The NRA has made public their response to the massacre of 20 first graders along with 6 school employees. The NRA wants every school building in America to employ an armed guard. This is the answer to gun violence in schools; insert more guns into the schools. 

It is not surprising that the NRA would make such a suggestion. What is surprising is the lack of outrage; no leaders in front of the cameras exclaiming the ridiculousness of the suggestion. The best the President could muster is appointing his Vice President to look into the matter. 

The United States is one of the most violent countries on the planet. Over 30,000 people are killed with firearms in this country each year. Over half of those shot to death are suicides (some of the suicides are the mass killers who take their own lives after snuffing out the lives of others first). But even given that horrific fact, that still leaves the US with about 15,000 people killed by firearms each year. 

So far this year alone, the US has had seven mass killings. Since the Sandy Hook massacre, there have already been over 100 additional deaths attributed to handguns in the US. 

There are over 300 million people who live in the US, there are an estimated 270 million privately owned firearms; the US is rated number one in privately owned firearms in the world. In the US, there is no federal regulation that requires a privately sold gun to be registered nor to require the buyer of such a weapon to pass any checks at all. Individual states can legislate/control guns; indeed, states with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence. 

In poll after poll, the citizens of the US say over and over again that regulations on the sale and ownership of weapons is needed; by an overwhelming margin, background checks for all gun sales, requiring gun registration for all gun sales (there’s a strong advocacy for a national gun ownership database). Almost 60% want to ban assault type semi-automatic weapons and over 60% want to ban any type of high capacity clips, like the one used recently in Sandy Hook. Of course, almost everyone agrees that mentally ill people and felons should not have access to guns. The problem with that is if there is no regulation on personally sold weapons, who’s to know? 

There are those who say that more guns in the hands of our citizens will result in less crime; well, the research doesn’t hold up ... the Harvard Injury Control Research Center studied guns and homicide in the US and the results are startling. They found that gun availability increases homicide rates. They studied states with more gun ownership and found the homicide rate higher in those states than in states with more regulations and less guns. 

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA representative who called for armed guards in schools, mentioned Israel as his model. Unfortunately, he didn’t do his research well; he said that Israel placed those guards to respond to school shootings. That’s not true. In 1974, Palestinian terrorists attacked a school killing 22 children. In 2007, a Palestinian killed 8 in a religious seminary. Those two incidents reflect the sum total of mass killings in schools in Israel. The Israeli response to armed guards at schools (and by the way at restaurants, movie houses, parking lots, train stations, etc.) is due to a terrorist issue. Israel’s private gun ownership regulations are very strict; a citizen must pass many tests to own a gun privately, and all such guns are registered by the government. 

We need to get the guns off the street. We don’t need to eliminate all legally sold and held weapons, but we don’t need military style weapons sold privately, we don’t need assault weapons at all in private hands, and we certainly don’t need high-capacity clips, armor piercing rounds, or other military grade weapons. Gun enthusiasts can collect rifles for hunting and handguns all they want ... with proper checks and registrations. 

The answer won’t come from Washington, as much as we would like it to. The answer needs to come from us. We need a Candy Lightner for gun control. We need someone to step up, someone like Ms. Lightner, who started MADD, to rouse the indignation in all of us that guns need to be minimized in this country. We need to create the grassroots effort that affects legislation, both at a state level and especially at the Federal level, to enact gun control policy that will get the crazy weapons off the street.