How to Prevent Most School Shootings with a Proper Defense

Each time a school shooting occurs, people get terribly emotional and lose their common sense. They start demanding all sorts of new gun laws, thinking that will fix the problem. Ironically, none of the laws they demand would have prevented the past tragedies and have no substantial chance of preventing any future tragedies.

Here is a fact of life. Some people are killers. They like to kill people. They may be angry. They may be disturbed. They may be insane, but they like to kill, and they will kill. People have been killing other people since the beginning of time. Long before we had guns, people found ways to kill each other. Even if you take away the guns now, people will still find ways to kill each other.

Since some people are so passionate about killing, we have numerous strict laws against it, but killers disobey those laws. If a person is not going to obey laws against murder, why would that same person obey laws regarding to guns? Since killers do not obey laws, the answer is not more laws. The answer is defense.

The most effective way to prevent the vast majority of school shootings is to allow teachers with proper firearm training to carry secured (locked) weapons in the school. That way, when a shooter penetrates the school's defenses, the teachers will be armed and able to engage the shooter in a fair fight.

People will argue that a teacher might snap during class and shoot a child, but that is a flawed argument. If a teacher is angry enough to shoot a child, the teacher is certainly angry enough to beat a child to death. If a teacher is prone to violence, the teacher is dangerous to the children armed or not. If you cannot trust a teacher to be armed around the children, then you should not trust that same teacher to be unarmed around the children. By the way, just because administrators tell a teacher he/she cannot bring a weapon into the school, that does not mean the teacher will obey. Remember, only the law-abiding care about the rules.

For those who cannot get past the idea of armed teachers, a more politically correct solution is to station a police officer in every school whenever students are present. Since this would require an officer to be present around seven hours each day for around one hundred and eighty days each year at each school, the costs would be significant, possibly up to $100,000 per year.

All of this money does not have to be wasted, however. The officer does not need to just sit in an office or the parking lot. The officer can be around the school teaching the students during the regular school day. The officer can give lessons in traffic safety, gun safety, drug education, anti-bullying, abduction prevention, self-defense, conflict resolution, emergency preparedness, Internet safety, etc. Cops have a lot of training, and a lot of that training could translate to helpful lessons for small children. We live in a dangerous world. Why not prepare our children to survive it?

Yes, it would be expensive to station an officer in every school, but when you think about the safety of the children, would the costs be that severe? Let's say you can protect five hundred little kids for $100,000 or less each year. That works out to only $200 per year per student. In larger schools, the costs would be even less per child. When you factor in that each officer could actually be serving a legitimate educational role, the costs are really not that steep.

We do not even need to hire new officers to do the job. Just pull them from less important duties like busting massage parlors, pulling over people with expired tags or no seatbelts, and catching soccer moms in speedtraps on the way to the grocery store during the day. Which is more important: keeping the minivans from going five miles over the speed limit or protecting a campus full of little kids from a psychopath?

Well, even if people are not willing to pull cops off of non-essential duties or spring for the extra money to hire more officers, we still have the option of allowing teachers to carry weapons responsibly. The bottom line is we do not need fewer guns in school, we need more guns in the right hands in school. Think back to any school shooting that comes to your mind and ask yourself how things might have been different if some responsible adults in the school had been armed and able to properly protect the kids.

Don't ever forget, schools are one of the few places that have a full ban on guns. In theory, schools should be absolutely free of gun violence, but, in reality, how is the whole gun-free zone concept working? It seems to work perfectly for the shooter, because when he comes, he is the only one armed, and he knows it. Imagine how quickly the balance of power would shift if the shooter knows that when he starts shooting, someone is bound to start shooting back.

Obama Using ATF to Pass Gun Control Under the Radar

When Barack Obama told Sarah Brady he was pursuing gun control "under the radar," people began to wonder exactly what he meant. Now, we have a specific example of how a President can abuse his power, overstep his authority, and circumvent the system to enact his own special gun laws.

Under the Obama administration, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as the ATF, has unilaterally passed a new rule that requires firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to report to the ATF sales to an individual of multiple semiautomatic rifles, greater than .22 caliber, with detachable magazines during any five-day period. The stated purpose of this new law is to limit the flow of firearms from the Untied States to Mexico.

This new rule essentially amounts to a new federal gun-control law; however, it was passed without a single vote in Congress. Barack Obama knew he could never get this sort of gun-control law through both houses of Congress, so he just created the law through executive authority and got in through the backdoor.

One of the most problematic features of this new gun law is that is does not apply equally to all states. American citizens who live in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas are now subject to more federal gun restrictions than those citizens in other states. Since the federal government cannot impose federal laws on specific groups of people, this law is unconstitutional.

