An Experiment

Reading The Diplomad 2.0 today got me to thinking about his suggestion and about what we might do to stop the rash of school shootings. I think we should set up an experiment to see which of two approaches might work better to reduce this mayhem:

Experiment #1: Get rid of school (and other) gun-free zones. For the first ten years, permit and encourage any responsible and trained adult to carry a gun in our schools ... open-carry for any uniformed personnel and closed-carry for others -- teachers, coaches, etc.

Experiment #2: For the second ten years, return to a gun-free zone policy in our schools but totally ban anyone from purchasing semi-automatic military-style rifles or their ammunition.

Comparing the results over this 20-year period should tell us which policy to go with long term. I strongly suspect that this second decade test would not be necessary.

AR-15

There was this mean-looking AR-15  see that:

- was a loner on anti-psychotic drugs

- was publicly obsessed with other guns and explosives

- would kill squirrels and rabbits and drink their blood

- would capture neighborhood dogs and cats and hang them from trees

- would shoot out the windows of neighbors' garages, sheds and houses

- threatened to kill multiple high school classmates

- many classmates felt it was quite likely it would be a high-school shooter

- was expelled from high school for carrying ammunition to school in its backpack

- police were called to its house 39 times in one year

- posted on Facebook that it was going to stage a high school massacre "professionally"

- the FBI was twice warned that it, by name, was quite likely to kill multiple classmates at school

-  finally went to its high school and killed 17 and wounded 15 more classmates