Well, it’s not like more guns has been fixing this problem so far… in fact it almost seems like it’s been getting worse the more guns we add. Who could have predicted that?
I feel like I need to point out that museums do not as a matter of course have metal detectors and security checkpoints at every entrance – some do at the front door, sure, but the overwhelming majority of the ones I’ve been to don’t even have that much. Metal detectors are only a recent innovation in the stadium business as well – growing up, I never had to go through one to get into a baseball game or concert or live event. I also don’t think you’ll find many people here sympathetic to the notion that airport security is a good model for securing schools; airport security is pretty universally considered invasive and degrading, costing billions of dollars while not actually solving any real problems and routinely failing to catch dangerous objects in spot checks (and hey, remember that time Adam Savage managed to walk onto a plane with 12" razor blades he’d forgotten he was carrying?).
Why stop at just hardening primary and secondary schools, though? What about other places mass shootings have happened, like movie theaters? Concerts? Malls? Conventions? Street fairs? Fireworks celebrations? College campuses? How much would it cost to harden every theater, concert hall, convention center, park, boardwalk, college quad, and commerce center in America? Why should we accept subjecting ourselves to constant security checks at every turn, when it would be a lot cheaper and more cost effective to just reduce the number of guns? The fewer guns there are, the less society needs to be worried about someone violent bringing one literally anywhere.
I think you’ve glossed over my point slightly. Someone with a swastika on their bicep or “1488” on their knuckles is clearly identifiable as a white supremacist/Nazi. Unless you’re intimately familiar with the particular gang-related tats that gang members get, odds are it’s going to be difficult to separate “gang member” from “regular person with a mean-looking tat”. I think we can have a reasonable argument over whether or not the person with a tat of questionable provenance should be considered a piece of shit and/or have those tats be considered a warning sign for violent behavior. Whereas statistically, the guy with a Nazi tattoo is almost certainly going to fall into “red flag” territory, and frankly has no business owning any sort of gun for any god damn reason.
I don’t think that we should make it a legal requirement to not have any threatening-looking tattoos if you want to buy a gun, but I do think that “I’m not going to sell a gun to a Nazi” seems like perfectly acceptable grounds for an individual to choose to refuse that person service, since “Nazi” is not (yet) considered to be a protected class in this country. I would also hope that those sorts of things would correlate to the kinds of behavior that would surface in a background check, but if wishes were fishes etc. etc., especially these days when a documented history of white supremacy doesn’t seem to be an inhibitor to gaining a high-level security clearance at the White House.
(Funny how with all this looming fascism and tyranny on our hands in this country, all these guns don’t seem to be doing a single god damn thing to stop it like everyone has spent decades promising they will. Instead they get used to get into standoffs with the Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing fees, and to take over state parks, and to mow down over 100 people at an open-air concert from a hotel room across the street.)
(Speaking of, metal detectors and security checkpoints managed to do fuck-all to prevent the Vegas massacre. Should we also put metal detectors, security checkpoints, and hardened, restricted access points in every hotel in the country? What’s that gonna cost?)
