Defeating the Gun Menace

Following several terrible school-shootings, officials across the country rolled up their sleeves and went after the nation’s gun-problem with stern resolve. Spokes-persons announced that “we have had enough.” Since that time, nearly every week has brought new headlines on weapons-seizures and students severely disciplined. Among them was a report carried in the Washington Examiner concerning a weapons bust by Alexandria Police at the Douglas MacArthur Elementary School. (Early indications suggested that the perp would serve hard time for this violation.)

The crackdown has been – steady yourself – on toy guns, gun-like shapes, and even on fingers cocked and pointed to simulate guns. One student was suspended for fashioning leggo blocks into a pistol-shape, and another was disciplined when he aimed his “finger-gun” at a classmate while making an explosive sound with his mouth. (The report did not indicate whether his shot struck the intended target, went wild, or hit someone else. Fortunately, the perp was disarmed and apprehended before he could reload his finger for a second shot.)

The criminal arrested and charged with “brandishing a weapon” in Alexandria, VA, was a 10-year-old boy who had brought a toy gun into the school in his backpack. He had not pointed it at anyone, but school staff couldn’t tell if it was a toy or real. Police arrested the boy at the school and took him to a juvenile detention center. Administration officials are considering expulsion. (I’m not making this up!)

Most school administrators have been unwilling to discuss these incidents with reporters or other outside parties, citing school policy which prohibits airing disciplinary cases outside the school system. In some cases, however, parents of disciplined students have gone public to the media with details. They complain that schools are spending time and resources on nonsensical “enforcement” which will:

• Siphon off effort that might have been spent guarding against real guns and real threats; and
• Give a false sense of security to school staff who might believe that genuine threats have been eliminated by these actions.

Having grown up in a childhood environment of pretend gunplay, I’m bemused by the current hysteria over toy guns. At age 8-9, my days were filled with wild shootouts in the back-alleys of the small city where we lived. During mornings and afternoons cap-gun shots rang out in our neighborhood, as combatants found refuge behind garden walls and fired around the corners of houses and garages.

My dad, a WWII veteran, understood the importance of high-quality arms, so he bought a cap-pistol for me that had a revolving cylinder on which you placed a paper disk with six shots. After firing your six, you had to reload – just like with a real revolver. (This toy would have been banned by proposed laws in some areas.) The caps were jumbo-sized, so each shot roared realistically. I recall that the pistol cost $4, which was a great deal of money for a toy at the time. No cheap plastic stuff then. I treasured that gun and fired hundreds of rounds with it. (The only wounds incurred were knees scraped during dives for cover.)

My buddies and I continued our daily shootouts at the OK Corral, Laredo, Dodge City, Deadwood, Tombstone, and other famous places, until we suddenly discovered baseball at around age 9. I have no idea what happened to my realistic cap-pistol, but I’m reminded of it by the current war on toy-guns.

To my knowledge, none of my 1951 boyhood comrades-in-arms entered a life of crime, ever shot anyone, carried a real gun, or even became gun aficionados. This was play. We were boys, doing what boys have done from time immemorial. (Full disclosure: Today I own only an 1853 Harpers Ferry musket, given to me by my grandpop. My grandkids think I rode with Mosby, so I’m ready, in case he rides again.)

My sons played the same way in the 1970s. Both became real-life soldiers, but neither is a gun-guy today. Their own sons’ toy guns were scattered all over their homes. They won’t become criminals, either. Childhood fantasies don’t cross over into reality in healthy, decent families that are grounded in faith, love, industry and goodness. There is much confusion about these matters in American society today.

We do have a problem in the country with guns and violence, but it’s not connected to toy guns, leggo-pistols, artfully chewed pop-tarts, or cocked fingers. To begin with, we seem to have forgotten Abraham Lincoln’s famous question:

“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”

The answer, of course, is “four,” because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one. Just so, calling a toy gun (or finger) a “dangerous weapon” does not make it so. What it does, however, is make school administrators and police authorities look ridiculous. Liane Rozzell, executive director of Families & Allies of Virginia’s Youth, summarized the hysterical environment well when she said:

“A toy gun is no danger to anyone. A 10-year-old is not a fully formed adult… That kind of situation should be dealt with outside the courts and the justice system.”

Another unanticipated consequence of the anti-gun hysteria will be lawsuits filed against school systems by parents of children who have been wrongly charged with “firearms violations” because of silly incidents with toys. Schools will end up paying thousands – perhaps millions – in damages, and the careers of some decent administrators and teachers will be ruined because common sense flew out the window in the aftermath of horrible crimes which could not have been prevented by any of the measures being taken against brandishers of toy weapons (or fingers).

School- or mall-shootings present a law-enforcement or security problem different from other crime-scenarios. Every year, for instance, some 6,000 bank robberies are committed in the USA. Security systems stop some of them, but many are carried out – at least temporarily. Some innocent people are injured or even killed during the course of these crimes. The FBI takes charge of the investigations, but we don’t obsess about preventing bank robberies at all costs, or limiting how much cash a bank can have. Robberies don’t change the way we conduct business in our everyday lives. When a bank-robbery occurs the FBI pursues the guilty parties. We don’t try to stop all robberies with preventive crackdowns.

But multiple murders during school-shootings are different matters. They are particularly horrible because they involve children. Americans have a particular revulsion to the injury of children, and have shown themselves willing to permit extreme measures in order to prevent such crimes. If we knew which measures would prevent them altogether, we would almost certainly implement them.

Unfortunately, we do not know the magical solution to this problem – or, saying it differently, solutions that might be effective would probably exceed Constitutional boundaries. Confiscation of all weapons might stop school-shootings such as Sandy Hook, but this could not legally be done in our Republic. Such measures are impossible inside the boundaries of our legal system.

Beyond those considerations, the confiscation of over 300 million firearms, nationwide, would be socially and physically impossible. It simply cannot be done. Politicians who suggest otherwise are being dishonest, and those who propose abolishing seminal provisions like the Second Amendment are dangerous. It is entirely within the scope of human nature that some politicians will arise to exploit such situations for their own aggrandizement. Obviously we are seeing some of that now.

All that being said, calm and wise deliberation is needed regarding prevention of these horrible crimes, to the greatest extent possible. Obviously, most of them are committed by mentally or emotionally disturbed individuals who need medication, therapy, incarceration, or all three. They should not be circulating freely in our society, within easy reach of weapons. When they are detected by medical or educational personnel, legal authorities must be consulted.

Had this been standard operating procedure, several terrible past shootings, including Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech, might have been prevented. Those shooters were “grenades” waiting to go off, but people aware of them did nothing to respect the individuals’ “privacy.” At the very least, we need to furnish legal protection for professionals who can help us identify dangerous people before they kill more children.

Finally, we can stop the war on toy guns and on children – especially boys. Not a single child will be saved by this silly campaign. And while we’re at it, a little education would help school staff recognize what is a real gun and what isn’t. Sanity needs to be restored here.