So Many Problems
I wrote this for the Urban News.
When I was an intern, one of my fellow interns would summarize a busy night of medical admissions with a simple phrase: “So many problems.” Unfortunately, this was during morning report when we were supposed to receive a detailed summary of the patients who had been admitted overnight. This would allow me and the rest of the medical team to carefully plan how we would take care of the newly admitted patients. The “so many problems” line gave us nothing. We had to scramble and figure out what was going on with these newly admitted patients and then formulate a plan for how we would take care of them. We have a similar problem in the United States these days. We have allowed Congress to kick problems down the road without resolution for decades. No one seems to be held accountable.
Gun Violence
More than 20 years ago, two high school seniors walked into the Columbine HS library in Littleton, Colorado with a variety of pistols, sawed-off shotguns, pipe bombs, and other explosives. They killed 10 students and one teacher before committing suicide.
America cried out for action. We needed some meaningful legislation. We could have limited high-capacity magazines. A girlfriend of one of the gunmen was over 18 and she had bought some of the weapons. Allowing someone to buy a weapon which is later used in a mass murder seems to be a loophole crying out for simple action. Congress could easily write a law which holds the person who bought the firearm responsible for any crimes committed with that firearm, but nothing was really done.
We hear the same tired old arguments that put the rights of gunowners ahead of the rights of the victims. Current data from the Center for Disease Control states the number one cause of death or injury for children under the age of 16 is firearms. Yet, we still have weak gun control laws. And when there is a strong one, like the 109-year-old legislation in New York that required anyone to show a good reason for carrying a firearm in public, the current Supreme Court majority will strike it down.
If you are in a public space, you should be on the lookout for some crazy man with a gun. This means if you are at church, at the mall, at a parade, or anywhere in the United States, you need to be on guard. This is just a sad fact of life right now in the US.
The recently passed Safer Communities Act is a nice start but it doesn’t come close to protecting us from random gun violence. It does not ban assault weapons. Why a civilian needs an assault weapon is beyond my understanding. The 2nd Amendment does NOT say that Americans can and should have any weapon they chose. Nor does the Safer Communities legislation enact red flag laws (These are laws that temporarily remove guns from people who are an immediate threat to themselves or others.) The act does not hold Americans who purchase guns accountable for the violence that their guns create. This is a must. My right not to be shot, killed or injured by some crazed lunatic outweighs any Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Finally, arming teachers to protect our school children may be the dumbest idea since Wiley E. Coyote decided to capture the Road Runner. Why? Because if we quickly review mass shootings, we find that well-trained police officers, who handle guns every day, fire and miss their targets frequently. Now, inject an armed teacher who is NOT as familiar with guns as a police officer into the confusing mix of a mass shooting. I see very little good that can come out of this situation. I see teachers becoming scapegoats as angry parents are wondering why the teacher didn’t save their child.