A crazed gunman entered a Pennsylvania school and murdered three girls. He also wounded seven other girls. I'm sure there will now be yet another flood of demands that we Do Something about the school shootings from the idiotic do-gooders who always want to ban more guns, prevent people from owning guns, prevent people from buying ammunition, and various other things that will not stop these school shootings.
We have something like 200,000,000 guns in private hands in the United States. Many of us have the strange idea that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects our right to keep and bear arms, i.e., to own and carry guns. No matter what the politicians do, we are not going to give up our guns.
So what is the answer these do-gooders come up with? Well, the absolutely most counterproductive idea is to have "gun-free schools." I have really bad news for you: such laws do not, in fact, prevent people from shooting up schools. If they did, we wouldn't be seeing these school shootings now. Do you all understand that? Passing a law is not the same thing as stopping people from doing what we wish them not to do. "Gun-free schools" are only gun-free if everyone involved agrees to obey the law. Someone intent on shooting up a school is not going to stop and think, "Oh, wait, I can't shoot up that school, because it's against the law to take a gun onto the school grounds."
We seem to believe two fundamentally incorrect things: that the mere presence of a gun might cause an otherwise normal person to start shooting other people; and that the way to prevent people from shooting other people is to pass laws against carrying guns. First, it is obviously not true that the mere presence of guns causes shootings. I go to shooting sports events in which dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of people are walking around carrying guns. They do not shoot each other. Second, laws themselves do not have the power to compel anyone to do anything, nor to prevent anyone from doing anything. "Gun-Free Schools" laws do not create gun-free schools.
So, what can we do about these school shootings? The only thing we can do that would have any effect on school shootings is, gasp, to empower the adults at the schools to be in a position to stop the occasional crazed gunman from carrying out his intent to shoot up a school. How can we do that? It's very simple, really. We should, instead of setting up "gun-free" schools, which are, in fact, "free-fire" zones, urge the adults at every school to learn how to handle firearms, and carry them while at school. Then when some crazed gunman tries to shoot up a school, the responsible adults will have some chance of putting a stop to the crazed gunman's plans.
Back to my home place.