Broaching the Subject of the Connecticut Shooting

I've wanted to talk about the shooting in Connecticut since I first heard detailed reports about it yesterday. Columbine didn't affect me too much, admittedly, and other shootings since haven't quite as much as this one did. Because now I am a dad, and most of the victims in this shooting were little kids in elementary school, like my kids are. When I saw that all of these kids died, I imagined my own kids being killed like that. It's heart-wrenching, and the whole thing made me angry, and I wanted to blog about it. But, I stayed my hand, because this is a political blog, and I didn't want to politicize the thing, out of respect.

However, many on the left are over their 1 day of "waiting" and are already politicizing this as a gun control issue. And I just can't be silent about it now, because as a parent, there is a real issue when it comes to safety that affects my own kids. That issue is the fairytale safety of "gun-free zones".

I'm not going to argue for gun rights here, because that would be politicizing it. I'm approaching this as a parent and asking the question: how will public schools ensure my kids are safe from this sort of thing? How do they make sure that there are protectors on the scene before there are 20 innocent little victims, instead of afterwards when the shooter has already killed himself?

That is the real question that needs to be asked. I'm not suggesting that teachers need to start packing heat, although I am not against it either. What I am suggesting is that, as long as we are stuck with public schools, those officials that set the policies need to address the issue of a school being a place where there is no actual safety from violence. Not just gun violence, but any violence. Believe it or not, the same day that the Connecticut shooting took place, in China a man went around stabbing kids with a knife in another school. He didn't need a gun. But there wasn't anyone trained, or more importantly, equipped to stop him before he had already made victims out of children.

Making laws or declaring that a place is safe doesn't mean anything. Actually making it safe, or at least trying to should be the aim here. Saying a school is a "gun free zone" is all fine and dandy until some evil waste of human life shows up with a gun intent on doing violence. Then the term "gun free zone" becomes a complete and ironic joke, as nobody has a gun to stop him.

In this brave new world of restricting weapons and keeping them as far from children as possible, we have presented perfect opportunities for predators like this piece of filth in Connecticut to kill as many as they can before the cops show up. And all we can do after is pick up the pieces, clean up the mess, and ask "why" it happened. Nobody can answer why someone would do such evil. But we can easily figure out why such evil happens in shopping malls, schools, and movie theaters. Because they are "gun free" zones...which means nobody has a weapon except someone intent on doing harm with one. So nobody can stop them.

Why don't mall cops have guns? Why aren't there armed guards in schools and movie theaters? They have armed guards in banks for Pete's sake...do we value money more than lives? Society has said that they don't "feel" that guns should be on the same premises as children. Maybe it's time for Society to do less "feeling" and more "thinking".

There are those that would argue that using lockdowns and protocols will keep students in a school safe. The school my kids go to locks the door too. The door is also made of a wood frame and glass, and I could easily get through it if I wanted to force my way in. That sort of thing is not going to stop a would-be assailant. They aren't going to come to a school geared up for war and when the front desk refuses to let them in say "Aw shucks", and turn around and leave. They are going to blast their way through and commit the violence they showed up to dole out. The stronger the door, the more explosive power they will bring to get through it...because they plan these things.


There are no laws that can be made that will stop these things from happening. And declaring an area to be "gun free" does not make it so as far as a criminal is concerned. We need to stop making targets of opportunity for people like this and make it a very dangerous venture to try and shoot people in public venues by arming those who would protect our children and others and putting them in place to make a difference.

Because if some good person had had a gun at this school, this scumbag murderer would have had something else to think about besides which kid he was going to shoot next.