen,
This topic is a little closer to me than I feel comfortable with. On February 2, 1996, my town was affected by a school shooting. The shooter dressed in a black cowboy duster, hid a .357, a .25 automatic, and a .30-30 and walked into a junior high. He first shot and killed Manuel Vela, then Arnold Fritz, then Natalie Hintz, (who survived) before fatally shooting his teacher Leona Caires. Jon Lane, a PE teacher at the school, ran to the class after hearing gun shots, and entered the room, voluteering to act as a hostage so that the shooter could exit. When the shooter got close enough, Jon Lane grabbed the rifle and subdued the student, holding him for police. Jon Lane is now and forever a hero to me.
Wikipedia has a reasonably accurate version of the story here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Mi...l_shooting
I tell you all this because the first student killed, Manuel Vela, was my next door neighbor. His younger brother played with my kids every day, and we saw Manuel frequently in the yard, playing with his brother and the other kids.
I know how this kind of a tragedy affects people, I've seen it daily for almost 20 years now. I know kids in the class, I know Natalie Hintz, and my son in law to be was in the next classroom. One of his best friends was in that classroom with the shooter and I know that young man as well.
My town did a lot of soul searching as we tried to find a way to make students safe without making every school into a prison. What we finally realized is that you CAN'T make everyone safe WITHOUT putting them in prison, and even then, if someone is determined to do them harm, and willing to die in the process, they will succeed.
There is no real answer to this problem.
Norwegian citizens don't have the same gun laws we do, and guns are much more tightly controlled, and yet a shooter was able to kill 77 people there last year.
The Jews in the ghetto in Warsaw supposedly had NO access to guns, yet managed to fight off a vastly superior NAZI force for almost a month.
In our times, the truth is that guns are machines, and fairly simple ones, and can be manufactured and acquired easily, even under the most difficult of circumstances. Unless you were to outlaw EVERY gun, and then act as the Gestapo or the KGB did, you simply cannot BEGIN to stop people with evil intent from obtaining them. All you do is make it difficult for law abiding citizens.
So we need turn this discussion completely around, we need to make sure that people understand that we must find and treat those people who have evil intent. These people are not generally criminal UNTIL they crack and act out in a spasm of rage. We have to identify and help treat them early, in whatever manner we can find that works. Right now, we do a lousy job.
This is NOT an argument about gun control, its an argument about mental health. And we have to go on the offensive and find a way to make everyone understand that.
This topic is a little closer to me than I feel comfortable with. On February 2, 1996, my town was affected by a school shooting. The shooter dressed in a black cowboy duster, hid a .357, a .25 automatic, and a .30-30 and walked into a junior high. He first shot and killed Manuel Vela, then Arnold Fritz, then Natalie Hintz, (who survived) before fatally shooting his teacher Leona Caires. Jon Lane, a PE teacher at the school, ran to the class after hearing gun shots, and entered the room, voluteering to act as a hostage so that the shooter could exit. When the shooter got close enough, Jon Lane grabbed the rifle and subdued the student, holding him for police. Jon Lane is now and forever a hero to me.
Wikipedia has a reasonably accurate version of the story here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Mi...l_shooting
I tell you all this because the first student killed, Manuel Vela, was my next door neighbor. His younger brother played with my kids every day, and we saw Manuel frequently in the yard, playing with his brother and the other kids.
I know how this kind of a tragedy affects people, I've seen it daily for almost 20 years now. I know kids in the class, I know Natalie Hintz, and my son in law to be was in the next classroom. One of his best friends was in that classroom with the shooter and I know that young man as well.
My town did a lot of soul searching as we tried to find a way to make students safe without making every school into a prison. What we finally realized is that you CAN'T make everyone safe WITHOUT putting them in prison, and even then, if someone is determined to do them harm, and willing to die in the process, they will succeed.
There is no real answer to this problem.
Norwegian citizens don't have the same gun laws we do, and guns are much more tightly controlled, and yet a shooter was able to kill 77 people there last year.
The Jews in the ghetto in Warsaw supposedly had NO access to guns, yet managed to fight off a vastly superior NAZI force for almost a month.
In our times, the truth is that guns are machines, and fairly simple ones, and can be manufactured and acquired easily, even under the most difficult of circumstances. Unless you were to outlaw EVERY gun, and then act as the Gestapo or the KGB did, you simply cannot BEGIN to stop people with evil intent from obtaining them. All you do is make it difficult for law abiding citizens.
So we need turn this discussion completely around, we need to make sure that people understand that we must find and treat those people who have evil intent. These people are not generally criminal UNTIL they crack and act out in a spasm of rage. We have to identify and help treat them early, in whatever manner we can find that works. Right now, we do a lousy job.
This is NOT an argument about gun control, its an argument about mental health. And we have to go on the offensive and find a way to make everyone understand that.
You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live. - John Galt