Opinion
No sure cure
TBO.com
Published: December 20, 2012
In response to the horrible shooting rampage last week at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Connecticut, some school districts on the Suncoast had what they said were increased on-campus security measures in place when classes resumed Monday. Given the completely understandable emotion surrounding the slaying of 20 children and six adults, we don't suppose the school administrators considered they had any other choice.Published: December 20, 2012
Amid all the grief, however, people need to hold onto a sense of what can and cannot be done to prevent someone from taking a lot of lives if that person is determined to do so.
To take things to an extreme to make a point, let us suggest we station a team of Delta Force anti-terrorism operators or Navy SEALs on every school campus in America. That sort of heavyweight security would do the trick, wouldn't it? Then how do we explain the November 2009 incident in which 13 people were shot to death and another 29 wounded at one of the most secure places on Earth — the Fort Hood military reservation in Texas?
We could enact tougher gun control measures, like the ones that have been long in place in Norway, where a man in July 2011 shot dead 69 people, mainly teenagers, and wounded another 110.
As for suggestions that government try rounding up the millions of deadly weapons in private hands in this country, we can't imagine that approach would prove any more successful than the Noble Experiment — banning alcohol in the 1920s and '30s.