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The Second Amendment column in this month's issue of Guns & Ammo magazine mentions an interesting statistic, in the course of arguing that the Gun-Free School Zones Act may well have cost more children's lives than it has saved.
The statistic: Between 1997 and 2002, 32 students were shot and killed in elementary and secondary schools across the US.
Sounds bad, doesn't it? Makes it understandable why there's a lot of fuss on the subject, huh?
Here's what so interesting about that number: During the same period, in the same schools, 53 students died playing football. That's more than half again as many.
So why don't we have a football-free schools act, "for the sake of the children"? Surely if it's killing 65% more students every year than those horrible, evil guns, football must be a really serious problem, right?
Simple. We don't have a football-free schools act because it's not about preventing child deaths. It's about exploiting child deaths to ban guns, regardless of how many children's lives that saves or costs.
So next time someone tells you that guns need to be banned "for the sake of the children", ask them how they feel about banning football. Or any of the other causes that kill more kids every year than guns do -- bicycles, swimming pools, .........
Errrrr ...
Here's a fact: Kids die and, since they attend school for around a dozen years, they often die at school. The school does it's best to ensure that as few as possible die on the gridiron, court, diamond, or mats - areas where controlled violence is a part of the sports.
Guns have no place in a school. Well, maybe on the belt of a security guard, but that's about it. There is no more reason for guns to be permitted within on school property than there is to permit booze on school grounds or drugs, both of which also kill kids (but, by your odd logic, maybe making drug-free schools is actually about exploiting child deaths to ban illegal drugs).
Fuzzy logic, Amigo. Apples and oranges.
Re: Errrrr ...
No, what I'm saying is that anti-gun lobbyists are ready at the drop of a hat to scream about children killed with guns, yet are oddly silent about other risks that kill far more kids every year. If it's really about the kids, why don't we hear an outcry from the same people for safer gridirons or better protective gear for kids playing contact sports? Safer swimming pools? Safer playgrounds? Mandatory bicycle-safety classes?
The answer, it seems to me, is because those are politically-correct risks, and there's no political capital to be made from them. The truth is, their risks are small. 53 kids died on football fields in five years -- that's less than 11 per year out of, what, 30 million? It's a pretty damn good risk, several times better than the proverbial one-in-a-million. But just let a gun be involved, and from the media feeding frenzy, you'd think Ghengis Khan and the Golden Horde were sweeping through the nation's schools decorating the schoolyards with kids' severed heads on pikes. You'd think schoolteachers had to wear hip waders to school to avoid getting blood on their clothes as they waded through the red-running halls.
We, as a nation, don't appear think the number of kids killed every year on gridirons -- or on bicycles, or in playgrounds, or in swimming pools -- is a problem, certainly not one worthy of nationwide federal legislation. Heck, the total of accidental firearms fatalities of all ages in the US each year is less than the number of kids who die on bicycles in that same year, and the newspapers are virtually silent about the dangers of bicycles. Yet a hundred times smaller number of kids dying each year from gun-related causes is a national crisis? WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, OVER?
Technically speaking, there is a place for guns at schools. JROTC, for example. I know what you mean, though, and I agree -- schoolkids shouldn't be bringing guns to school. If the school maintains a shooting team, which I have absolutely no problem with, then the school should provide the rifles. However, I think it's counterproductive to ban ALL guns from the school premises or, as such laws do, a thousand-foot radius around it. I haven't the least objection th the security guard being armed, or to the staff being permitted to carry on the jobs. I don't believe it's a coincidence that the rash of school shootings only began in earnest after the media started sensationalizing such events and the Gun Free School Zones Act was passed; any nutball now knows that if he wants to go and shoot up a school, he can be almost certain of meeting no armed resistance, and he can be certain his name and face will be on the nightly news. Easy pickings and instant fame.
And hey, we're talking about someone who's planning to go to a school and mow down as many kids as he can before the police arrive and gun him down -- does anyone think he really cares about being posthumously charged with violating the Gun Free School Zones Act? That's penny-ante shit compared to the mass murder he's already planned. I say, leave the school staff the ability to defend themselves and their students.
