Real solutions needed

What is it that Americans really want? Is it safety, or anarchy, an open society or a police state? It would seem the answers should be obvious, but such things aren’t so clear-cut in 21st-century life, or for Connecticut in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown. When the National Rifle Association (NRA) came out with a statement on the tragedy at a press conference a week after the shootings of Dec. 14, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for armed guards in all schools across the nation. Never mind that this would give the gun business a major boost, making the proposed solution seem more self-serving than community-minded. The implication is that Americans should accept the necessity of living in a society that’s a throwback to the image of a Wild West where every citizen should have been armed and ready to shoot at any provocation, at a moment’s notice. Except that just to keep a balance of power, rather than being armed with a sidearm, one would wish a rapid-fire automatic weapon as the preferred protection.This hardly seems like a path to a safer environment for our school children or any other Americans. Fully trained and professional soldiers might be able to handle live firearms in public places, evaluating situations carefully and with the understanding that military experience can bring before taking lethal action. But security guards, even ex-military, who see only sporadic violence might have a harder time accurately assessing the intentions of people in a crowded place, who may not be actively brandishing a weapon but still might seem threatening. The more loaded weapons there are on the street, the more likely they will be fired, whether in error or in justifiable self-defense.Such a sadly predictable response from the NRA was both disappointing and disturbing. There has to be a better solution to our societal problem of mass violence in the schools and other public places over the past decades than arming all of us. To say more people are killed with blunt force trauma than with automatic weapons doesn’t make anyone feel safer in our schools, movie theaters or shopping malls. And it doesn’t present a full picture of those American lives, especially on a terribly regular basis in individual neighborhoods in cities like Hartford, Bridgeport, Chicago and Baltimore, which are touched by gun violence but don’t result in death, but rather injury, fear, grief and anger. Better answers must be found, and serious, respectful suggestions should be forthcoming from responsible gun owners to address gun violence and its effects on the American reality. If gun owners want their rights to own guns protected, it’s time they thought of ways to protect their fellow citizens that don’t include increasing the number of guns on the streets by hundreds of thousands. While long-term solutions won’t be simple, they must be targeted through careful thought and research and implemented with cooperative, open-minded effort from all who care about the kind of society the United States will offer to future generations.