QUESTION: You are not in favor of banning all guns?
ANSWER: Absolutely not. If that were the case, the only people with guns will be government and criminals who buy them on the black market anyway. This is as absurd as outlawing prostitution and expecting nobody will do it anymore when that practice they say was the first profession and has been around since the dawn of time. The Roman Emperor passed a law that you could not pay a prostitute with a coin that bore the image of the Emperor of which all did to stop the practice. Solution? Mint tokens you could buy to pay the prostitute, she would redeem them later and no laws were violated.
You cannot legislate and change human behavior. Only a fool believes a law will prevent a crime. Most people assumed they would not get caught anyhow. Crimes of passion take place in the heat of a moment and imposing the death penalty is not something anyone will think about beforehand rationally and stop.
Look at the facts of this case of the Florida shooting where 17 people were killed. There was an ARMED OFFICER on campus to protect students and he did nothing to stop the shooter. County Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, did not enter the building. Three other Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were also outside the school and had not entered. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were cowering behind their vehicles and not one of them had gone into the school to protect the children.
Cruz shot students on two floors, then discarded his weapons, and walked out with the fleeing students blending in. He then went to a Walmart and bought a drink at Subway and stopped at McDonald’s. He was unarmed walking down a residential street when he was arrested without incident.
On top of that, numerous records demonstrate that the shooter displayed mental behavioral troubles for years and nothing was done. So obviously, using a criminal background check is pointless in these type of incidents.
Cruz was clearly mentally disturbed. Trump is correct. Mental facilities were closed to save money. The shooter was fixated with guns and killing and no doubt choose Valentine’s Day because of its significance not with love, but with the famous Mob shooting known as the St Valentine’s Day Massacre which took place in Chicago on February 14th, 1929.
So here we have (1) an officer who did nothing so posting armed guards does not guarantee anything, (2) no mental health assistance, (3) failure to check backgrounds, not for criminal history, but mental history.
Even banning an assault rifle will not prevent something like this. He could have used multiple shotguns and handguns. It is not the gun that kills, it is the person. In China, 33 were killed and 130 were injured in what is being called a China Knife-Wielding Spree. They had no guns at all and killed more people with a knife. So where will outlawing all guns eliminate the problem?
I would require a certified doctor’s statement that there has been no mental illness. Some sort of mental examination. Yes, age should be 21. There should also be some sort of training course they must go through to be certified to handle a gun.
The people who do these sort of things are the crazy people – NOT criminals. So a criminal background check that shows someone sold drugs or robbed a store, says nothing in this context. It is a mental health issue. The same when people kill their own family and then kill themselves. They are in so much pain that they want to end it all, but fear to leave their family behind and what they might face. So they take everyone with them often even the dog. This too is a mental issue NOT criminal.