Drugs and alcohol on school property, I agree 100%. (Despite the fact that I also think the methods by which we've been conducting the war on drugs for the past 30 years are utterly and totally wrong-headed.) There's no legitimate reason for their presence -- schools don't have drinking teams (though it seems many college fraternities do), and the security guard's complement of equipment doesn't generally include a supply of doobies, nor is there any conceivable benefit to be imagined from him having such. If you want "apples and oranges", this, I suggest, fits the bill. (And we're getting insanely stupid about this, too, with "zero
thoughttolerance" expelling kids for possession of doctor-prescribed asthma medication or, god help us, lemon drops -- but that's another discussion altogether.)Re: Errrrr ...
Um, Amigo? They have had demands for those very items, some national. Most of them have already been put into effect and there are quite a few schools where the parents have actually gotten football banned.
Now I do understand what you're saying, but - sorry for being blunt here - it's silly. There is one hell of a difference between kids dying while involved in sports and kids dying by being shot by another kid. The fact that more kids were killed playing football than were killed by other kids going nuts with guns simply doesn't prove that people don't really care about kids dying, regardless of the fashion.
It's guns, which have no reason whatsoever in the hands of kids, much less on school grounds, versus accidental deaths during sporting events. What would you have the government do? Outlaw football? Is that the only way you can see that outlawing guns on school grounds would be ... what? Fair? Okay?
The Second Amendment has never applied to kids and I'm sure that you'd never advocate putting guns into the hands of children, other than in situations too terrible to contemplate. So why does the idea of not allowing guns on school grounds erk you so much?
Re: Errrrr ...
Hmmm -- now that you mention it, I recall hearing about one or two of those. I stand corrected on that point. Nevertheless, what protest there is, is on a much smaller scale, and it doesn't get 1% of the media blood-wallowing that school shootings do.
There is one hell of a difference between kids dying while involved in sports and kids dying by being shot by another kid. The fact that more kids were killed playing football than were killed by other kids going nuts with guns simply doesn't prove that people don't really care about kids dying, regardless of the fashion.
Absolutely. But most of those school-shooting deaths aren't kids bringing guns to school and shooting their schoolmates. Since school shootings became a media sensation, the majority factor has been J. Random Wacko deciding to go shoot up a school and commit "suicide by cop."
The Second Amendment has never applied to kids and I'm sure that you'd never advocate putting guns into the hands of children, other than in situations too terrible to contemplate.
Well, actually, I started shooting when I was 8 years old, and I've never felt the need to go on a killing spree. I think, properly taught, it can be as good a way as any other to teach discipline and responsibility. In principle, though, yes, I completely agree; I don't think any child in an urban setting should have access to a gun except under strictly-supervised conditions, except for the "situations too terrible to contemplate". (Look up the Merced pitchfork murders (http://www.lewrockwell.com/poe/poe1.html) for one such horrific case.) Rural settings are another case; I don't see a problem with a responsible and safety-trained 12-year-old going out to hunt rabbits with a .22 or pigeons with a .410 shotgun.
So why does the idea of not allowing guns on school grounds erk you so much?
Three reasons.
Firstly, because it means that our schools are defenseless, so when the aforementioned wacko decides to go out in a blaze of nationwide media attention by murdering 20 or so schoolkids, there's usually no-one there who can stop him.
Secondly, because it's not just "on the school grounds"; it creates legal problems for any law-abiding gun owners unfortunate enough to live within a thousand feet of a school, or have to pass within a thousand feet of one to reach their house.
And thirdly, because in the atmosphere of "zero tolerance", it leads to absurdities like a kid being suspended from school for drawing a police officer wearing his gun. Why did he draw this "violent" image? The teacher told everyone in the class to draw a picture of their hero. So he drew a picture of his dad.
While I think it's a misguided and ill-conceived law, I don't for one moment suggest that a kid bringing a gun to school other than for a good and school-approved reason shouldn't result in a very stern talk between the principal, the kid, and the kids's parents about how and where said kid got the gun and why he brought it to school, and possibly result in action against the parents for unsafe storage of a firearm if that turns out to be the case. But when we're suspending and expelling elementary-school kids merely for saying the word "gun", the tail is not just wagging the dog, it's bludgeoning it to death against the wall.
(As a point of information, the original article actually mentions a number of cases in which school shootings were limited or averted; in one of the cases cited, on a college campus, the news media made great play of the fact that the shooter was "tackled by several students", but somehow neglected to mention that he was "tackled" only after two other students went and got their own guns out of their cars and got the drop on him first.)