J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
Stopping Evil, Ending Lethal Stupidity
Enough is enough.
The slaughter of innocent children, and of the heroic teachers and school administrators, who threw their bodies in between the children and the madman who brought high firepower into what the law dumbly calls a “gun-free school zone,” must never happen again.
Gun bans don’t work at stopping massacres. They didn’t despite strict gun-control laws in Dunblane, Scotland or at a summer children’s camp in Norway, nor in multiple gun-free zones in schools, movie theaters, trains, and malls.
We all say that insanity is defined by doing the same thing and expecting different results. Let’s act on this understanding and end the utopian fantasy that legal bans of weapons magically dispose of the weapons.
I am not going to argue the Second Amendment here. I am arguing practical common sense.
If there are to be taxpayer funded schools and taxpayer funded institutions of higher education, those who teach and administer these institutions must have the means to protect their students and the legal liability for failing to do so once granted the means. They must have what even police in this country do not have: a duty to protect.
I propose not a freedom but a responsibility.
Every public-school and public institution of higher learning must make it a requirement that every teacher and school administrator take training in handguns equivalent to the standards that police officers and pilots must qualify, renew this qualification every six months, and openly carry sidearms while on duty.
Either this, or stop pretending that government exists to protect the people and be done with this epic failure of political solutions to social problems.
Now in production: Alongside Night. Look for it in 2013!
December 18, 2012 - 1:37 am
Thanks for the free book. I enjoy your work, and I look forward to reading this one.
December 19, 2012 - 2:23 pm
Mr. Schulman. I just read your interesting paper regarding the correct interpretation of the second ammendment with commentary by Professor Roy Copperud. I have just learned that the USA is offically the most armed population on earth, with 88 out of 100 people capable of defending themselves. How is that working out for you? Regards, Alan Rempel.
December 19, 2012 - 2:51 pm
Where handguns are allowed to be carried there are a lot fewer deaths than in gun-free zones.
December 25, 2012 - 2:06 am
J. Neil,
Count me as among those who think that that SOMEWHERE in the 4years of “Teacher Training” required in most of the country they can fit in a Hangun Course. Think what an effect it would have on discipline in those “Bad” Inner City Schools to know that “Miss Hot Babe” is “Packing.”
Not to mention the obvious benefits of eliminating a “Target-Rich” environment for every wacko with a grudge from their own own “Dear Old Golden Rule Days.”
Until this can be implemented though, I think a new corps of “School Volunteers” should be formed to guard and defend our “Most Precious Resource.”
We’ve got Crossing Guards, Teacher’s Aids, et cetra, ad nauseum. Time for a little demonstration that we MEAN it.
Also, as there’s a HIGH unemployment rate among returning Vets, let’s give them tuition to Teacher’s Colleges, and preferrential hiring upon graduation. Lot’s of kids from ‘broken families’ have no male role models, let’s give ‘em some .
December 27, 2012 - 9:31 am
Hi, read your post with interest. I live in Canada where I know of no one who owns a gun except for a few hunters or those who shoot at gun ranges. Guns cause so much harm in the USA and have no idea how the problem can be solved except to destroy all guns. Not an easy solution.
January 3, 2013 - 9:56 pm
Craig, I suspect you know a lot of people who guns. You probably don’t know who they are. Your government greatly revised downward their former estimates of gun ownership in the Dominion when the registration and buyback programs proved nearly fruitless. While ownership of unregistered firearms in your Dominion may not be as high per capita as in the forcibly united states to the south (and northwest) of you, they _are_ there. Just as they exist in your mother country and in other spots with allegiance to the former empire.
Of course _I_ don’t own any guns. I’m in New Jersey, the satrapy of Washington City most hostile to the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
March 21, 2013 - 6:06 pm
I wonder where Alan Rempel “learned” that 88 out of 100 Americans can defend themselves? From the snarky tone of his comment, it would appear that he thinks that we are much safer when we CANNOT defend ourselves. Someone needs to explain to him that police carry guns for THEIR protection, not ours.