School Safety and the Placebo of Gun Control

“We have to do something.”

I’ve heard that phrase time and again from politicians and gun control spokesmen. With some 23 thousand firearms regulations already on the books, it seems that we’ve done quite a lot that hasn’t worked. Those ineffective laws don’t stop the urge for more feel-good regulation after the murders in Parkland, Florida.

We tried mandatory background checks. Those laws didn’t stop the mass murder at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Background checks didn’t stop the murders at Isla Vista, California, or at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. I chose these particular examples because Oregon and California have some of the most restrictive firearms transfer laws in the country..including mandatory background checks. They already failed, but I expect the gun-prohibitionists to call for more background checks.

We tried gun-free zones, but they failed too. Rather than stop mass murderers, gun-free zones seem to attract these killers. In fact, almost all of our mass murders took place in gun-free zones. The reason is easy to understand. Mass murderers don’t want to get into a gun fight. Instead, they want to shoot innocent victims who can’t shoot back. Gun-free zones effectively disarmed the honest people who were never a threat in the first place. Unfortunately, also we disarmed the honest people who could slow down or stop the murderer. Expect to hear more calls for gun-free zones.

We tried an “assault weapons ban” back in 1994 under President Clinton. The ban didn’t disarm criminals. It didn’t stop mass murders. Dedicated mass murderers got their guns before they committed their crimes, or they got them by murder. The assault weapons ban didn’t stop them in either case. The ban only made it harder for honest gun owners to own some guns, and that is the lesson we haven’t learned.

Before you pass a new law, assume that the people who commit mass murder will break it. Passing another law will only change the behavior of the honest people who obey the law. If more laws could stop mass murder, then our 23 thousand gun regulations should have done it long ago.

The sad fact is that we’re passing laws to make us feel better rather than to effectively stop attacks on our schools. We know what we should do, but doing it doesn’t give us that warm feeling inside, the pleasure of a quick fix of putting more ink on paper and passing another law.

We should know better. It is amazing to me that we finally have a generation who figured out that drug prohibition laws don’t work. That same generation is now eager to pass more gun prohibitions. Some things never change.

I want us to change what we’re doing and to protect our children. We need better mental health treatment. We also need armed staff in schools. That is what law enforcement says. That is what we do for the children of elite society, and I think they are right.

Our kids deserve it too.