The Government’s Response to the Previous School Massacre – Part 1 in The Right Answer?
The 2012 mass shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut bears disturbing similarities to the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting, where two angry youths killed a teacher and twelve students.
Since all actions have visible and invisible consequences, an effective response to reduce the incidence and mitigate the effects of such massacres needs careful consideration. Invisible repercussions can often make a situation drastically worse. Economists now know a lot about moral hazard, for example.
The response to such massacres
Many people have emotional responses that ignore such consequences. Brian Giattina, a school board member in Birmingham, Alabama, reportedly said guns send the wrong message. “He tells them that we have to have a weapon to protect them. It is a complex problem that needs to involve mental health, education, law enforcement and the community.”
However, in the last fifty years, with one exception (the attempted murder of Gabby Gifford), every mass shooting involving more than four victims has taken place in a supposedly gun-free zone.
Your right to protect yourself
Unfortunately, Giattina herself is giving the wrong message. Her second sentence is indisputable but encouraging learned helplessness is morally corrupt.
Improvement is definitely needed in all of these areas, but that’s not not it means that responsible adults must stop protecting themselves. If the school teachers had been armed, how much less would the death toll have been?
Brian Rohrbough, whose 15-year-old son was killed in the Columbine shooting, has a more reflective than emotional response. He acknowledged that “it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have someone armed, even a teacher, who has the courage to protect children in schools.”
As Larry Correia, Utah Concealed Weapons Instructor, Military and Law Enforcement Head Trainer, Competition Shooter, Utah State Legislature Expert Witness, Title 7 SOT Gun Store Owner, Elite Firearms Expert explains :
“The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by police: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple There were armed civilians there when it started.”
So what was the government’s response? They set up an investigation that instead muddied the waters and missed the true causes of the problem: the inability of responsible adults to protect themselves and their children. Government failure in the most fundamental of government tasks: protecting its citizens and students.
The government concealed its lack of action
In this particular case, the government had received many warnings, but not only failed to act, but tried to hide its failure for many years.
Former Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass, author of the book, columbine: a true crime story, found that the police ignored the complaints and explains what really happened.
A year earlier, the mother of one of Harris’s friends had filed a formal complaint: Harris, one of the shooters, had threatened her son on his website and bragged that he had been building bombs. Police created an affidavit for a search warrant at Harris’s home, but did not proceed further.
It took county officials five long years to acknowledge that they had met after the attacks to discuss the ignored 1998 affidavit for a search warrant. However, the police also found a small bomb near Harris’ house, but no one bothered to present the affidavit to a judge. The search was finally carried out, but only after the shooting.
Defensive Weapon Uses
In this massacre, as in countless others, the massacre of innocents by disturbed individuals was exacerbated by the legal prohibition on weapons. Laws designed to prevent the law-abiding from having guns lead inexorably to responsible citizens being unarmed.
However, guns in law-abiding hands stop much murder and criminal mayhem. A study by Kleck and Gertz found between 830,000 and 2.45 million defensive weapon uses per year in the United States. The National Survey of Private Firearms Ownership study found approximately 1.5 million defensive firearm uses per year.
Mass shootings increase dramatically
The Wall Street Journal reported that there were 18 random mass shootings in the 1980s, 54 in the 1990s, and 87 in the 2000s. In just one year, 2012, instead of an entire decade, the Washington Post lists 14 cases of mass shootings.
This increase in the number and severity of massacres suggests that the increasingly stringent gun laws already on the books are having an understandably negative effect. Would new restrictions on gun ownership by responsible, law-abiding people make things better or worse?
It seems that those who wish to strengthen gun restrictions are simply ignoring the consequences of the above actions. What is the most effective way to discourage any criminal activity? Is it really to disempower the law abiding?
food for thought
“Bad guys with guns are bad, and good guys with guns are good!”
Harrold School District Superintendent David Thweatt, and many others
© Copyright Worldwide by Cris Baker, LifeStrategies.net. Republishing is welcome under the Creative Commons non-commercial no derivatives license which keeps all links intact. All rights reserved.
