On Memorial Day, we mourned for the servicemen and ladies misplaced defending our nation. However at this time, most of all, I mourn for the kids of Uvalde, Texas. I mourn for his or her classmates, lecturers, and fogeys. Final Tuesday was a day each mother or father prays won’t ever happen of their group. Sadly, over the previous 23 years, this terrible actuality present has performed out too many occasions—from Columbine to Sandy Hook, Parkland, Oxford, Virginia Tech and extra. Harmless younger folks have been gunned down whereas merely going to high school.
I’m compelled to write down as a lifelong hunter and gun proprietor, a mother or father of educators, a grandparent of 5 school-aged youngsters, and former trainer, coach, faculty superintendent and faculty administrator.
I don’t imagine Uvalde will lastly disgrace our nationwide “leaders” into having the braveness to wrest themselves from the management of the gun foyer feeding their marketing campaign coffers. No leaders of some other civilized nation view the lives of kids as “expendable” in defending their subsequent election.
So, if we will’t cross cheap gun security laws, I suggest another for guaranteeing the security of our youngsters and their lecturers: 1) Add up the overall expense of safety safety for our elected officers in Washington — the capital police, secret service, contracted safety companies, D.C. police, and army items. 2) Divide that quantity by the overall variety of elected officers to get a per head safety value. 3) Allocate that very same per head value to all colleges (Pre-Okay via college) within the nation, for use for the direct safety of their 65 million college students and lecturers.
Will this be costly? Completely! Are the lives of youth and their lecturers any much less worthwhile than the lives of our federal elected officers? Let’s take a ballot — I feel everyone knows how that may end up.
Listed here are two choices for funding this safety. One, impose a nationwide revenue tax, utilized on a progressive foundation from wealthiest to poorest. Perhaps the wealthy gained’t have as a lot cash for taking pleasure rides into house, however, hey, everybody has to make sacrifices.
Or, impose an annual gun licensing payment, with proceeds earmarked for defense of kids. I pay annual charges on my truck, ATV, and boat; annual licenses to hunt and fish and even for my canine. I possess six shotguns, two rifles and a pistol. So why don’t I’ve an annual payment for my weapons? This might be on a sliding scale from a modest payment for a shotgun to a dear payment for an AR-15 manufactured to kill many human beings rapidly. Simply an possibility. (I’m additionally required to have insurance coverage on my automobiles. Why not legal responsibility insurance coverage necessities for gun possession?)
If Congress does nothing once more, as I concern, brace yourselves for the subsequent faculty taking pictures, coming to a group close to you — sponsored by the gun foyer and their minions in Washington. Within the meantime, make this concern a precedence if you vote and get lively in organizations combating gun violence.
Could God bless America.
Dr. Tim Quinn is president emeritus of Northwestern Michigan Faculty and founder and former proprietor of the Michigan Management Institute. He and his spouse, Shelley, are new contributing members of the Michigan Coalition to Forestall Gun Violence.
The opinions expressed within the Visitor View don’t essentially characterize the opinions of the Every day News.
