Guns

Here is my list of changes we could make to reduce overall gun violence in America and specifically increase the safety of schools. I have thought long and hard about these, after considering many of the arguments from both sides. I look forward to your agreements and disagreements.

·         Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.  I have not heard a single good reason, only childish ones, why anyone should own an assault weapon.

·         Require a background check on every gun sold.

·         Require a battery of psychological and mental tests for every gun owner, and then a quick annual checkup thereafter to make sure mental stability has not deteriorated.

·         Make gun trafficking a federal crime, including real penalties for “straw purchasers,” people making purchases who have passed psychological and background checks but are purchasing weapons for people who have not been cleared.

·         Every weapon and gun owner should carry insurance, cost to be determined by the insurance industry.

·         Increased gun safety and gun-respect instruction, maybe not done by such a vested and extremist group as the NRA.  They were fine in my day when I took gun safety and was a member, but they’ve become way too political, weird, and a lobbyist for the gun industry and its profits.

·         A panel of interested parties, including some statisticians, should study whether teachers’ being deputized with access to guns would lead to only a minimal increase in or too high of a number of children and school staff fatalities from accidents, teachers snapping, guns being wrestled away from them, etc.

·         Armed guards could be helpful in middle and high schools, if they’re already in schools with other responsibilities such as drug detection, but for many schools it has not proved to be effective nor would it be cost-effective.

·         More locked doors and the use of metal detectors.

·         Trained counselors in every school.  The at-risk kids, the alienated and lonely, can almost always be identified by teachers, but without resources nothing intensive enough can currently be accomplished.

·         Mental treatment that includes humane treatment and living centers in cases where talk therapy and drugs are not enough.

·         Some kind of study should be done to figure out why America’s fascination with our gun culture is so weird, extreme, even crazy,  including looking at the impact of looking at movies, video games, etc.

·         In order to reduce an excessive number of guns floating around out there, there should be a gun buyback program, with a premium price on weapons of offense, such as assault weapons.  If the buyout price was enough, maybe some of these cat-lady-like gun fanatics would reduce their absurd arsenals of multiple weapons.

Yes we could do these things.