The National Rifle Association scored a bulls eye (pun intended) with its delayed pronouncement regarding the slaughter at Newtown, CT. The NRA plan is to post an armed guard in every U.S. school while we wait to understand and deal with the mentality of deranged killers, something humans have tried and failed to do for a few thousand years or so.
The NRA’s inelegant spokesman Wayne LaPierre no doubt
considered all the advantages of the plan he espoused. We have 132,183 first
through twelfth grade schools in the U.S. One new job at each school
thus would improve the national unemployment situation a trifle. That trifle
would, of course, cost the federal government or local governments and school districts bundles they don't have,
but the generous LaPierre has offered to have the NRA fund development of a
training plan for the new hires to defray part of the cost.
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| More guns would save lives! |
We, of course, would want our school guards to be
well-equipped. Only the latest weaponry would do. The NRA plan thus would
result in adding 132,183 gun sales or more to augment the 300 million weapons how in
circulation in the U.S.
Adding the new guns would provide a mini-stimulus to our
still-recovering economy and some welcome additional cash for gun
manufacturers. We assume guns manufactured outside the U.S. would be
banned under the plan, but maybe not. That would be “gun control,” and the NRA
generally does not welcome any of that sort of nonsense.
The number of Americans continues to grow as our resource
base declines, so LaPierre’s proposal would help a little with population
control. One more death would be added to the toll in each new school massacre.
The shooter would kill the guard before firing at teachers and children.
Perhaps we could solve this problem by expanding the plan to arm every teacher and child. Then shooters might be killed before much additional damage was done, although gun battles are notorious for generating random shots that frequently injure or kill nonparticipants. This conventional wisdom could be wrong, because NRA experts constantly tell us that guns don't kill people. It follows that stray bullets don't kill people, either.
In addition to streamlining the population, LaPierre would improve the Constitution by making it more compact. His rather vague statements that we should censor undesirable media in preference to improving gun safety controls would require us to delete the part of the first amendment that guarantees the right of free speech. Perhaps his plan is to do away with the first amendment altogether, thus elevating his sacred second amendment to the top of the list.
Perhaps we could solve this problem by expanding the plan to arm every teacher and child. Then shooters might be killed before much additional damage was done, although gun battles are notorious for generating random shots that frequently injure or kill nonparticipants. This conventional wisdom could be wrong, because NRA experts constantly tell us that guns don't kill people. It follows that stray bullets don't kill people, either.
In addition to streamlining the population, LaPierre would improve the Constitution by making it more compact. His rather vague statements that we should censor undesirable media in preference to improving gun safety controls would require us to delete the part of the first amendment that guarantees the right of free speech. Perhaps his plan is to do away with the first amendment altogether, thus elevating his sacred second amendment to the top of the list.
Carried to its extreme, the NRA plan also would add to pleasant childhood memories
for all Americans. Getting an education in concentration camps surely would be
more delightful than attending traditional schools.
There is much to be said for the NRA plan, but none of it
smacks of intelligence.
