Guns, School Shootings, and Public Safety: What’s the Answer?

Arm our schools?!  Is this really the right direction to take?  Become more militarized in our behavior, attitude, thinking?

The irony is that it is the NRA, which constantly barks about freedom and protecting our constitutional rights, that is advocating a direction that will make us look and act more and more like a Police State.

I have no interest in militarizing our schools with armed security guards.  Neither do I have any interest in taking away the basic American right for a law abiding citizen to own a gun.  I want to have both, rights and safety.

I want the confidence to move freely within our public and private domains—be it our schools, our places of worship, shopping centers, amusement parks, national monuments, or within our halls of government and justice—without fear of being gunned down and without the irritation and fear of being manhandled by security forces who are trained to distrust and question every action and motive of casual pedestrians weaving his or her way through these same public spaces, minding their own business.

What comes to mind is the old saying, “Locks on doors simply keep honest people honest.”  Meaning, a determined thief or dishonest person will find a way to break in, no matter what, despite the locked doors.  Likewise, most determined killers will find a way to kill.  Still, we must make it as difficult as possible for intentional murderers to get their hands on assault weapons.

So of course we need security.  Every town, community, and neighborhood requires a well-trained and well equipped police force.  Nevertheless, I am troubled by this “Gated Community” mentality that we seem to be moving towards as a way of feeling safe and protected.

When we begin walling ourselves off by barricading our houses and militarizing our schools with uniformed or plain clothes security and police officers, we are no longer living freely.  We are living in deep fear and distrust—restrictive, defensive, and reactionary—and we have given up control of our greater expanded living space, the community at large.

And that feeling of a loss of control is translated into a sense of physical vulnerability.  Thus, we want to compensate that feeling of vulnerability with heavy armor.  We run out and buy more guns, arming ourselves to the hilt, in order to feel safer.  That, my friends, is a sign of weakness, not strength!  It signifies community breakdown not community empowerment.

The strength we need is inner, spiritual, moral, emotional, and relational strength.  We need the strength of a healthy community coming together, not a frightened and fractured community turning its defenses in on itself against its very own members.

We do need wiser and more effective gun management, gun control laws.  We do need to keep guns out of the wrong hands.  Good, reasonable, and effective laws affecting the types of guns sold and how they are sold and distributed can help us do this.  But we also need to deal better with the overall human factor, as for example, caring better for our society’s mentally ill.  For example, was Adam Lanza really a “Monster!”?  Or, was he a dazed and crazed young man who needed some real personal, psychological treatment and emotional attention?

There is much to learn here.  Will we take the time to really learn or will we simply jump into knee-jerk reactionary posturing and break into two camps, pro and anti-gun lobbying without getting into the deeper issues ravaging our society’s peace and safety?