STUDENTS RIGHTS TO SAFE EDUCATION VS GUN OWNER RIGHTS TO OWN MILITARY WEAPONS —WHO IS STANDING UP FOR STUDENTS?
55 million innocent students vs 9 million gun owners. More balance of rights is needed!
Governor Scott Walker of Florida just signed a $400 million dollar school safety bill that broke a legislative impasse, but sadly will not do much to protect the lives of students in and around the schools of the state. Florida, at present, still permits almost anyone to carry concealed weapons. The misguided legislature has encouraged senseless legislation such as the “stand your ground” law which encourages a “Wild West’ mentality and has has led to deadly confrontations. However, in the “Wild West” of Florida, Gov Walker’s less than adequate actions are being attacked by the NRA on one side, and lauded as a watershed moment in the gun rights/student rights debate, on the other. In other parts of the nation the bill seems to be more about “baloney and bump stocks”, but little else.
The Florida school safety bill will spend vast sums to “harden” buildings by installing windowless metal doors, and bullet proof glass—but do nothing to limit access to military grade weapons. The bill reasonably raises the age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21 years. It stipulates a sensible three-day waiting period for most gun purchases and bans the sale of “bumpstocks” ( which effectively change a ‘semiautomatic” AR 15 into an automatic weapon). The bill also includes a proviso to permit certain school personnel to carry concealed arms. Most teachers groups are rightly opposed to allowing more concealed weapons on school grounds. The opponents of arming teachers and staff envision the likelihood for even more mayhem and bloodletting with children in a crossfire between potential armed groups.
What seems to be forgotten in the politicized rush to “do something” is the need to balance the existential rights of one group of citizens to a safe education against the legal right to own any kind of weapon of another. We seem to forget that one of the most important functions of any state or nation is the education of our young. There are about 55 million elementary and secondary students in this nation. These millions of students have as much (or more) rights to “life and pursuit of happiness (and an education)” as the approximately 9 million gun-owners of the nation. These gun folks are guaranteed the right to own and “bear weapons” by our Constitution—-but that guarantee does not extend to any and all weapons systems. We rightly restrict Tommy guns, Browning Automatic Rifles, hand-grenades, armored vehicles and half tracks. Our national laws clearly restrict automatic weapons. But weapons like the AR15 which fire as many rounds as automatic weapons at similar rates, fall through the cracks in the law. These lethal weapons of war can still be purchased by anyone.
But that “baloney” distinction between automatic (banned) and semiautomatic (pull the trigger for each shot) is meaningless under the present state and national laws in the USA. The distinction between automatic and semiautomatic is a form of useful but meaningless terminology which permits the powerful weapons-manufactures in this nation to aggressively hawk military-equivalent hardware designed to kill as many humans as possible to any one with the cash to purchase one—teenagers, addicts, felons, illegal aliens, the mentally unstable.
In the recent deadly massacre at Florida’s, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 19 year old, mentally disturbed perpetrator—Nicholas Cruze is known to have fired off 150 rounds in six minutes. That fact is significant. It means that teenager Cruze, armed with his military-style AR15, with a thirty round magazine (he must have carried at least five magazines) was in effect armed as one of our Marines or Special Forces would have been. Cruze was not a formally-trained marksman—and even with time expended to reload five of his 30 round magazine clips into the weapon and time to take aim at his innocent young victims —was still able to fire off on average 25 rounds per minute, or one deadly, high-velocity bullet @ every two seconds!
The M16 that Cruz’s weapon was styled after has been the standard arm of the US military since Vietnam. This is the weapon issued to all our military forces since the Vietnam War, and was used and remains in use in all our wars and military actions since then. It is perfectly effective for what it was designed to do. Kill as many enemy soldiers as is possible in the shortest possible time.
Cruze’s AR15 is the semi-automatic version of the M16. But the difference between them is just as thin as a see-through slice of baloney. The M16 weapon in the hands of a trained US military marksmen has a safe sustained rate of fire of 15 rounds a minute, and as much as 60 rounds a minute, firing in its semi-automatic mode. So Cruz’s rate of fire was well within the range of what one would expect from one of our troopers fighting for his life in Afghanistan or Iraq. Faster rates of fire will heat up the M16 barrel and could cause disastrous barrel failure.
Thus it is plain that there is no significant difference in lethality of the two weapons. The M16 fires the same ammo, has the same sights and mechanisms, and the same gas-fired reloading action as Cruze’s AR15. The only difference is that the M16 can fire automatically as well as semiautomatically. In battle, that (automatic) mode of use is almost never used. It burns up too much ammo too fast and can cause the barrel to heat up and burst.
The weapon that youngster Cruz purchased and used with such tragic effect—the AR15 which can fire off 25 rounds (or more) in a minute is designed for the theater of war...not for recreation, hunting or target shooting. It does not belong in the hands of civilians. It should be banned.
No one is proposing that our citizens give up their legitimate weapons..as per the Second Amendment. But the government has the right and the duty to protect all of its citizens from the deadly misuse of lethal weapons of war. The government has a clear right to limit automatic weapons and equally lethal semiautomatic weapons which have no other function than to kill humans effectively. Then too, we must balance conflicting rights. The rights of citizens to own and use military weapons of war does not trump the rights of students to a safe, gun-free, anxiety-free school where they can be secure in their devotion to the important goal education. Though the public debate and the resulting legislative actions would seem to belie that fact.
What is plain as a baloney sandwich, is that it is necessary to restrict the possession of weapons like the AR15 (and others just like it)—-designed only for the theater of war—- from every civilian Tom, Dick and Harriet in the State of Florida. Had that proviso been part of the Florida bill—-it would have been something to crow about.
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