Donald Trump has come up with the obvious solution to school shootings. This is his grand strategy:
- Install fencing
- Metal detectors
- Armed guards
- “Highly trained” teachers with concealed weapons
- More rigid school discipline systems
And America should make it “far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions.” Well, that’s clear, then. To end the seemingly endless series of mass murders at US schools, the answer is to…er… have more guns. Why did no one think of this before?
Essentially, Trump wants to turn your average school into an airport. Always assuming one of Trump’s “mentally deranged” folk don’t mow down pupils with an automatic weapon before they reach the school gates, what a thrill going to school would be.
Presumably, pupils would require some kind of photo ID, rather like a passport, to get into school and then they’d need to have their school bags searched before they pass through a metal detector and say good morning to God knows how many armed guards before reaching the classroom where your peace studies teacher will be standing there with an AK-47. I am sure the “more rigid school discipline systems” will be adhered to instantly.
All this assumes that the new armed guards and “highly trained” teachers are not “mentally deranged” and don’t suddenly turn their weapons on more innocent children. It seems to me that Trump has overlooked one very simple solution: why not make it much harder for anyone, never mind just the “mentally deranged”, to get hold of guns in the first place?
Trump says he has the answer for this, too: “The existence of evil in our world is not a reason to disarm law-abiding citizens—the existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens,” he asserts. Clearly, I don’t have the brain of a former American president, but we don’t always know who these “mentally deranged” people actually are. Presumably, the gun shop can ask the prospective gun owner a series of questions. “Are you mentally deranged?” If the answer is yes, the gun shop may have saved many lives and perhaps even prevented yet another massacre. This scenario depends, of course, on people being honest about whether they are “mentally deranged” or not and I suspect if you were “mentally deranged” there is the possibility you may not wish to share this information.
As my loyal reader knows only too well, I have mental health issues which, to date, have not seen me carry out mass shootings. In fact, even at my lowest ebb I have never thought about killing others. Like most people with said mental health issues, I was always more likely to damage my own health than anyone else’s. And even if I did feel inclined to load up on guns, I’d find it quite tricky to do so here in the UK. In America, the situation is rather different.
Whereas in the UK, we regard gun ownership as generally a bad thing, in the USA the right to bear arms is actually part of their constitution. It’s not so much a right for some people as an obligation. And here’s the thing. If guns are easy to get hold of, they will inevitably fall into the hands of someone who is “mentally deranged”, whatever that literally means.
We will hear lots of fine words from Americans in the coming weeks and months, as well as some seriously unhinged words from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and in the end nothing will change. Like every president before him, Joe Biden will not take firm action over gun control because it would be a massive vote-loser. When a tragedy like Uvalde occurs, tears are shed and people are angry. Then nothing happens until the next mass shooting and then nothing will happen yet again.
There is one solution to mass shootings: strong gun controls. America will never go down that road so expect before long another totally avoidable bloodbath at one of their schools. It’s freedom, American style. Some things will never change.
