It goes on and on and it never seems to stop.
In 2012 at a quiet elementary school in rural Newtown, Connecticut, twenty children in the sixth year of their life together with six adults were gunned down by someone who afterwards took his own life and that of his mother in what may have been his final act of contrition and in so doing prevented us from learning who or what may have caused this person to go off the deep end.
Since that fateful day at Sandy Hook Elementary School, we seem to have been infected by a deadly virus which has given us a total of 239 separate school shootings in which 438 people were shot, most of them school children, of which 138 died.
It goes on and on and it never seems to stop.
I have a simple question to which I know that there is no simple answer. As I ask this question let me say that I have been in law enforcement for twenty three years, I am a gun enthusiast and I support the Second Amendment. My question is: what is happening in this great country of ours?
We may never know what is causing this epidemic but there are some things that we should in the meantime give consideration to which will hopefully help to contain this latest form of insanity.
1. Laws that are presently on the books restrict the ownership and usage of machine guns. Bump Stocks, which were not used, as far as I know, in any of the above referenced school shootings, were developed to circumvent the restrictions on machine guns and therefore should be incorporated into the existing machine gun restrictions.
2. There should be a minimum age of twenty one for anyone seeking to purchase a firearm. The hope here is that the purchaser of firearms, by being a little older, will have matured a little more.
3. Anyone who has ever been convicted of a felony should not be permitted to possess a firearm. This is clearly a no-brainer.
4. Anyone who has ever been adjudged to be mentally ill should not be permitted to possess a firearm. This is also a no-brainer.
5. Anyone who is not a citizen of the US should not be permitted to possess a firearm. The idea here is that when someone goes through the rites of citizenship they must learn something about how our country works, what it stands for and most importantly, the relevance of the Constitution.
6. All purchases of firearms should go through proper channels. This means no purchases through ‘straw’ men and complete background checks.
Will these six suggestions, if implemented, rid us of the problem of school shootings? Probably not. Would it help? Most definitely.