Okay...the Florida legislature has proposed some new gun laws. Thank you...just what we need, more bandages on a wound that needs a tourniquet. Laws are great for those of us who respect and obey them but criminals don't and those with a mental problem don't. The red traffic light indicates that you should stop your vehicle to allow for proper and safe traffic flow and violating it can lead to serious injury and/or death. But the light itself cannot stop the car...that's totally the responsibility up to the driver. Just as my guns have never gone off by themselves--I have to pull the trigger EVERY TIME!
So adding another "gun law" to the other 30-or-40-thousand on the books is not going to help. Raising the minimum age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21 won't stop mass shootings. Outlawing "bump-stocks" won't stop mass shootings. Banning the NRA is the dumbest idea and that won't stop them either. And turning law-abiding citizens into criminals with the stroke of a pen isn't going to stop them either.
So what will work? Most of the mass shootings (if not all) were done by someone with a mental problem. Back in the 1980's we dramatically reduced funding mental facilities and many hospitals for the mentally ill had to close. It was, once again, the politically-correct police who constantly complained that it was cruel to shelter these folks and they were released to the general public. That, however, didn't cure them and now they had no place to go. We have had to jump through hoops to keep our facility open here. Sheriff John Wilcher will tell you that a great deal of the prisoners he has in the Chatham County Jail have a mental disorder. So now the "new" mental health facilities are our correctional institutions. This costs millions of dollars extra and also takes deputies off the street when these folks have to be transferred to another facility.
Then there are the drugs we give our kids these days. It's amazing to me that when I was going to school in the 1950's and 60's there were guns aplenty. Some of the kids who drove pickup trucks had the classic gun racks on the back windshield with shotguns and in many cases high-powered rifles. The Army Jr. ROTC rifle team used the old Springfield bolt-action .22 caliber rifle in competition. I had a class not too far from the rifle range (at Groves High School) and you could often hear them practicing with real live ammunition. On occasion when they had a competition at Savannah High or Benedictine, the members would get on a city bus with their rifles and no one thought a thing about it. And--get ready for it--no person was ever shot on or off campus.
So what changed? Well, the government expelled God around 1965 or so and over time we started dropping discipline actions and if a child was acting up in some way we started prescribing drugs. Then there were more drugs and--did I mention drugs? I know some kids today that ought to get Christmas cards from Merck and Eli Lilly. Nearly ever shooting has been perpetrated by some youngster on all sorts of drugs of some kind and that has to play with the mind.
Next is the bullying. Bullying is nothing new but usually it ended when school was over. With social media it's never over and kids have committed suicide over it. Many of the school shooters have been the victims of bullying. So maybe all those students who are going to be part of the "walkout" on March 14th or the student march on the 24th perhaps they ought to take that energy and befriend those they have been bullying. Before they go pointing their collective fingers at guns and the NRA just remember the old saying: "When you point a finger at someone (or something) you have three pointed back at yourself.