Guns and schools

The first time you drive a automatic car you realize your feet have two options — hit the gas or hit the brake. That’s it amigo. There are no 50 shades of anything happening there in the decision making process, you hit one or the other. We condition ourselves to treat the rest of life like a car and think there are only two solutions to a problem. Take the latest horrific school shooting. Before the bodies are even removed from the crime scene you have two camps staking out territory and making their positions known; it’s either take away the guns or leave the guns alone and blame it on something else.

I’m not stupid enough to write a column about gun control because I know whatever position I take I’ll tick off half the people reading it. I would today like to make a reasoned pitch for a different approach, one that tells everyone in this volatile debate that they are right and wrong at the same time.

The second amendment guarantees people the right to bear arms but even the head of the NRA would agree we need some restrictions. Nobody wants to see a 13-year-old buy a handgun or a 63-year-old leave the local gun shop with a fully automatic weapon. The vast majority of people are not the idiots and monsters the media makes them out to be. Are there the few exceptions? Of course but most people are reasonable.

The kid in Florida never should have had a gun; I think everyone would agree with that. So how do you keep this from happening again? For starters we have to have a system in place that shares information between law enforcement agencies when someone is constantly in trouble. The alleged shooter had police at his home more than three dozen times; surely that information could have been placed in a file and shared with a data base that gun sellers must look at before a sale, If you buy jeans at the Gap in Seattle they know about it at the Gap in Boston because the stores keep track of customer information to serve you better. Yet the gun store in Florida had no clue this kid had so many encounters with police? It’s lunacy.

The weapon of choice in many of these mass shootings is the AR-15, that we know. Should we ban the weapon? Many would say no because it is people that kill not the guns and they rightly point out that we’ve seen lunatics kill scores of people by running them over with a truck and nobody is calling for a ban on the Ford Explorer. Still since this particular weapon is so efficient at firing so many rounds in a hurry can’t we treat the sale of it more carefully than say a standard shotgun? Whether you raise the age on who can buy one or put in some extra layers of scrutiny there is a middle ground that both sides can live with.

I also hear calls addressing the mental health problem in the country and I say hallelujah to that. But throwing money at it won’t be enough. We live in a time where no one wants to be accused of offending anyone and often the whole “see something, say something” doesn’t apply because people are worried to open their mouths. We need to recalibrate our moral indignation and encourage people, especially teachers, to come forward and speak if they see a student that, quite frankly, scares them. This alleged shooter checked off every single box a troubled kid could check but authorities either didn’t get the message or didn’t take it seriously. Yes I’m looking at you FBI.

We also may want to look at an issue nobody wants to talk about and that’s the family structure. So many children we see getting in trouble lack a strong father figure at home. Government can’t fix that part of the equation but there has been a societal trend to paint men as unimportant and it’s simply not true. Moms and dads both matter equally.

My overall point is you can’t fix this problem by hitting the gas or the brake. We need an across the board approach that looks at helping troubled kids and warning people about them if the help isn’t working. Buying an assault weapon shouldn’t be as easy as buying a skateboard and requiring a little more scrutiny for young people wouldn’t threaten the 2nd amendment. Oh and I’m sad to say putting an armed cop at every school from 8-4 each weekday might be a good idea as well. Don’t tell me we can’t find the money if it means protecting our kids.

Something is wrong here. There are simply too many school shootings to deny that fact. You don’t have to take away all the guns and you can’t blame it all on the FBI not following up on a lead or the president’s illadvised tweets. The solution is multifaceted and requires true leadership. If the people running things won’t do it, vote the bums out and get people who will before we have to stomach any more body bags.