Gun Rights vs. Gun Control

Recent shootings in Southern California, both in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, return the subject of guns and gun violence to the headlines.  It often seems that the divide over the gun issue is growing wider, and that reasonable people on both sides have a sense of frustration that their views are often demonized by the other side.

When responding to the questions put to me for a PBS story on gun violence, I had to take a step back and truly evaluate the issues in the story before jumping to any previously held conclusions.  Sometimes one has to take a breath and step back in perspective to give a reasonable thought or two on the issue at hand.

In the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting of children at Sandy Hook, so many different ideas were considered in order to try to stem the danger to children in our schools – to try and keep our children out of reach of gun violence.  Some may consider it impossible to build a creative and carefree learning environment while having in place protections against the dangers of violent perpetrators who can lash out without warning.  Hopefully there is an answer out there.

The NRA proposed that having armed guards in our schools may have helped prevent the massacre of children at Sandy Hook.  I discuss what I believe to be a better way.




There's no guarantee that armed security guards are going to do anything.  Any time there is protection at an embassy or in a building, most of the time these guys are bored.  Their guard is down.  They're walking around having coffee, talking to their friends.  It's human nature.  You just can't be ever-vigilant.

And again, if you're sitting out in front of a building, you're a sitting duck.  In Newtown, you don't know if that guy Adam Lanza  would have… if the first person he would have taken out would have been the guy he knows is the security guard.

I think there's a better argument for keeping, like Air Marshalls, secretly-armed people at a school, so if somebody comes, then they can get shot by somebody they're not aware of is a security guard.

The debate obviously will continue, but it seems like the dialogue will become heated at every incident that comes along where the issues of guns and gun violence comes to the surface with another headline grabbing event.  Perhaps if we continued this conversation between the news headlines, we would be better able to come to a solution that fits the neeeds of safety, security and gun rights that could be acceptible to all sides.