This week, 17 people were murdered by a bloodthirsty lunatic in a high school in Florida. Others were gravely injured and the body-count may yet increase. A suspect was arrested. It appears the authorities were even aware he was a potentially dangerous person. As is the case with all of these tragedies, the “gun control” politicians can’t wait to get in front of a microphone to promote more infringement on our second amendment rights. Aside from the obvious objection I have to people who attack our constitutional rights, I want a solution that actually addresses the problem. More gun control laws most definitely do not.

Every time this sort of thing happens, I urge people to resist the temptation to recommend the typical knee-jerk, Nanny State Solution to ban guns. It is very easy to assume that more gun control will result in less crime, but this is false. The truth is counter-intuitive. This is not easy for some people because the emotional, gut reaction they think of as “common sense” is wrong.

Gun control laws only “control” people inclined to obey the law in the first place – the law-abiding. Murder is ALREADY illegal. More gun laws don’t stop gun violence. There is no logic – or evidence – to support how restrictions on law-abiding gun owners is going to make a bit of difference. See the 2003 and 2004 studies done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Academy of Science concerning the efficacy of gun control laws on stopping gun-related crime. It will open your eyes.

Research these studies and you’ll find the numbers of firearm related crimes and accidents have steadily dropped in relationship to the total number of guns, and all the while gun sales have dramatically increased and more states have liberalized laws dealing with the carrying of guns in public, but there is no corresponding spike in gun violence. Guns are used 5 times more often to stop crime than to commit crime – and that doesn’t count police use or the deterrent factor of criminals knowing their intended victims might be armed. Guns are used by private citizens to stop criminal activity some 2.5 million times each year and rarely do they even fire a shot doing it. Recreational shooters fire billions of rounds each year, but firearms injury accident numbers keep going down as a percentage of all the guns in circulation and are at record lows.

Chicago has the toughest gun control laws in the country. Last year nearly 3000 people were shot, and 625 of them were killed. That works out to be someone getting shot about once every 4 hours. This city has one of the highest murder rates per-capita of any city in the country. Statistically, you’d be much safer in Kabul, Afghanistan. There is a “Florida High School” in Chicago about every six days.

There is nothing wrong with being anti-gun, everyone is entitled to their opinion and no one is forcing anyone to own a gun, but I wish people would at least be against failed government policy with the same enthusiasm. I don’t need to be an Afghanistan combat veteran to tell you that one armed citizen could have made a huge difference in that high school in Florida. That’s just common sense.
Reasonable people can disagree, but before we can really sit down and have a “meaningful discussion” about gun crimes, both sides need to agree that “gun free zones” are just target-rich environments filled with helpless people waiting to become victims.

I am going to take a long, hard look at our Nebraska laws as they relate to the subject of voluntarily arming faculty and staff in our schools. I’m going to gather stake-holders together this summer and try to find a way to write a bill that permits this. We protect all kinds of things in our society with armed security. I cannot think of something more precious to all of us than a school full of innocent children. They deserve armed security more than anything I can think of. There has to be a way to do this on a voluntary basis that doesn’t cost the taxpayers of the Nebraska anything.

There is always going to be evil in this world. If someone wants to do harm to someone else, they will always find a way. All we can do is be prepared for it. Putting up a “Gun Free Zone” sign and hoping for the best doesn’t work. When it comes to the safety of our children, “hope” is an unacceptable course of action.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions or concerns. Email me at; tbrewer@leg.ne.gov. Mail a letter to; Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1202, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509 or call us at (402) 471-2628.