Solving the school shooting crisis

While the facts — such as questionable police action — continue to unspool, one fact jumped out at me: Mad Dog Ramos entered the building through an unlocked door.

A door, that a journalist on the scene reported, was supposed to have been locked, with a self-locking mechanism.

Even when I was in elementary school in the South Bronx in the late ‘40s, after assembly in the school yard, after students entered the school, the doors were locked.

The only unlocked doors were at the main entrance, the one that led to the principal’s office. I believe an aide was stationed there. And this was long before the South Bronx became a hell hole.

Had the door at Robb Elementary been locked, what would Ramos have done?

He had already shot at a couple of people at the funeral home across the street.

If locked out of the school would he have tried to break in, through a door or a window?

Maybe, but that would take a little time and cops would be called.

Would he have gone to the Wendy’s where he had worked, or try to find another target?

We don’t know.

I think he would have tried to find someone to kill because he was in a murderous rage.

He had two AR-15s, legally bought. They each cost about $800 and ammunition is expensive. Where did this 18-year-old loser get that much money? 

I have not read that he took a background check, but U.S. law requires it when firearms are bought from a federally licensed dealer. (The cry for “universal background checks,” which I support, would expand the check to all gun sales, such as at gun shows and person to person.)

Let’s assume he passed the background check. Usually, they take just a few minutes as the dealer calls in the information and hears back.

Everyone is heartsick over the death of the children. Everyone wants an answer.

A lot of people think banning so-called “assault weapons” is the answer. I don’t.

Why?

Because we had a 10-year ban starting in 1994 and the results, at best, we’re mixed. There was no dramatic drop in gun homicides. Is that my opinion?

No, it is the liberal Washington Post’s own fact-checking.  

Most gun homicides are by handguns — the real problem — not rifles. More people die from knife attacks than by rifle, of any kind. In 2020, 1,739 people died by knife, 455 by rifle. In other words, three times more people died from knife attacks than rifle attacks, but there is no clamor to ban knives.

Why?

Because the rifle attacks are so high profile. When they happen, the images of dead children override any attempt to deal with the problem logically.

Many people are convinced that Congress — no shining star here — is incapable of producing meaningful gun law.

Wrong. 

In 2019 it came together to ban bump stock weapons. And — right now — Congress seems willing to enact at least some small changes. This is happening even as I write. 

A simple locked door might have prevented the massacre at Robb.

This suggests to me that every American school must have self-locking doors, with panic bars that open from the inside, in case of fire, or attack.

Every school in America should have an armed and trained cop.

I know the “defund the police” crowd despises that idea, but if they don’t like it, they need to suggest something better.

It is disgusting that we have reached this point where high schools almost everywhere have metal detectors.

That’s not really because of the guns. They are the symptom of a sickness and immorality in a nation that takes death so lightly.

Other killings — such as in our major cities — require different interventions,  but the school mass shooting problem seems easy to solve.

Lock the doors, arm the guards.