In the end there were 38 children dead at the school, two teachers and four other adults.I think the author of this piece, Lenore Skenazy, is on to something. More at the link.
I’m not talking about the horrific shooting in Connecticut today. I’m talking about the worst school murder in American history. It took place in Michigan, in 1927. A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, quietly planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary. Then, the day he was finally ready, he set off an inferno. When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, too, killing more people, including himself. And then, something we’d find very strange happened.
Nothing.
No cameras were placed at the front of schools. No school guards started making visitors show identification. No Zero Tolerance laws were passed, nor were background checks required of PTA volunteers—all precautions that many American schools instituted in the wake of the Columbine shootings, in 1999. Americans in 1928—and for the next several generations —continued to send their kids to school without any of these measures. They didn’t even drive them there. How did they maintain the kind of confidence my own knees and heart don’t feel as I write this?
They had a distance that has disappeared. A distance that helped them keep the rarity and unpredictability of the tragedy in perspective, granting them parental peace.
Monday, December 17, 2012
A history lesson
The thing about history is that there's a lot of it. And mass murders at schools have a history that goes beyond our current time:
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14 comments:
Mark,
From 1897 to 1927, had there been 70 bombings in the United States like the one you describe? Had 544 people died in similar incidents? Had seven bombings occurred in 1927, in which innocent victims were killed?
If your answers are yes to any of these questions, I am guessing let's do nothing wouldn't have been the response.
Regards,
Rich
Rich,
What are you going to do? There are 300 million guns out there now. What are you going to do?
Be specific.
Reasonable waiting periods. Limits on magazine size. Universal background check. Universal registry for ALL transactions. Mandatory liability insurrance. Tax the hell out of ammo.
Reasonable waiting periods.
Define reasonable. Be specific.
Limits on magazine size.
Does nothing to solve magazines that are already out there. Would certainly help the black market, though.
Universal background check.
How do you implement it? Be specific.
Universal registry for ALL transactions.
Hello, black market.
Mandatory liability insurance.
Good luck enforcing that. Hello, black market.
Tax the hell out of ammo.
See above, especially the black market part.
Everything proposed here will exacerbate the situation. And the funny part, Brian? You know all of that, especially if you change the context only slightly to the War on Drugs.
Try again.
Mark,
I am not suggesting a gun ban. And I am not naive enough to believe that any measures we might take would completely solve the problem and end gun violence. But all of the suggestions Brian makes seem pretty reasonable to me. What is a reasonable waiting period? I am not sure, but I bet we could crunch numbers and find out how frequently gun violence has been committed with a newly purchased gun and figure out a good number that might curb the number of incidents. Magazine size is a no brainer to me. This seems self-evident. If Mrs Lanza didn't own a gun with a large clip, I am pretty sure a lot less children would be dead. And I doubt very much that Adam Lanza would have gone out and found a a large magazine prior to his rampage on the "black market".
Universal Registry: Yes. Shouldn't be hard at all. If you haven't noticed, technology has made big advances in recent years. A universal national registry shouldn't be all that difficult. Especially for new guns.
How about mandatory trainig on gun safety, and required extra training for people who own guns and have people living with them with a history of mental illness?
How about improving the background check system? Currently, 40% of guns bought and sold are not actually subject to checks. Let's close that loophole.
And, how about bans on semi-automatic assult weapons?
As for liability insurance, just as we already do with cars, the buyer needs to show evidence of liability insurance before removing a new gun from the premises he purchased it from. Failure of the gun seller to verify that liability insurance has been obtained leaves the seller with strict liability for any damage caused with that gun. That shouldn't be all that hard to track. As I already noted, this is done now with cars.
There are things we can do. None of them, individually or collectively, are going to stop all gun violence. But if they can curtail it, and help prevent or even lessen the tragic events we seem to be regularly witnessing now (7 mass shootings this year) then it is a step in the right direction. Your view, which seems to be that there is nothing we can do that would prevent 100% of these incidents, therefore, we should do nothing, seems ridiculous to me. I floss two or three times a week, and brush my teeth two or three times a day. But I went to the dentist last week, and I had a cavity. Should I stop with the dental hygiene?
