Agree with that... raise the age to 21... cut out the private sales and loop holes... hire ex-military as guards for the schools... and improve mental health for teens and young adults...
I will say it seems crazy to me that you can't even buy a drink of alcohol until you're 21 because society says you're not responsible enough to handle it, but at the same time they think you are responsible enough to handle buying firearms with 30 round magazines that have the power to kill multiple people in a matter of seconds. But then how else could the government excuse 18 year old kids form entering the military if they did that?
Closing the gun loopholes is something I think is a smart and useful way of stopping convicted felons from easily purchasing firearms and is common sense. But if you notice, most of these school shooters are buying their guns legally at gun stores. Either that or getting them from their homes. So as it pertains to stopping school shooting per say, I don't think there would be any real impact. While there might be an example of it, I can't think of an instance where a a mass school shooter has purchased the weapon they used through such a loophole.
The mental health aspect is a great idea. But that would mean that someone would have to recognize it and those who need help it would get it. We already have teachers and administrators trying to dictate which children should be medicated and they have no medical degree. We have far too many parents who will tell you, "Johnny is a good boy and there's nothing wrong with him" no matter what little Johnny does. So yes, the mental health aspect will help for when those kids that might shoot up a school get the help they need before they do shoot up a school.
As far as armed guards in schools, once you have an active shooter in your school you have already lost the battle. At that point all you can possibly hope for is to try and keep the body count down. I can't imagine how armed men walking around a school would impact the learning environment but it certainly wouldn't be good. The objective should be to stop them from entering the school, not reacting after they do by adding more active shooters into the mix with even more projectiles flying in different directions where hundreds of children are.
As it pertains to violent movies and video games. When I was growing up video games like they have today weren't around. But we watched westerns and gangster movies with all the violence one could handle. Yet nothing of this magnitude was happening on a regular basis. We watched both the gangsters and the "G Men" mowing people down with Tommy guns. I don't buy that violent movies and video games are responsible.
Those promoting stopping the sell of what they call "assault rifles" isn't the answer either. Does it appear to be the gun of choice in these mass shooting? Yes it does. But if those rifles weren't available they would just substitute it with another gun. I'll give you an example. The last pistol I purchased was a 9mm. It has a 19 shot capacity magazine. There are three magazines. That's a total of 57 rounds. I can change out a magazine in a matter of a few seconds easily. So how would that pistol not just as easily have accomplished the same thing as these two rifles the shooter used in Texas? The answer is it easily could have.
We have more guns in circulation in our country than we have people. It's too late to try and use restrictions on firearms as a legitimate answer to this problem.
Metal detectors at every entrance to every school would be a great place to start. Will it stop every school shooting? Who knows, maybe not. But for the most part it would stop many of them. The detectors would have to be placed in a way you would have to pass through them before being granted access into the building. Maybe between two set of doors. But certainly pro active measures must be taken. This would not require having cops inside of schools. It would not require you arm teachers. The last thing we need to do is add more guns being fired with even more projectiles flying through the air in buildings full of children. The last thing we need to do is make the inside of our schools looking more like a prison than a school.
Thoughts and prayers aren't enough. If they were these shooting would have already ended long ago. Taking assault rifles off the shelf won't work. There are many other firearms with similar capacities.
The go to lines from both sides of politics are as per usual not going to work and won't address the problem. The best thing would be for both of them to work together in order to help find common sense solutions. But as per usual we know that's never going to happen because that would mean they would have to admit what they've been saying so far is wrong and a compromise would have to be reached.
If finding the answer was easy it would have already been found.
