A friend of mine recently posted a question in social media.  Why, he asked, are we not hardening our schools?  Now obviously, this question refers to gun-oriented issues so it’s important for me to start by saying I’m not an anti-gun guy.  If you try to tell me the true problem is mental health issues, I agree.  BUT…if we, the people want to implement mental health care in this once-great nation, we would have to ask the One Percent to participate in society.  They’ve made absolutely clear they’re not interested in doing that and, sadly, FAR too many Americans have decided it’s just too disruptive, asking the wealth-hoarding One Percent to pay their fair share in taxes.  The result?  We don’t have the money to properly manage the mentally ill in this country.

So…if we’re not going to pursue the actual correct answer – and we’re not – we’re left with Option B: try to minimize the amount of damage that can be done when someone breaks.  I’m never fond of treating the symptom instead of the disease but if that’s our only choice, well, that’s our choice.  We agree it’s a mental health problem AND we acknowledge we’re NOT going to address mental health problems.  THAT means that from time to time, someone in America is going to “fall down.”  They’re going to break under the stress.  Some few of those will decide to do as much damage as possible on their way out.  So why aren’t we hardening our schools?

I actually have two answers to the question.  The first one is also the more simplistic but helps me define the term ‘hardening.’  Basically, for the uninitiated, ‘hardening’ means fortifying the school to the point where it’s able to withstand a military type assault – like a fort…or a prison.  Have you ever been to a fort…or a prison?  They’re not exactly inviting.  In fact, they seem to instill a sense of foreboding on purpose.  That doesn’t seem like the kind of place kids would be eager to go to.

When I was young, I would often go to one of the local schoolyards to play basketball or tennis or use the track or just sit in the field.  Schools were inviting places people liked being around.  I prefer that model of school.  But I guess putting eight year olds in bullet-proof backpacks through checkpoints and security sweeps so they can participate in active shooter drills is just the price we pay for freedumb…

Okay, so we harden our schools into fortresses.  But the truth is, it’s not just the schools, is it?  We’ve seen these shootings inside and outside of nightclubs, in restaurants, at concerts, at garlic festivals, and even just driving down the street shooting at random.  The Dayton shooter had the “misfortune” to start his killing spree with cops already in the vicinity.  He was dead in thirty seconds.  Thirty seconds.  Still, he managed to kill ten people and shoot 17 others.  In thirty seconds.  Clearly, in order to allow the unreasonable minority to have their little hobby, we’re going to have to harden every public facility in the country.  We’re also going to have to post trained and armed guards within thirty seconds of any and every public venue.  That’s going to be expensive…

At this point, I’d like to take a page from the conservative position playbook and ask why I should have to part with MY hard-earned money in order to harden every public venue in the United States just so some frightened rabbit can own a particular kind of weapon?  Frankly, I don’t think I should.  I, for one, don’t want to have to live that way at all, let alone have to pay for it.  So if we’re forced to live in prison-like conditions for “safety” I think the costs of hardening should be borne by the people creating the danger: gun owners.  The best way would be an additional tax on the sale and transfer of the weapons in question.  Yes, I can imagine the howling of the Gun Rights Advocates (GRAs) at the idea of taking responsibility for the “freedoms” upon which they insist – but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong…

Okay, so we’ve fortified all public buildings and posted armed guards, ready to shoot, on every corner and imposed taxes on gun owners to pay for it all.  Safety!  But then, that seems like the very type of police state conservatives are usually warning about, yet here they are, pushing for it – aggressively.  This is getting confusing.  Then I start to wonder, what does all of this do to what might be called the ‘Open Carry Paradox?’  If everything is fortified and locked down, what happens to a person’s “right” to carry openly when and where they want to?  But if a nut ball can slip past any fortification simply by claiming open carry, what good would it do to fortify anything, schools included?

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In an effort to prove I’m not anti-gun, I’d like to help my GRAs by pointing out what I think is a tactical error.  When a nut ball starts shooting, the standard discussion starts with the suggestion to get rid of the “assault rifles.”  GRAs respond by pointing out there’s no such thing as an assault rifle.  Now…when I say “assault rifle,” you get a picture in your head, yes?  You picture an AK-47 or an AR-15.  So, on the one hand it seems odd that everyone knows what an assault rifle is though, according to the GRAs, no such thing exists.  But the reality is, the GRAs are technically correct when they point out that so-called “assault rifles” are really just scary looking semi-automatic weapons…and that’s the mistake…

I think GRAs should allow people to think they “solve” the problem of shooters by getting rid of the scary looking weapons.  By constantly arguing that “assault weapon” is an inaccurate term, GRAs are inadvertently pointing out that, in reality, the culprit is simply semi-automatic weapons, in general.  But once the general population realizes the fact, it’s only a matter of time before people start calling for the removal of semi-automatic weapons – ALL semi-automatic weapons.  (Yes, I acknowledge that this DOES qualify as “coming for your guns…”)  The GRAs themselves make the case: stupid gun-grabbers don’t realize assault weapons are just semi-automatic weapons.  Ah HA!  So it’s not “assault weapons” that are the problem – it’s semi-automatic weapons…

Once upon a time in America people were allowed to own fully automatic weapons.  A very few of those people used them to rob banks and kill people.  Before too long, fully automatic weapons were outlawed and (mostly) removed from society.  We CAN do the same thing with semi-automatic weapons.

I say again: I KNOW it’s a mental health problem.  I KNOW that only the very smallest number of people ever “go postal” (ah, yes, post office shootings, too) and start shooting things up.  But it’s always the few who ruin things for the many, right?  And the needs of the many really DO outweigh the needs of the few.  So it doesn’t matter that it’s a mental health problem if we’re not going to address mental health issues.  THAT means we have no choice but to try and reduce the amount of damage broken people can do and THAT, in turn, might well mean eliminating semi-automatic weapons.

I know the response; crazies will just find another way to inflict damage.  True.  But the GRAs know (though they won’t admit) that there’s NO other legal way to inflict so much damage and death as quickly and as efficiently as semi-automatic weapons.  They expose this knowledge by demanding the right to own semi-automatic guns as the best way to defend themselves from the invading Mongol hoards or whatever.  If they could do the same thing with a kitchen knife or a hammer, there wouldn’t be a problem, right?  But they know a knife or a hammer does NOT do the same amount of damage in the same space of time.  They know there’s a reason our military members are issued semi-automatic weapons and not kitchen knives as the primary tool of the trade…

I’d be interested in hearing from my GRAs on the subject but do me a favor: please stick to the topic at hand.  I mean, I already know I’m a cuck libtard moron, so…