Pew finds that there's majority support -- in some cases, overwhelming support -- for many gun policy changes championed by liberals. There's also majority support for a proposal that comes from the pro-gun right: putting more armed security guards and police officers in schools:
But notice which idea is rejected, 57%-40%? The notion of arming more teachers and other school officials.
The NRA's Wayne LaPierre focused on cops in his notorious public statement last month, but arming other school personnel is the sort of idea that's at the heart of gun worshippers' true thinking. Read any fervent defense of America's gun culture and you'll see that what's being defended is the idea of citizens as the main line of defense (against crime, against tyranny, against murderous insanity). Gun fans want lots and lots of guns despite (for the most part) not having a professional need for those guns, so they want to portray themselves as potential amateur cops and guards and soldiers, ready to serve at a moment's notice.
But the public isn't buying it. Americans want guns in schools, but they want those guns carried by people whose job it is to provide security. They don't want a nation in which anyone might turn cop or soldier at a moment's notice.
Sorry, gun culture -- you're probably going to win the legislative war, as usual, but you haven't won Americans' hearts and minds.
2 comments:
I still think having armed guards in schools is a stupid response to this problem - which is, more and more guns, too many of them semi-automatics with large magazines, in less and less hands.
The percentage of people who own guns has dropped in the last 50-60years - which makes sense, since once rural and wilderness areas where hunters hunted, have turned into roads, suburban homes, malls, and strip malls. I've seen that happen here, in Upstate NY.
And, most tenants in apartments in urban areas don't usually have guns. Neither do most condo or co-op owners.
The laws against guns are pretty strict in cities - just ask Plexico Burress, formerly of the NY Giants.
It's the number of guns that that dwindling percentage of gun owners still have, that's the problem. And that group is the group that keeps on buying more and more new guns.
No one is looking to ban a handgun or shotgun for home protection (though, with the number of accidents and suicides, perhaps that will warrant a look in a generation or two).
And no one is looking to ban rifles used for hunting.
It's semi's, and large magazines, that are the problem.
And the solution isn't to have armed guards in schools, it's to get rid of those guns.
You want to stimulate the economy a little while getting rid of some guns?
Have a buy-back program, where you give a Gift Card, good for 90 days, worth $500 for each gun, and $1 for each bullet.
Well said. Look what happened when George Zimmerman decided to make himself an amateur cop. We must not forget the lesson of Trayvon Martin.
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