What happened on December 15, 2012 with the attack on the school by a heavily armed Adam Lanza, aged 20, was a tragedy and the logical outcome of an incomplete policy.
The federal gun free school zone was passed in 1990. A constitutional challenge prevented this law from being enforced. Many states had laws that preceded the federal attempt to expand gun free zones around schools. Connecticut was a state that adopted such a ban, but, as happened in each state that passed such a ban, failed to follow through to actually make a meaningful policy that would protect the kids from a terrorist attack. Nationwide, politicians at the federal and state level dropped the proverbial round short. The carnage that ensued from the politicians’ arrogance and negligence has failed to catalyze any correction, other than specious demands of firearms bans.
Adam Lanza was a terrorist. He had a mission. He had the weapons, and he acted without restraint. He went to Sandy Hook Elementary with the knowledge that he would be safe, that there would be no armed staff or visiting law abiding citizens who would be legally carrying concealed to present a threat. He knew that he had some time before any response by the local police in which to do the maximum damage. He took full advantage of the politicians’ negligence in crafting the ban on firearms in schools. The only prohibition was . . . words in a statute.
To take attention off of what allowed Lanza to act with impunity, to gain access and shoot young children without armed response, the liberal media and the liberal politicians are going hell bent for leather to hang . . . a rifle. They are not making any attempt to fix the law, they are seeking to ban a particular style of rifle alleging that once again, merely banning with words will serve to protect our children in unprotected elementary schools.
What could have been done under the intent of the law intended to protect children in elementary schools that now was not being done?
The average elementary school is open to the public during the day with several unlocked entrances. In some schools, there are some security cameras, but not enough to cover every entrance. There are no protocols that require locked doors with single point of entry to the school. There are no armed security or armed staff members to present a counter threat to any attempting to harm the schools’ youngsters. Visitors are not escorted to and from the office tothe classroom and back to the entrance door after the visit. For all practical purposes, the schools are unprotected.
The threat from terrorists is world-wide. From Finland to Israel, attacks on schools over the last thirty years have been increasing. Whether the terrorists are Islamic jihadists, revolutionaries, or students under the influence of anti-depressents, the threat to U.S. schools has always been considered a possibility. Why then, after 9-11, after the November 2009 massacre at Ft. Hood, after the prior school shooting incidents were elementary schools overlooked with respect to upgrading their security?
Government at every level has been silent on this issue. They have their red herring in the media’s demonizing of the AR15 sporting rifle.
No politician, including President Barrack Obama and Sen. Diane Feinstein, has to date suggested improvements to elementary school security, rather than specious attempts to ban weapons that are incredibly popular with Americans. The politicians’ misdirected cries to ban the rifle have eliminated any opportunity to have a public discussion of actual security improvements for elementary schools.
Until the politicians get serious about security, only words will be the outcome of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. We owe our children and the memory of those killed at Sandy Hook meaningful attention to creating a an environment that is reasonably secure from a terrorist attack.
Other nations have faced this problem and have addressed the reality. None more so than Israel. Israel’s children were a target of high value for terrorists since its inception. The Israeli law requires an armed security guard on duty at all Israeli schools. Some of the school staff are also armed. The Israeli model presents no opportunity for an unopposed attack on a school.
The American liberal model of no armed guards or armed staff, no single point of entry, insufficient security cameras, no protocols for escorting visitors not having children at the school, but prohibiting firearms by law, only served to make the elementary school a criminal safety zone.
Americans need to demand from their politicians that the safety and security of our children does not call for firearms bans. The safety and security of our children require real world solutions. They need to demand armed security guards, the ability for the school staff to carry concealed, the ability of law abiding parents who legally carry to be armed on school grounds, thereby magnifying the number of law abiding adults who could act to defend the children by several orders of magnitude. Protocols need to be instituted that require locked doors, single point of entry, and security cameras. That banning weapons is a red herring that will prevent nothing.
The massacre at Ft. Hood, a U.S. Army base by Major Nidal Malik Hassan on November 5, 2009 should be an indicator that even the U.S. Army is not immune from terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
Our schools need not suffer politically correct solutions, such as gun bans. It is time to go to work and to finish the job on making our elementary schools secure. Adam Lanza was a terrorist whose act could have been prevented by proper security. Banning the AR15 will not provide any such security. No criminal will attack an a prepared target.
Had the politicians carried through with the necessary steps to secure the elementary schools beyond the words of the firearms prohibition laws, no one may have ever heard of an Adam Lanza and Newtown, CT may have continued to be the quiet backwater that it was so proud of.
Firearms bans and restrictive gun laws are meaningless, feel good, ineffective legislation and a waste of time.
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