We may not have to spend a lot of time worrying about the uneven application of this law on the southern border states, however. If the ATF gets away with this law, they are bound to expand it to more states. Eventually, the Obama administration will argue the law was so effective in curbing illegal gun sales in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas that the gun smugglers have started using buyers in states like Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, etc. Then the ATF will expand the law to other states. Eventually, the law will probably apply to Alaska too. Do not be surprised if Barack Obama and the ATF start claiming people are buying guns in Alaska, putting them on boats, and sailing them down the Pacific coast to Mexico.

A ridiculous part of this new rule is the "greater than .22 caliber" clause. Nearly all firearms, except .22s themselves, are greater than .22 caliber. The ATF probably threw in this clause to give the illusion the ATF is concerned only with high-powered rifles. In reality, this law going after just about any rifle caliber. For example, the ATF has always been very aggressive about targeting, AR-15s, the civilian version of the M16. Standard AR-15s fire .223 (similar to 5.56 NATO). Even though the .223 round is only moderately powerful, when compared to most rifle rounds, the ATF probably set the power threshold so low for this law so they could include AR-15s.

Also note that the ATF is specifically mentioning "detachable magazines" and "semiautomatic" rifles in the rule. This is just code for "assault weapons." The ATF simply does not like people have assault weapons, and those are the first weapons they would abolish if given the chance. That is what they are pursuing with this rule. This rule is what will set the stage for eventually placing stricter controls on the types of guns the ATF does not like.

The most egregious element to all of this ATF reporting business is the hypocrisy. The Obama administration is claiming that too many firearms are ending up in Mexico, but the ATF's "Fast and Furious" program was deliberately allowing actual working firearms to be transferred to Mexican gangs. Obama and the ATF are out panicking everyone about how many US weapons are ending up in the hands of gangs in Mexico when our government was just caught intentionally allowing--and even encouraging--those weapons to flow into Mexico as part of a organized effort. You just can't make this stuff up.

ATF Fast and Furious Whistleblower Fired in Retaliation

After twenty-four years of service, ATF agent, Vince Cefalu has been fired after being one of the leading forces in the exposure of one of the stupidest and most ill-conceived sting operations in the history of America. The ATF claims its "Fast and Furious" program was supposed to track weapons flowing from the United States to Mexico by encouraging gun dealers to sell weapons to suspicious gun buyers who might smuggle the weapons to Mexico. The real intent, however, was most likely to set the stage for tougher gun laws in the United States by building a case that American weapons end up in the hands of violent drug cartels.

Read the whole story at the link below.
"Project Gunrunner Whistleblower Says ATF Sent Him Termination Notice"

ATF-Mexico Fast and Furious Sting Was About Gun Control

Under the direction of the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (commonly known as the ATF) has greatly embarrassed itself with an ill-conceived program that allowed weapons to flow illegally from the United States and into the hands of violent drug cartels in Mexico. The program was named Fast and Furious and ran from 2009 to 2011. The ATF claims they were trying to track the weapons in an effort to expose drug cartel networks, but all they really did is arrest some criminal nobodies and allowed the drug cartels to acquire arms illegally.

Some innocent people were killed by criminals using the illegally smuggled weapons. Most notably, US citizen and border patrol agent, Brian Terry was killed in an Arizona border shoot-out involving these weapons.

This whole operation was truly a debacle, a massive failure, and a disgraceful incident that has resulted in needless deaths of innocent people. The ATF is trying to defend itself by stating they were trying to take some short-term losses to gain greater ground in the international drug war, but there are some problems with that position.

Why should the ATF care so much about tracking weapons flowing out of America? Certainly, the ATF has an interest in gun smuggling, even when the weapons are leaving, but why would they run such a risky program that actually placed working weapons in the hands of violent criminals? Furthermore, why is the ATF worrying about the operations of drug cartels in a foreign country? Fast and Furious accomplished very little, and anyone who looks at the program objectively can easily see that there could have been no reasonable expectation that anything could have been accomplished. The operation and its goals just do not make sense.

The reality is the ATF's Fast and Furious program was about providing concrete evidence that guns are being purchased in the United States and going directly into the hands of the cartels in Mexico. If the ATF can provide overwhelming evidence that substantial quantities of weapons are being purchased in the United States for sale to Mexican cartel thugs who are using those weapons to commit murder, the evidence can be used to push for stronger gun laws in the United States.

Imagine what an effective argument the ATF could make in favor of greater intrusions on the Second Amendment if they could demonstrate gun sales in American are ultimately aiding violent criminals in other countries. The ATF could use the data to call for an all-out ban on assault rifles and greater regulations of handguns. They could also make a very effective argument to place limits on the quantities of weapons US citizens can buy.

Fast and Furious was not about exposing Mexican drug cartels. Fast and Furious was about the ATF collecting evidence to erode your Second Amendments rights. Fortunately, the ATF failed in their mission, and this botched operation has been exposed. Unfortunately, this cruel and aggressive attempt to build up ammunition against the Second Amendment has resulted in the spilling of innocent blood on the soil of America and Mexico.