Tuesday, June 02, 2015

'An Armed Society Is A Safe Society" Quoth Texas State Representative Jonathan Stickland


He's a Republican with a wolf smile:








Texas is now allowing students, faculty and staff over 21 years old to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, including in classrooms and professors' offices.  Delicious, because of the arms race aspect of this:  Imagine being a professor at one of those institutions, familiar with student anger after they receive bad grades.  Now you will feel forced to be armed to your teeth, too!

Does an Uzi fit inside a backpack?

Never mind.  I know that "the bad guys with the guns" won't be stopped by laws, but neither will they be stopped by "the good guys with guns."  Note that the police gets a lot of training with guns and they still hit bystanders when things get murky and  confusing.  Having lots of additional guns in the hands of untrained civilians is not going to make the resolution of mass shootings easier.   At least the Texas lawmakers should have thought about that.

Is an armed society actually safer?  Has Rep. Stickland actually researched his argument?  And if so, how does he explain the vastly greater numbers of gun deaths in the US than in the less armed societies?  Are gun deaths of and by toddlers and suicides from gun deaths counted in his mind?  What about accidentally shooting your neighbors?

Part of the problem, in my view, is that the NRA has turned the ownership of a dangerous and tricky tool into something like a human right without creating the commensurate human responsibility:  To be properly trained in the use of guns, to employ the necessary care in their storage, and to be responsible for the outcomes of all misuse.

Imagine a world where anyone, in almost any condition, and without any training should be allowed to drive an automobile anywhere, including off the roads or on either side of streets.  Then imagine that no car insurance would be required.

That's what the Texas concealed carry law sounds like to me.