An Army Veteran’s Thoughts on the Assault Rifle Debate
How are we still arguing about this?
Yesterday marks the one-year anniversary of the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that claimed the lives of 21 innocent people at Robb Elementary School, 19 of them children. Following that mass shooting, we offered the traditional thoughts and prayers which were so effective that a mass shooting in Jasper, Texas two days ago (two days ago) only injured 9. Progress? No.
I’ve been thinking about the whole gun control issue more the past few days not just because of the anniversary of the Uvalde murders, but because there has been extensive coverage of proposals by both the City of Uvalde and the Texas Legislature to prevent another such tragedy. The proposals are familiar to anyone who follows the debate: one side wants to arm every school employee (from teachers to janitors) and station armed guards outside the school, while the other side wants increased security and a ban on assault rifles. The latter plan will inevitably be voted down because banning assault rifles is, inexplicably, a non-starter in America today.
At this point, you might expect me to launch into an attack on the Second Amendment; you would be wrong. I do wish there were far, far fewer guns on our streets and believe that here in Texas we should reverse the insane…
