Roger McGrath on Guns and Violence, continued

TJF:  What do you think of arming teachers?  What qualifications would you impose? What other approaches might be taken, apart from saving the family and destroying consolidated schools.  Finally, what went wrong with the sheriff’s deputies?  Should Sheriff Israel be forced to resign?


It's unfortunate that it has come to arming teachers,  but I suppose that before we can remake our society I think that certain qualified personnel on school grounds be permitted concealed carry.  Probably most of the faculty, administrators, and staff wouldn't want to do so, and that's fine because if only a few were armed,  rigorously trained, and regularly certified they would be sufficient to provide a good defense.  I suspect of all those working on a typical high school campus you'd find a military veteran or two and perhaps others who serve as reserve police officers.  I think a substantial pay increase would be appropriate for those who carry to compensate for their many training hours and for the possibility that they'd be the ones to confront an armed suspect or shooter.  All this could be accomplished if the will is there.

Additionally, I think there should be security cameras everywhere on campus with someone monitoring them every minute school is in session.  This could be coupled with a security guard who walked the campus and was in regular communication with camera-monitoring central.  This may already be the case in some gang-infested intercity schools.  This goes on in hotels and malls--even department stores--so it seems it could be done easily on a campus.  It would be especially important to monitor entry points to campus.

Regarding the Florida shooting specifically, I know only what's been in the news.  According to the reports a "school resource officer"--a euphemism for an armed guard I suppose---was on duty and he hunkered down outside and didn't attempt to enter the building where the shooter was killing and wounding students to his heart's content.  I think Scott Peterson is his name and he was a sheriff's deputy.  I suspect being a school resource officer was considered retirement on the job and probably given to officers who are doing their last few years before collecting their pensions.  I don't know.  More recently, I heard there were three more sheriff's deputies who had arrived on the scene while the shooter was still active and they also did not attempt to enter the building in question.  I'll have to hear more about Peterson and the other deputies because at this point I find their inaction unfathomable.  "Ride to the sound of the guns" is something foreign to them, perhaps.  There's a lot more I'd need to know before I can make any real assessment of the deputies and their CO, Sheriff Israel, but my gut reaction is it's past time for Israel to fall on his sword.

More gun laws is exactly the wrong approach.  I'm told there are some 20,000 gun laws on the books--local, municipal, county, state, and federal.  As long as we continue to pass laws against the tool a criminal uses instead of the criminal himself, we are spitting in the wind.  The bete noir gun de jour is the AR-15.  Let's say all AR-15 rifles disappeared from the United States tomorrow.  You mean to tell me a demented kid could not wade into a classroom with an old fashioned 12 gauge pump shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot and not kill half or more of those in the room?  If my memory serves me well, didn't Charles Whitman use a single-shot, bolt-action deer rifle to also kill 17 students?

I heard an MD, who specializes in such things, say on the radio that when he saw a photo of the kid, he immediately thought "fetal alcohol syndrome."  Wasn't the kid adopted as a baby from Russia?  From what I've heard the kid was twisted and violent going back many years and various agencies were called again and again and again.  But other than expelling him from school no action was taken?  Again, it seems the media and others want to blame an inanimate object--in this case an AR-15 for the monstrous crime--and not this kid.  I've heard all this outrage directed at the gun and at the NRA but nary a word of invective directed at this kid or all the authorities who failed to take action when it must have been obvious this kid was a time bomb.  That's probably all a part of a larger societal problem--we don't want to condemn any human being for anything but let's blame it on a gun or anything but the individual.  In one sense, although the immediate blame goes on this kid, he may have been badly damaged in the womb and then all the resulting problems denied or ignored.  However, that brings us right back to a failure to acknowledge he was one badly damaged human being who needed special treatment and institutionalization.  Had this kid been on psychotropic drugs?  Somewhere, I've read that all those engaged in school shootings had some history with psychotropic drugs.

FF

The Fleming Foundation