Let\u2019s get one thing straight. As a teacher, coach, and an administrator; I spent much of my career working with law enforcement. I found that almost every police officer, sheriff\u2019s deputy, or state trooper I worked with was competent, motivated to protect people, and well aware of the potential risks they faced around every corner. They were (and are) exactly the kind of men and women I wanted to \u201chave my back\u201d when things went crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We place them in an incredibly difficult position. They are supposed to protect us from crime; but if they try to act proactively, they are \u201cinterfering\u201d. We want them to make us safer, but resent it when they enforce the law on us. And we ask, no, demand, that they risk their lives for us. Sure, \u201cit\u2019s what they signed up for\u201d. But that doesn\u2019t change their desire to go home to their families after work, like anyone else. But they\u2019re not anyone else, on duty or off. They\u2019re cops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t an excuse for the excesses we saw in Minneapolis, or this week in Akron. But the officers, deputies and troopers I knew wouldn\u2019t do that. The failure of a few shouldn\u2019t indict them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And here\u2019s the most impossible thing we ask: protect us from the mass shooters; our wholly American problem. We expect that they will run \u201cto the shooting\u201d rather than away from it. And, honestly, most of them will. But the United States seems to have a virtually unlimited supply of high powered weapons, available literally \u201con demand\u201d. Hundreds of shots fired in the Uvalde school, seventy some fired at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, fifty rounds shot in the Tops Market in Buffalo. The \u201cshooters\u201d can act so quickly, there\u2019s no way for the police to protect us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No matter how fast the police get there (less than six minutes in Buffalo), the \u201cbutcher\u2019s bill\u201d is already written. In Buffalo a retired police officer sacrificed his life. In Uvalde, conflict in the hallway among the nineteen officers, held back by the incident \u201ccommander\u201d, will probably never be known. If they were like the police officers I knew, I suspect it was more than intense. But many of the kids were already dead before they even arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Highland Park, Illinois, the target was a Fourth of July parade. The police were on the scene, directing the procession. They\u2019re response was immediate and appropriate. Watch the videos: the crowd, the parade participants, are running away from the gunfire. The police are guiding, directing, sheltering the onlookers and victims, and searching for the shooter. They are in the line of fire, doing their duty, their job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are the \u201cgood guys with the guns\u201d. They are the ones willing to lay down their own lives to protect others. And there\u2019s not much they can do about the young white man with a gun on the rooftop of the building, or who storms into the supermarket, school, church, synagogue or nightclub. So let\u2019s stop making them the \u201csolution\u201d, for a problem they can\u2019t possibly solve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because, by making them the solution, we are really making them the \u201cfall guys\u201d for our national malady. We can\u2019t solve the two actual problems: the ready availability of high powered, high capacity weapons; and the willingness of young, mostly white men to use them to commit atrocities. Or more accurately, we won\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We won\u2019t, because we\u2019ve allowed common sense to be thrown out the window by political rhetoric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States has been here before. In the 1920\u2019s, fully automatic weapons flooded the American market. We all know them, \u201cTommy Guns\u201d, Thompson sub-machine guns. If you don\u2019t remember, find an old black and white gangster movie from the late 1940\u2019s with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson or George Raft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tommy Guns were designed as \u201ctrench sweepers\u201d for\u00a0\u00a0World War I type combat, with the rapid fire ability to clear the enemy at close range.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the post-war world, with the passage of the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment banning alcohol use in the United States; crime became rampant.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Tommy Gun lead the way as criminals provided society with booze.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Bonnie and Clyde\u2019s crime spree in the Central United States, and the Saint Valentine\u2019s Day Massacre in Chicago, the US government regulated automatic weapons by licensing them and requiring a steep tax. While it didn\u2019t solve the problem right away, ultimately it limited the number and raised the cost of the fully automatic weapons available. They stopped being the gangster \u201cweapon of choice\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So the argument that there is no \u201clegislative\u201d solution that could cure our current assault weapon crisis is simply not true. It was done in the 1930\u2019s, and it could be done again, if there was a legislative \u201cwill\u201d to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The deeper question \u2013 why are some Americans, especially young, white, males: drawn to committing such terrible acts?\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t pretend to have an answer to that question, or a solution for the problem.\u00a0\u00a0But I do know one thing \u2013 we could take the weapon of choice out of their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we only had the will to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"