01/13/13

I cannot imagine a greater tragedy than the death of a child. To have one snatched away in a violent act, the consequence of the irrational hatred of a madman, must be the most painful. Who wouldn’t do their best to prevent such a thing from ever happening again? Vice President Biden states that our president promises to do whatever it takes so this never happens again. Not one more child. Not ever.

This is an ambitious statement, but heck, not one more child would be worth whatever it would take, whatever it would cost, right?

I’m not going to make light of murder. I’m not that callous or stupid. But I’ve been watching the response to murder, and it lends itself to some head scratching.

We are experiencing an epidemic of shootings in schools. That’s what they are calling it these days. Those of us trained in medicine use a different definition for the word epidemic, but this situation clearly demands a little hyperbole, so I’ll let that go. One murder is too many, and there have been far more than one.

In the last twenty years, 484 kids have been killed in shootings in our schools. It was way worse back in the early 90’s than it is now, for the gang warfare had spilled from the streets into the schools. They didn’t call it an epidemic back then. And it’s slowed down considerably since 93. 

But since the mid 90’s, a few crazies have discovered the nearly everlasting notoriety they can gain by murdering innocent people they catch defenseless in shopping malls, theaters, and schools. They choose to become famous for murder, and garner weeks of 24 hour a day cable news coverage, their pictures plastered over the TV screen and in the newspapers, their life stories broadcast, with all their grievances aired as their reward. All this publicity turns their heinous crimes into something almost heroic in their demented minds.

So now we have madmen killing kids in schools.    

Four Hundred Eighty Four kids in only twenty years….A big number. A national disgrace. A horror. An epidemic.

Why, this is a bigger number than the 200 kids killed every year by drunk drivers.

It’s even a bigger number than the 250-425 kids murdered by their own parents every year. And it is parents who have always been by far the biggest murderers of kids. So yeah, this number of kids dying from shootings in our schools is too high.

What to do, you might ask? This is a question on every set of lips these days. How to protect our children from mass murders.

Some have suggested stationing a police officer in every school. We have 55 million kids in pre K-12 to protect. This sounds like a good idea, but there are only 800,000 police officers in the entire country, and we have 130,000 public and private schools to guard. The other criminals out there in our society, the bunch other than that handful each year who want to commit suicide by killing a group of innocents, might take advantage of the artifical shortage of cops this would create. And who could guess how much harm they’d do with this opportunity.

Senator Feinstein mentioned using the National Guard to uh, guard the schools. We have roughly 500,000 Guard soldiers, but many are already occupied, so I don’t see that working.

Likely the president has other ideas. He is an idea guy. One of his oldest, firmest ideas is his desire to disarm the entire American population. He’s been talking this up since he was a teacher of Constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Presumably, the president figures if he begins taking all the firearms away from all the people, starting with the easy people, the folks who obey laws to a fault, and then slowly working his way through the people who might ‘forget’ to turn in their guns, and then investing the effort to disarm the really stubborn bunch who will simply refuse to turn in their guns without a fight, he might eventually, finally, get to the psychopaths and criminals we’d all like to disarm.

Let’s see, that would be about 95 million law abiding people before he gets to the bad guys. That won’t take long.

For this the president will need all 800,000 cops, the 500,000 National Guard soldiers, and likely the rest of the military. Things will surely change around here for the better, once 300 million guns are confiscated. The psychopaths and criminals will be the last to give up their guns, of course. Oh, and that bunch of formerly law abiding productive citizens who actually revolt against this annoyance will be a fly in the ointment But eventually, the president’s dream might come true.

This disarming the good guys to eventually disarm the bad has never actually worked in any other country, but this is America. We know how to do things right.

The president did promise to protect all 55 million kids. Every one of them. So after the smoke clears, it will be worth it.

So I’m also waiting for the president to announce when he will take all the children away from their parents, to have them reared in safety by the state. You know, onna counta that bunch of crazy parents who kill their own kids. Can’t let that bit slide, because not one more….

And when will the president order the destruction of all the motor vehicles? Without vehicles the drunk drivers cannot kill another kid.

Most likely, the president won’t get the chance to remove every firearm from America. And he is unlikely to suggest anything remotely like the last two paragraphs. Which is fine. The ideas in those last two paragraphs wouldn’t save every singe child. Losing video games and violent movies won’t do it either. Somebody somewhere, some angry crazy person with a hammer or a 2X4, will eventually kill another child. Or a roomful.

The numbers won’t change much, but they already hover right around lightning strike. Can anyone make the promise of not one more child? Nope. Not even a president. Do we need to change everything because of this? 

Nope

Won’t help.