Vice President Joe Biden will make his recommendations for stricter federal gun laws to President Obama next week. Thursday he said his conversations with advocacy groups had already discovered a broad and strong consensus favoring a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines and universal background checks on gun purchasers, including those involved in private sales. HERE IN KANSAS at least one more school district has followed NRA logic by deciding to let its security officers carry guns. The Emporia school district’s board of education voted Wednesday to allow its guards to carry guns starting Feb. 1. The guards would have to meet new job requirements, including law enforcement experience and training. Two of the three guards are retired police officers who already meet those requirements. WHAT KANSAS schools say to a neutral observer is that some schools, such as those in Emporia and Wichita, are dangerous places while others, like those in Moran, Humboldt and Iola, are safe.
Biden told a Washington Post reporter “ . . . I want to make clear that we’re not going to get caught up in the notion that, unless we can do everything, we’re going to do nothing.”
With this warning given, the nation can expect modest first steps toward effective gun controls despite the horror of the Newtown, Conn., massacre of 20 children and six of their teachers.
But each journey starts with a single step. By all means, let’s get on with banning the manufacture, ownership and sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines. Let us also set up a buy-back program for them.
Background checks of gun buyers should include finger-printing and other scientific ways to establish a permanent record of the individual buyer tied to the serial numbers of the weapons purchased. A statement of why the weapon was purchased should be taken and limits set on the number of weapons an individual can buy in any month. The goal should be to prevent back-alley sales to those who can’t qualify for purchasing from a legitimate dealer.
As could have been predicted, the National Rifle Association has branded the Biden studies “preparations for an assault on the Second Amendment” and said it would have nothing to do with the effort to write new laws aimed at reducing gun deaths.
The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to own guns. It does not prevent government from controlling the sale of deadly weapons.
Kathy Toelkes, spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Education, told the Associated Press that 151 security officers and 42 resource officers are hired in the 286 school districts in the state. That doesn’t include school resource officers who are active police officers working at the schools under cooperative agreements, she said.
Wichita’s school district, for example, for years has had an agreement with local police for armed resource officers in addition to its own district-employed, unarmed, security officers.
State educators say that most small districts, such as those in Allen County, don’t hire security guards because they don’t feel they can afford them. With tight budgets, they would rather have a teacher in the classroom, one remarked.
Not really.
What the history of all schools in this wonderful country of ours shows us is that shootings in schools are extremely rare. Has there ever been one in Kansas? What school board members in Emporia should ask themselves is what life lesson they are teaching their children by placing armed guards in the hallways. That they should pack heat to cope?
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
