More danger won’t help

Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 18, 2000

Richard H. Clise (“Gun violence: How about real solutions?” Letters, Dec. 7) feels that some people will view his suggestion of arming teachers to prevent any future Columbine Highs as nuts. Yes, it is! Absolutely!

His idea is nothing new, though. It has been around for years, known as the “Archie Bunker solution.” Archie Bunker, as many people remember, was a character in a ’70s sit-com. In one episode, he came up with the brilliant idea to stop airplane hijackings by arming all the passengers. The more astute viewers could see immediately the fallacy of such a suggestion. For every hijacking that could be prevented you would have dozens, if not hundreds, of people killed and injured from the misuse or abuse of firearms.

Law-abiding passengers would be accidentally shooting themselves and others or, worse yet, putting a bullet through the pressurized cabin. You would have passengers getting angry with other passengers, flight attendants or flight delays and then taking their anger out with a gun. Other passengers could find themselves with a tool that would easily and quickly allow them to end their life of worries.

Similar types of situations, as mentioned above, take place every day on the ground across America, and to suggest that giving more guns to more people will solve gun abuse problems is not only nuts but downright crazy!

Everett