"If America's Top Sniper can't defend himself from a homicidal maniac it kind of casts doubt on the "Arm Every Teacher to Protect America's Kids" theory ... doesn't it?" -Ed

My wife is a teacher and she cried for two weeks after the shootings in Connecticut because she could not escape it. Every school, parent, teacher, administrator across the country was having this discussion.

I was nothing short of furious when the NRA crowd began suggesting having paid armed guards at every school...perhaps one of the worst and most disgusting ideas I had ever heard. I tried to allow for the fact that people do overreact to tragedies and can say and do some crazy things in the aftermath.

It was a little hard to fathom though that there were people that actually believed that the solution to a shooting in a school was to put more guns in the school.

Once you head down that path the question again becomes "Where does it end?"

Do you surround every school with 20 foot fence and barbed wire? Build guard towers and place snipers in them? Have a gated entrance to the parking lot with armed guards and dogs to search every car that enters? Do we want to send our children to a maximum security prison each day rather than a school? Every person is searched and goes through a TSA style check to enter the building. Bag searches, random full body cavity searches, interrogation rooms to take people for further questioning...and maybe some water boarding if the "paid security staff" is not getting the answers they wanted...

If we do this at schools why not movie theaters and shopping malls? Hospitals and restaurants? I mean why don't we just construct guard towers for snipers on every street corner across the country so when or if the shooting starts lots of people can shoot back.

The fact is you can't predict what people are going to do and people with criminal records or a history of mental illness are not the only people that could have a breakdown or begin shooting people in a public place.

It is troubling that the solution to gun violence in this country to a lot of people is to have more guns and put them in all the places people go on a regular basis...schools, churches, malls, movie theaters...you have got to be kidding me.

People fight against background checks saying they won't help. They fight against assault weapons bans and bans on high capacity magazines..."Oh that does nothing!" they scream.

The truth is these things probably won't do a lot but they will probably prevent some deaths...and even if they saved the lives of just 20 children over the course of the next ten years wouldn't that be worth it?

In so many of these cases the shooter has an AR-15 with him and either uses it or plans to use it because of the number of rounds he can get off with it. Is it the best gun to kill people with? No, you could choose a weapon that would do a lot more damage but do these shooters like this gun...YES, THEY DO!

It is fairly obvious why a lot of them like it:

1. Because you can use a high capacity magazine with it which does appeal to somebody that is planning a mass shooting.

2. Because it is an intimidating looking weapon and many are seduced by it due to this fact.

So, taking these guns off the market makes sense...unless you are a total moron or have a vested interest in weapons and ammunition sales. Despite the people like Marc that feel he needs to varmint hunt with his AR-15 they serve no purpose in our lives and nobody needs to have one.

The fact that nobody needs them is highlighted by the foaming at the mouth nonsense people begin to spew when you start to discuss it with them. They will as we have seen here, change the subject to abortion or politics or claim "All you people that don't have an assault rifle will never understand!" as if you need a special degree to know what it is and what it does.

Basically, we are at a crossroads in this country when it comes to gun violence and a choice needs to be made to do something about it. I do not mean take everybody's guns away...I would not ever suggest this despite the stupidity you hear from nitwits screaming that's what we are planning to do.

The people that say this are actually attempting to create a dangerous situation in this country by getting all gun owners or "want to be" gun owners worked up. They play on the paranoia of the masses by claiming the government will take away all the guns and then "enslave" us once we have all been disarmed. This is pure and total bullshit of the most ridiculous kind.

We should not have this sort of stupid fear mongering going on as we try to sort through how to prevent or at least slow the number of mass shootings in this country. It is also an issue that a lot of gun owners are prone toward this sort of paranoia which is what leads them to becoming gun owners.

Nobody is going to nor do they want to "take away all the guns" but we do want to put some rules and restrictions in place that slow the epidemic of gun violence in this country and there is no question that the more guns that are available the more opportunity there is for gun violence to take place.

Gun and ammunition sales skyrocket after a tragedy like this and sadly that is evidence of the paranoia and deeply troubling mindset of a lot of gun owners or want to be gun owners.

The problem here is that we do need to evaluate what is going on in these mass shootings and one of the common elements is the shooters tend to have an assault rifle with them for the reasons stated above. They do like the AR-15. They tend to bring several weapons with them and chances are it is because the shooter has formed a plan that does involve some understanding of the weapons he is using. The smaller caliber AR-15 plays one part and the larger caliber handguns play another part. I won't go into details but you can imagine the thought process.

Removing the assault rifle from the equation might discourage some of these shooters from carrying out their plan. We do have an obvious and clear connection with these rifles and people that carry out mass shootings.

Would Adam Lanza have carried out his shooting if he was only armed with a couple of handguns? Would he have killed as many people as quickly if he had? We will never know the answers to these questions but there is no doubt that the AR-15 is a weapon that appeals to mass shooters. One was just used again in New Mexico by a 15 year old boy to slaughter his family and his alleged plan was to head to the local Wal-Mart to begin shooting people there.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/01/15-year-old-who-killed-his-family-ar-15-had-plan-attack-walmart/61217/

Marc is correct about one thing here and that is that if you walk into a public place with an AR-15 you will scare the hell out of people. It is a gun that frightens people and it would seem the shooters depend on this and it is likely one of the things that draws them to the weapon. People do not have the same reaction to a person with a handgun as they do to a person brandishing an AR-15 and they do not go through a thought process whereby they think "Oh, that's just a weapon that fires a small caliber round." when one is being pointed at them.

Have a quick look at the weapon and you will see why a mass shooter would bring this gun along:

http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/files/2011/09/1003_WVafghanistan.jpg

It has an intimidation factor as well as the capacity to get off several shots with the right magazine. There is no question that shooters feel empowered by this weapon and that is why they use it.

These NRA types that claim the weapon is no different than any other are clearly blowing smoke. You may be less likely to die getting shot with a single .223 caliber round rather than with a handgun that uses a larger round...Dirty Harry's .44 magnum for example...but how this matters in this discussion is beyond me. If this kid in New Mexico had made it to Wal-Mart with his AR-15 he likely would have killed several people with it regardless of the size of the bullets he was using.

I can't really take the stupidity of the arguments against taking these weapons off the market and the fact that they are totally empty and void of any valid reasons not to.

Yes, there are many factors to take into consideration in these shootings and mental illness and the fact that not all of the shooters in these incidents have criminal records should also be considered.

Yesterday, the guy was a law abiding gun owner but today he loses his job, comes home and finds his girlfriend screwing some other guy and blames Obama for his life going to shit. So, he goes to his gun safe removes his weapons and goes to the mall to make the world pay for what has been done to him and slaughters 15 people with his AR-15. It happens people snap and all we can do in the aftermath is try to sort through the detritus to figure out why.

The point is, guns are not just any old tool and they are not like a spoon and they play a prominent and bizarre role in the American psyche so the people that own them need to be held to a set of standards and requirements that fit the fact that they own a weapon they could go out and slaughter people with at any moment.

Taking assault style rifles off the market is a step in the right direction and what bears that out is the fact that these weapons are so often used by the people that commit these crimes.