Think of this as one of the first cracks in the dam. If you’ve been watching the constant drone of tragedy TV all weekend, pretty much all you’ve heard is the clamor throughout the land for more gun control. But Chief Tim Fitch who runs the St. Louis County PD sees the problem a little differently. As far as he’s concerned, more laws won’t save the life of a single student. Or mall walker. As he told stlouis.cbslocal.com, “If there’s somebody that’s really hellbent on doing something like this, they’re not going to care what the law is.” Fitch’s solution: end the policies that give whack-jobs like James Holmes and Adam Lanza the comfort of knowing they’re walking into gun-free, target-rich environments . . .
Chief Fitch wants to arm teachers and school administrative personnel. He likens it to arming pilots after 9/11.
“I see it no differently,” he said. “Pilots have been armed now for many many years, we’ve not had another hijacking and the issue is, for the bad guy, he doesn’t know which airplane he’s getting on, if the pilot is armed or not.”
Fitch knows he has a tough row to hoe in advocating putting guns in schools. The question is why that should be. How many more children have to die because people are squeamish about having armed, trained personnel on hand, in the schools who can react to an active shooter (or, God forbid, terrorist) situation faster than the police ever could.
So along with the anguished cries for a national conversation about guns (read: more gun control laws) more voices like Chief Fitch’s — people who understand that, in a world where guns area a reality, no matter how many laws our legislators can muster, they won’t stop a determined psycho — will begin to filter through the noise.
As John Lott told National Review’s John Fund,
“With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
Wonder why that is.
