Let's throw some money at it!

 

As usual, Obama's gun control proposals aim to cure the problem with money -- lots of it! I hate to tell him, but we are not going to cure mass murder no matter how much money we throw at it. There will always be mental cases and there will always be evil people. And those mental cases and evil people will always find a way to perpetrate the heinous acts they dream up.

 

If I really thought his proposals would prevent another slaughter of innocents, I'd be the first one to jump on his bandwagon and say, "It's worth the money." But, just so you know, here's how much Obama wants to throw away trying to solve a problem that can't be solved:

• $20 million to give states incentives to share background data. (Now just what in the heck does that mean? Can't he just "executive order" the states to share data?)
• $4 billion to keep 15,000 police officers on the street. (If I counted my zeroes right, that's $266,666.67 per officer. I don't think the cops in our city make anywhere near that! And suppose that Newtown had 50 more officers on its force. What could they have done that would have prevented the murders there?)
• $14 million to train 14,000 police officers to respond to shootings. (With a population of roughly 300 million, that's one additional officer to protect every 21,500 people. Think that will make a lot of difference? Anyway, aren't police officers already trained to respond to shootings?)
• $10 million to the CDC for research on the correlation between video games and violence. (Do you think they could do it for $5 million?)
• $20 million to expand the National Violent Death Reporting System. (I thought most police departments already did all sorts of crime statistics reports for the FBI/Department of Justice.)
• $150 million to school districts for school resource officers, school psychologists and social workers. (Isn't that something that should be handled on the local level?)
• $30 million to help school districts develop emergency management plans. (I doubt there is a school district in the nation that doesn't have some sort of plan for emergencies.)
• $50 million for 8000 schools to train teachers and staff to create safer environments. (How do they choose which schools? What could have been more safe than the school at Newtown?)
• $55 million to make sure students get mental health treatment. (A lot of those who perpetrate these crimes are like alcoholics or drug addicts -- they don't think they have a problem. It's hard to treat someone like that.)
• $25 million to help people ages 16-25 with mental health or substance abuse issues. (What if the next killer is 26 years old? Or 14 years old?)
• $25 million to offer students mental health for trauma or anxiety.
• $50 million to train 5000 mental health professionals.

Total cost for these vague ideas: $4.44 billion dollars. But that's OK -- we'll just make the rich pay some more of their fair share.

 

"Obama's gun-control proposals." The Dallas Morning News; January 17, 2013; p. 11A.