As President Obama unveiled the most assertive gun-control plan in decades, Colorado Republicans introduced a measure to require businesses to provide armed guards for patrons.
This past Wednesday, in response to recent mass shootings and the president’s plan for gun control, a measure was introduced in the Colorado legislature which would require privately-owned businesses to provide armed security for patrons if those patrons are not allowed to carry their own firearms. According to the Fox21News.com report, such a measure would actually require businesses to provide armed guards for “every 50 patrons if the patrons are banned from carrying guns.” Venues such as movie theaters and shopping malls would be included.
Because the measure would affect privately-owned venues, private business owners would bear the burden of cost to provide security if they chose not to allow patrons to carry weapons upon their premises. While it is within their rights to refuse to allow patrons to carry firearms on their premises, it seems unfair that they should be penalized by having to provide security at their own cost, possibly forcing some out of business.
The measure faces an uphill battle in the Democratically-controlled Colorado legislature.
The debate surrounding the posting of armed guards in public venues such as schools, shopping malls, and movie theaters continues at the national level as well. While Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says that schools with armed guards would be ‘The one thing that would keep people safe;’ anti-gun advocates state that less guns equals less shootings and less crime. How do we determine “what works” when it comes to preventing more mass shootings?
Paul Heroux, a State Representative-elect from Massachusetts who previously worked for a prison and a jail and has a Master’s degree in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard, says that both of these types of statements are “partisan,” and “not backed up with good research about what works and what doesn’t.”
Heroux has written an article regarding the dangers of making policies based on what he calls “junk science and bad research” entitled “Preventing Mass Shootings: How Partisans Get ‘What Works’ Wrong.” In the article, Heroux points out that “things that have been proven to work don’t work all the time. A 100 percent success rate is not how something is defined as what works.”
He believes that “until the advocates on both sides of an issue start using ‘what works’ properly and not for political gain, we won’t have good advocacy for public policy.” And, he continues, “This is very dangerous.”
With both the president and a number of states rushing to legislate guns and gun owners’ rights, the probability for ineffective policy becomes greater. “As awful as high profile examples of mass shootings are, it is important to remember that high profile events are high profile precisely because they are unusual and unlikely. Making policy based on high profile events is a surefire way to overreact and make inefficient and, worse, ineffective policy. A high profile event is a good time to find out where a shortcoming of a policy or a failure of a policy might reside, but a high profile event is not necessarily what policy should target. Doing so would result in the majority of cases being marginalized and a strategy designed around an unlikely event,” says Heroux.
The president is adamant that he will push Congress to ban certain types of weapons, which will be in opposition and violation of the Second Amendment as well as creating policy based on “an unlikely event,” as Paul Heroux describes. Although Americans are split on gun laws, with many wanting tougher laws in hopes of preventing more mass shootings while being equally in favor of retaining our right to bear arms, we must not allow the “high-profile” random acts of mentally deranged people to strip us of our rights. Let’s hope sanity prevails.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
Link to article in press:
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2013/01/18/barb-adams-preventing-mass-shootings-what-works/
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