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Police dithered while a high schooler murdered 19 children and two teachers in an Uvalde, Texas elementary school. That gives us much to ponder.
As a Pennsylvanian, I might relish the thought of Texans being all hats, boots and no backbone. Surely, law enforcement from our noble state would have walked into rapid fire, chins forward and hot lead blazing. Hero Aaron Salter, of neighboring and equally-noble New York, died saving people... or trying to.
Or perhaps we should publicly execute the officers who suddenly took interest in lumbering bureaucratic protocol when confronted with a military rifle. People punch down more than we like to think, including those in authority. If the perpetrator was handcuffed or unarmed and selling loose cigarettes, experience tells us police may have killed him with their bare hands. One-sided pile-ons bring out the bravery. Apparently, it was safer for the Uvalde cops to handcuff wailing mothers than risk a good drilling from a NATO round.
Public executions too much you say? Well, when we militarize the population with military rifles, military responses come with the territory. You don't win battles by curling up in a hole. Why would the police be allowed to live while children died? A televised firing squad in Terre Haute would be in order. Future police would not dither, and children would live.
I am being rhetorical, of course. Nobody, other than a lockstepping phalanx, would walk into gunfire, and then only with gritted teeth and faith in afterlife. It was not silly for soldiers years ago to dress brightly and march to fife and drum. That's how commanders got people to do what they didn't want to do. Lines of soldiers were killing machines and they could dominate any musketeer. That is likely why Uvalde police waited; to form their phalanx. Arm the teachers? Slap my face and call me a libtard for thinking this is a lot to ask of middle-aged women with arms full of Magic Treehouse books.
These are stupid ponderings for a stupid scenario, Monday morning quarterbacking fit for the moral self-absorption of Fox News. Now that I have gotten you this far, dear reader: Here is what we need to discuss. Why did an 18-year old have a Daniel Defense AR-15 and why did we not help him before his binge on death?
The first question may be moot. Gun control is water under the bridge, because people already have millions of AR-15s and rootin tootin Americans won't give them up. Gun control is also politically stillborn, because a few well-paid congressmen waving a sentence fragment from the Constitution can stop a majority. If you want votes, I recommend NRA stickers. We are left, then, with only with the mental health question.
School officials will assure the public of their strong doors, their armed police, their metal detectors or their emergency protocols. High drama chest beating. Apples, bananas, peaches, pears, plums... gibberish to an angry boy with a Ruger MPR. The metal detector would chirp uselessly while he waltzes through, shooting the guard and riddling his way through any door. Uvalde came close to proving that step by step.
Those school officials probably could not tell you much about how they are helping children not shoot people. School is about reading, writing, arithmetic and mountains of assessment data, not moral training.
That needs to change.
When the founding fathers created the Constitution, not only were their noggin's full of well-regulated muskets, but very solid citizenry was in there too. They wanted a laissez-faire government as opposed to an authoritarian one. It meant giving people maximum freedoms and letting them interact. This gave the people more power than they ever had under a king. But with great power comes great responsibility. Washington and Jefferson knew it and I learned it again by watching Spiderman.
To make this system work, the ordinary people had to be extraordinarily responsible and educated. Without that education and sense of responsibility, authoritarian governments rotate into place. We should leave that for the Russians. Americans had to be vested in the nation and be darn smart. They would have votes and guns, after all, neither of which should be wielded drunk and dumbly. Those founding fathers spoke more than one language, had perfect penmanship, designed their own houses and... wait for it... pushed hard for public education.
Think of Americans as made, not born. Calves are biological organisms that are born. Humans are sociological ones that we must socialize. If we have weakened the other institutions that socialized our youth and gave them meaning, then we must do more of that socialization in schools. If we want to keep our guns intact, then we had better keep our hearts and minds intact.
Greg Walker is a sociologist living in Lock Haven