USA TODAY Roundtable on Guns in America.
How should the nation respond to the shooting in Newtown, Conn.? USA TODAY's Eileen Rivers hosted an online discussion withLillian Bittman, a former member of the Newtown Board of Education and volunteer at Sandy Hook Elementary School;Pete Earley, author of CRAZY: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness; Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence; John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime; and Lucinda Roy, author of No Right to Remain Silent: What We've Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech. Their remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
USA TODAY: Lillian, how are people in Newtown coping with the tragedy?
BITTMAN: I think when we go through the grieving process there are different of stages. There was a very hollow feeling in town. (When schools reopened), as those of us with children in school put our children on the buses, we started crying uncontrollably. I think that whenever you have tragedy and you go back to "normal," it feels wrong somehow. I think we're at the stage now of deep, deep grief.
You have to understand that parents in Newtown are coming to terms with what connections everyone has. You might have a high-schooler who knows a boy whose brother died. Or your college daughter might have babysat for one of the children who was killed. For Newtown families, because this is so personal, that grieving process is different and children are much more likely to be afraid. For Newtown parents, our very first thing to do is to surround all of our children, every child in the community, with love and make sure they feel safe.
ROY: People shouldn't think those small gestures don't help. There were days I got through things because people sent me little notes.
USA TODAY: Some people are saying if now is not the time to talk about gun control, then when is? John, do you think gun control is the answer?
LOTT: I wish there were simple answers. When something bad happens with a gun, I think most people's natural reaction is to think, well, if I just get rid of the guns, bad things won't happen. The problem you face is: Who obeys the law? If you pass laws that primarily disarm law abiding individuals, and not criminals, you produce the opposite effect that you'd like to have. Just to give you an example, take these so-called gun-free zones where we try and ban guns to make you safe. I have kids in school. I have kids in college. It's understandable that you think if you ban guns it would make them safe. But the victims become essentially sitting ducks for the criminals.
BITTMAN: John, are you suggesting security guards or are you suggesting teachers be armed?
LOTT: I'd like to go back to where we were prior to 1995 where we allowed people who had permits for carrying concealed weapons — be they teachers, principals, janitors or others — to do it. The limits that you have with having uniformed guards there is that they themselves become the first targets. The Israelis learned this the hard way with the terrorism they had over the decade. They found that no matter how much money they spent, they just couldn't spend enough money to cover all possible targets.
BITTMAN: I thought you might say that, because from a school district's perspective, adding armed guards would take money from our core purpose, which is education. (And arming teachers isn't a solution.) I heard another gentleman on a different network suggest that if the principal at Sandy Hook had a gun locked in her office, she could have taken this guy out. Well, this principal was not in her office. And from what I'm understanding from news reports, this was all over in a matter of minutes (so even an armed teacher might not have been able to stop it). I'm not saying ban all guns, John. I come from the Midwest. I understand hunting culture. But when you have terrorist kinds of weapons in our country, I think we need to have a rational discussion and not beat each other up. There has to be a compromise here.
HORWITZ: This whole conversation about arming teachers I find is really a sad commentary on our society. We allow this weapon, a Bushmaster, to be sold indiscriminately, and then we say, "Well, teachers, you need to be trained for this type of action." I find that to be juvenile and really ridiculous. The idea that we're going to have an arms race out there — we need to de-escalate this. The idea that we should be asking teachers, whose job it is to teach, to prepare because we have allowed too many assault weapons in this society is not a fair burden for teachers. And John, we're not talking about banning guns in people's homes or anything like that. We're trying to say, let's have a rational discussion about this. Let's look at some of the other facts. When Ronald Reagan was shot, he was surrounded by the best well-armed guards in the world. They couldn't stop the situation, so why should we expect teachers to?
USA TODAY: John, what about an assault weapons ban?
LOTT: We had an assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004. I don't know of any academic studies that found any benefits in terms of crime rates. But more importantly, people need to understand what the guns are that we're talking about here. They look the same on the outside. But one is a civilian version of the gun. It's semi-automatic. The military weapon is a machine gun.
ROY: From the point of view of a 6-year-old or 7-year-old, either gun is pretty terrible because it's going to blow them to pieces. One of the things we need to think about is how we have amped up killing. Now we have people like Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech who had more than 200 rounds left when he killed himself. He fired 174 rounds in 11 minutes. It looks as though the shooter at this elementary school fired an amazing number of rounds in 10 minutes. You should not be able to have a personal weapon of mass destruction and head into a school. We should all accept that and move on to the next argument, which is how those who are suffering from mental illness get the kind of treatment they need.
Most people who may be homicidal are not going to go out and say to you "I'm going to kill someone," so if they haven't given an imminent threat, it can be incredibly difficult to get help for them. We have cut the number of psychiatric beds by about 95%. So even if you notice the warning signs, there may be nowhere you can send a student.
EARLEY: Remember, the majority of people with mental illness are not harmful to others; they are more likely to be victimized than anyone else. But this small subgroup did carry out these horrible things. We know in the Virginia Tech case that (Cho) actually interacted with the system. When he was under the age of 18 he was getting treatment. The problem began when he became an adult. We want to protect people's civil rights, so we say a person needs to be a danger to themselves or others before we can intervene. This is what happened to me. I took my son to the emergency room and they said, "bring him back when he tries to kill someone or tries to kill you."
The tough issue here is, how do we help people who may not think they are sick? The Virginia Tech shooter actually went through the system but there were no follow-up services. In Virginia, there are 70 people a year who meet the dangerousness criteria who need immediate help. They've been put out of hospitals because we don't have any facilities for them. This is how bad our system is. The slogan going around now is, "It's easier to get an assault weapon than help for mental health."
ROY: With people like Seung-Hui Cho there are often windows of opportunity. They are very, very small, and you must take advantage of them.
BITTMAN: At 18, parents have no right to medical information or mental health information. I think this country needs to have a conversation about adulthood. I think we're letting parents out of the equation too soon.
ROY: There is a kind of performance aspect to some of these crimes. Some of these perpetrators really do want a very public arena, and that makes our schools particularly vulnerable. President Obama's decision to make gun violence a priority is an opportunity to try to find a solution. It will be a complex solution. It will not be simply about guns. It will not be simply about mental illness, either. It will be about a lot of different things.
Source: http://www.news.theusalinks.com/2012/12/29/after-newtown-shooting-how-should-nation-respond/
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