Imagine, if you will, a gun being dropped - or a student taking a gun from a purse - or a gun being stolen from a teacher's desk (things are stolen in schools every day) - or a gun left lying on a desk picked up by a curious 5-year-old (or worse yet, picked up by a high school student with a grudge) - or an innocent parent entering a school and forgetting to sign in while a trigger-happy teacher starts blasting away - or imagine the results, if a shooter did enter the school, of teachers hiding behind doors and conducting a shoot-out with a guy armed with an automatic weapon and wearing bullet-proof armor. A .22 caliber pistol is not going to be much of a defense. Even police officers who are trained and equipped to deal with shooters sometimes get injured or killed.
Do you think there are teachers who suffer from mental illness? Might one of them not go berserk? Or how about those who have proposed that we hire returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to work as guards in schools? Do any of them suffer from PTSD and would they all be stable and reliable, sitting there in a school full of children?
Trust me - the answer to too many guns in the wrong hands is not more guns in the wrong hands. I am not advocating getting rid of all guns - I am advocating the elimination of assault rifles in ANYONE's hands, and much more strict background checks of anyone who wishes to buy a gun. We can't eliminate all mudrers, but perhaps we can slow them down.
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