Strop Old Darling, the problem here is that psychos and thugs, being well, psychos and thugs, don't tend to have a lot of respect for declarations of "gun free zones" (any more than the Soviets would have respected a declaration of a "nuclear free zone" had they wanted to launch a nuclear attack) so declaring something a "gun free zone" does not make it one....Yep, them dangerous gun free zones in school. Are these people insane?
I'd be all for "gun free zones" if it meant that we had some sort of scifi device that could be installed that would dematerialize a firearm anytime one appeared within the zone, but alas, it doesn't work that way...
All the "gun free zone" guarantees is that if there is a gun in the zone, it will be possessed by a bad guy...
The "gun free zone" concept is nothing but a well intended PC feel good concept that accomplishes precisely nothing in terms of providing for school safety, and arguably may even be counter productive...
You don't see a whole lot of stores or private homes proudly displaying "This Is A Gun Free Zone" stickers in their windows....
(And you certainly don't need to have signs declaring a "gun free zone" in front of the building to prohibit students from bringing firearms to school, or punish them, or their parents, if they do.)
I certainly don't....I don't see why the suggestion of armed guards at schools is dismissed out of hand.
As I've said I would vastly prefer making federal funds available to pay for an eight hour shift for a regular local on duty police officer in the schools to the NRA's hodgepodge of private security proposal, but I certainly don't dismiss the idea of armed security at the schools...(As I've pointed out, according to the Justice Dept., about 25% of schools in this country have armed security already)
Perhaps the best approach might be to set up a system similar to what was done after 9/11 where the federal government would make monies available for local jurisdictions to do specific things if they chose to, (like getting all their first responders on the same radio system)
A fund could be set up to provide money to localities for the purpose of paying for on duty police in their schools if they chose to take advantage of it, but wouldn't compel any local jurisdiction that chose not to take advantage of it to do so.
But I want to stress, that unlike the out-to-lunch types in the NRA leadership, I certainly do not see this as any kind of complete approach to the problem. I have seen nothing so far, in any of the executive orders Obama has signed, or the proposals he has made, that I disagree with. (In fact, if I had my druthers, like the judge in the Tuscon case, I would go even further, and have the ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines apply to those already in circulation, but that is probably politically impossible to accomplish.)
I have not read through all of Obama's Executive Orders on this, but since I haven't seen it mentioned in the press, I'm assuming that raising the priority of prosecutions of those convicted felons who have illegally attempted to purchase firearms wasn't on the list. It definitely should be. This is one aspect of the proposals the NRA has made that is spot on.
