Freedom comes at a price and security costs our comfort

The entire school district of East Brunswick school district will post armed police officers outside all of its eleven schools as security mania grips U.S. learning institutions.

On Thursday, a day after a gunman killed 17 people and injured 15 more at a Florida high school, East Brunswick school board members voted to post armed guards outside all entrances.

As fear runs rampant, perhaps the time has arrived for military members posted at supermarkets, movie theaters, beaches and inside every Chicago household.

A personal safety quotient will increase with an armed security guard standing inside my shadow, on my front doorstep or just outside the bedroom door.

Just how much freedom a nation will surrender to feel safe remains an unknown quantity in this safety equation.

Defeating mental illness or extinguishing all the residue of hate offers a serious undertaking as criminal minds can devise unimagined killing plots.

Freedom offers vast opportunities for dangerous episodes in numerous venues. Even the most detailed security efforts frequently leave unexpected holes in protection efforts.

Terrorists now incorporate automobiles as weapons, impacting people on strolls or traveling by bicycles. A New York City attack forced city officials to install cement barricades near bike paths. Imagine what a town might look like if all streets were cordoned off by barricades and walls.

Should we wait until a terrorist blows up a New Jersey Transit or Amtrak train before implementation of security procedures? Is it conceivable in matters of cost and time for train riders to be screened before they gain access to rail transportation?

Of course, we should take necessary steps to prevent terrorism and school shootings although people who mean to inflict harm will produce the unexpected. An enforcement of gun laws and an elimination of semiautomatic and automatic weapons. President Donald Trump and other government leaders should make illegal bump stocks, which transforms a semiautomatic rifle into a machine gun.

Factually, freedom comes with a significant number of nooks and crannies that offer infiltrators intent on delivering carnage, fear and terror.

Let’s take necessary precautions, even require that all high school events deploy metal detectors and ramped security but let’s also remember that freedom comes with a cost.

L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist.