What Kind Of Gun Control?

Guns: More, or less?
Meir Liberman

There is, of course, shock and horror upon hearing of the disgusting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that strikes every civilized person. For this, I commend Rachael Risby-Raz  and Rina Ne’eman for their wonderfully written pieces, bringing up the topic in a clear and heartfelt fashion. They are both absolutely right- and wrong at the same time.

This shooting seems to be part of a bad broken record that seems to play over and over. This past summer had seen a horrendous shooting in a movie theater in Colorado and before that there was the other shooting in Virgina Tech…The examiner has an article on the Worst Mass Shootings in American Schools. The list is sickening.

Like I said, it’s like a bad broken record.

And every year, along with this bad broken records of shootings, the question of gun control arises. Parents of victims of violence scream for less guns on the street. They are understandable for their animosity towards guns, but as much as I want to agree with them I cannot.

What we need isn’t less guns on the street.

No.

What we need is more guns in the hands of those that can – and will – use them responsibly.

There are many studies on the topic of gun-control. Among them is the 10 year study by John Lott showing how people who buy guns through the proper channels are not likely to be found using them for crimes.Within the areas where legal gun proliferation was high, crime rates across the board went down. Such data indicate that more gun control isn’t what we need. What is needed is for more people in the right places to have them.

Now, I’m not a gun lobbyist. I believe that there should be very strict rules about who may purchase a gun, especially if it’s is an automatic weapon.

However, I’m a pragmatist.

If we restrict the proliferation of guns among the civilian populace, what we will find is not a safer population but a population that can look to Norway for their example of what happens when one crazy man gets his hands on a weapon. What will happen is that the only people with guns will be criminals and the policemen who arrive well after the incident has begun.

But imagine if several teachers in Sandy Hook Elementary School had guns and the training to use them. Being on the scene of the crime, they could have brought down the gunman within seconds; compared to the minutes of the law enforcement. They would have been able to stop the gunman from reaching such a high death count.

I understand the shock of the thought of a teacher who is around children all day carrying a gun. What if one of the kids gets a hold of it? What if they pull it out of the holster for laughs? So I recommend teacher-specific training. Training on how to deal with all the possibilities that might happen around children.

What we will then see is not how the gun kills, but how it protects.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/more-guns-not-less/