Is that an absurd comparison? Perhaps. But no more absurd than claiming that Mrs. Lanza's failure to properly secure her guns had nothing to do with what happened.
If Adam Lanza didn't have access to an assault rifle with a high volume clip last Friday, we wouldn't be discussing this. Period.
Regards,
Rich
What's the point D? You've clearly already made up your mind.
Brian,
I'm surprised that you're not more taken with the libertarian side of the argument, particularly with the comparison to the war on drugs.
Rich,
I'm not at all surprised that you think government has the power and responsibility to treat citizens like subjects, with only a procedural nod to freedom.
Rich suggests:
How about mandatory training on gun safety, and required extra training for people who own guns and have people living with them with a history of mental illness?
I'd be on board with most of this, but the history of mental illness thing is going to be troublesome for a lot of people.
Rich also says:
Is that an absurd comparison? Perhaps. But no more absurd than claiming that Mrs. Lanza's failure to properly secure her guns had nothing to do with what happened.
I'm not saying that, of course. Mrs. Lanza was negligent and her negligence was a huge factor in what happened in Connecticut.
Reasonable waiting periods. Limits on magazine size. Universal background check. Universal registry. Mandatory liability insurance. Tax the hell out of ammo.
None of which would have stopped Adam Lanza. The magazine limit may have been an inconvenience...but all the expenses and hurdles described had already been met by someone else.
Since these mass shootings have all been done by people with mental issues, why don't we set up a national mental health screening and tracking service to identify at risk citizens, schedule regular follow up evaluations and set up automatic red flags for when they don't pick up their medications?
Of course, that would invade their right to privacy, add an overbearing government intrusion, and unfairly stigmatize those who have mental issues - the vast majority of whom are no threat to anyone.
We certainly don't want to unfairly stigmatize entire groups of people, right?
I'm surprised that you're not more taken with the libertarian side of the argument, particularly with the comparison to the war on drugs.
I'm largely sympathetic to the libertarian point of view on many things. Which is why I have not said guns should be banned across the board. Nor I am I challenging the broad notions of "rights" to own guns, or for self defense generally.
I do not, however, accept the idea that those rights completely preclude limits on the ease with which guns are acquired or on the amount of killing power made available to the general public.
Nor do I think requirements regarding demonstration of competence, assumption of legal and financial responsibility of risks involved, or responsible tracking of lethal machines is impossible or without precedent--we do it all the time with cars--which there are actually more of in this country than guns.
I understand the argument that prohibition leads to black markets. That's why I'm not arguing for prohibition.
As to other comparisons to the War on Drugs--I am not particularly concerned that my next door neighbor's bong is going to go off and blow a hole in my wall or a member of my family. I think it is fairly unlikely that he will lose his cool arguing with his wife and shove some cocaine up her nose. I'm not especially concerned that his kid is going take his heroin stash to school and kill 20 first graders with it.
I am concerned about him getting high (or especially drunk) and getting behind the wheel of a car. Which is why I support a robust DUI regime.
If guns were an entirely private matter, there would be nothing to talk about. They aren't. It's a public safety issue.
See the difference?
Brian,
Yes, I see your argument. I assumed you had one.
I don't agree with you, but we have different concerns. I am more worried about an ever larger and more powerful government than I am with gun violence.
Universal Registery works well with immigrants.
If guns were an entirely private matter, there would be nothing to talk about. They aren't. It's a public safety issue.
In most cases, they are an entirely private matter. The problem with the comparison to cars should be evident, too -- cars are in use pretty much every day. Guns? Not so much. Many guns are purchased and used only for practice shooting or hunting.
Gino also makes the salient point about the efficacy of registries.
Brian, please understand -- your concerns are legitimate. We have seen some awful things happen this year. There's something especially horrific about a bunch of first graders getting gunned down and it's entirely natural to want to Do Something About It.
Picklesworth's concern is about the power of the state. My concern is about eroding the rule of law. Restrictions on behavior are always going to meet with resistance and laws of the sort you're suggesting aren't really likely to change anything, but they will make a lot of people think twice about cooperating with law enforcement.
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