As an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment for many years, I was looking forward to hearing from NRA president Wayne LaPierre about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.  He had the good sense to wait for a decent while before speaking and thereby convey some evidence of actuallythinking about this horrifying event, unlike the lockstep, ignorant leftists who began promulgating grand gun-ban wisdom within minutes afterward.

Surely LaPierre speaks the simple but indisputable truth when he says, “People driven by demons walk among us every day[.]  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  Moreover, the onus he lays on the violent video games industry is altogether plausible.  However, his solution that calls for putting an armed police officer in every school falls short of adequate.

I live in a Midwestern rural-suburban neighborhood (I like to call it the “ruburbs”) where gun ownership is normative and the sounds of recreational gunfire — yes, occasionally even a multi-shot burst from a semi-automatic weapon — can be heard on a Sunday afternoon.  Sometimes I get a little annoyed at the noise if I’m trying to take an afternoon snooze, but then another voice inside me says, “Thank you for shooting those guns today.”

Shortly after my family moved to this neighborhood more than a quarter-century ago, there was a brief “crime wave.”  A burglary ring broke into and robbed several houses during daylight hours, while the owners were working.  The ring was caught and busted.  Since then, there have been no similar recurrences that I’m aware of.  There has never been a gun murder in my neighborhood, to say nothing of a massacre, either individually perpetrated or gang-style.  My neighborhood is essentially crime-free.