Without pausing for a single question from the press, the NRA convention on December 21 stressed their belief in the importance of the right to bear arms. With a defensive tone, Wayne Lapierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, reiterated the importance of an armed society, claiming “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Violent videogames and TV shows were caught in the crosshairs of the conference; the National Rifle Association argued that the entertainment industry is promoting gore and guts, claiming that shootings are inevitable in such a blood-soaked society. If armed guards were placed in schools, if America fought fire with fire, then maybe the brutality visited on Sandy Hook Elementary could have prevented.
Maybe an armed guard at Sandy Hook could have made the difference, or maybe, like at Columbine High School, it wouldn’t have. There was “a good guy with a gun” in 1999, when two Colorado teens left 13 dead and 24 wounded in the worst mass shooting to take place at an American high school. Deputy Neil Gardner, a fifteen-year veteran of the Jefferson County police force, fired on Eric Harris, one of the shooters. Undeterred, Harris continued the massacre.
Instead of blaming the media, instead of pushing more guns on an armed and dangerous society, America needs to take responsibility for its policies. Our gun control laws are some of the most lax in the world; can we really be surprised that five out of ten of the deadliest school shootings in history belong to America?
The right to bear arms needs to be curtailed; access to assault rifles and similar guns should be limited. The Sandy Hook shooter’s gun, called the Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle, can unload forty-five rounds in a minute. Such violent weapons are unnecessary for home defense or hunting, and should not be available to the public. When the ‘bad guys’ can be so heavily armed, it’s nearly impossible to prevent tragedies like Newtown.
http://listverse.com/2008/01/01/top-10-worst-school-massacres/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/columbine-armed-guards_n_2347096.html