A Return to Blogs after a Tragic Week

This is the twelfth time I have started a blog since the terrible events in Connecticut last Friday. Anything I could say about Easton and its history seems so trivial while anything I could contribute to the new national debate has already been said a thousand times. Let me say three things. First, since Columbine the Easton Public Schools have worked hard to make sure our schools are safe. This includes many of the safety methods you have been reading about, but also a heightened effort to make sure that our students know that somebody on our staff cares about them and can help them. At the high school where I work these efforts may be the most important thing that Principal Wes Paul has done in his time in Easton. We should all know, however, that no measure guarantees absolute safety in our gun crazed society these days.

The reason is too many guns. My second point is that although we will probably never know what the Founding Fathers really meant when they wrote the Second Amendment, I find it hard to believe they could have conceived of anything as deadly as the assault weapon used at Newtown. Let’s ban those weapons and the large clip magazines that make them so deadly.

Finally, I think me should make automatic handguns and all concealed handguns illegal. Given the prevalence of handguns in our society, this will take much more thinking than simply banning assault weapons or semiautomatic rifles that can easily be made automatic. The evidence is clear, however, that you are much more likely to get shot if you own a handgun for self-protection than if you don’t own one. People who are responsible hunters and target shooters need to band together with non-gun owners to form an interest group stronger than the radicals in the NRA.

OK, enough said and not enough. Tomorrow we return to looking at what was happening to the shovel workers in the 1850s.