Here we go again. Yet another school shooting has triggered a new round of prayer meetings, hand-wringing by public officials and standard NRA defenses of the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear Arms.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick rushed to the microphones and television cameras to extend their condolences to the dead and wounded victims. Abbott benignly reminded his citizens of their responsibility to lock the guns in their homes so the kids can’t get their hands on them.
Patrick chimed in, reiterating the call to arm teachers in accordance with the NRA argument that the best response to a classroom shooter is a classroom teacher also packing heat.
He added that there are “too many entrances (and) too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses. There aren’t enough people to put a guard on every entrance and exit,” he said, suggesting that the schools may have to be redesigned to have fewer of them.
On ABC News, Patrick waxed philosophical, observing that Americans have devalued life, whether it’s the breakdown of families, abortions, violent movies or the various violent videogames played by 85 percent of teenagers.
Guns, he said, “are part of who we are as a nation,” he said, “It is our Second Amendment — you know, it talks about a well-run militia … our teachers are part of that well-run militia.”
Speaking of that, the NRA and other critics of gun control legislation often slough off the other language in the amendment, which begins with “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” as the justification for declaring that the right to bear arms “shall not be infringed.”
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