New York state law already required individuals to get written authorization from school admins in order to carry a firearm on campus, but Cuomo signed a law last week that prevents authorization from being given, reported Campus Reform. Now, “no educational institution shall issue written authorization to carry a firearm to any person who is not primarily employed as a school resource officer, law enforcement officer, or security guard.”
I’m guessing the reasoning here is that only those folks have the training required to use firearms safely. But here’s the thing: if there’s an active shooter, wouldn’t it be better to have some good guys, no matter how poorly skilled, instead of a crowd of people who are legally compelled to be helpless?
Cuomo said “The answer to the gun violence epidemic plaguing this country has never been and never will be more guns….These measures will help slow the proliferation of guns by keeping unneeded firearms out of school zones and helping to ensure unwanted or illegal guns don’t fall into dangerous hands.”
Alright, so let’s pretend for a moment that it’s possible to “slow the proliferation of guns,” which the US Census now estimates outnumber actual Americans at 393 million. Even IF it were possible to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys, do you think they’re just going to give up? Has Cuomo heard about the truck attack in France claiming more than 80 lives? How about the uptick in knife attacks in the UK?
We know the New York governor’s probably in a political echo chamber, but is he also in a geographical one? I don’t think you could ever fully confiscate the hundreds of millions of guns in the US, and if you did, international trends unfortunately seem to indicate that people will just find another violent means of acting out their personal vendettas or ideological grudges.
