Posted by
Kerbouchard on Friday, March 14, 2008 12:43:13 PM
Possible fixes to 'Gun Free Zones', or as I like to call them, 'Criminal Empowerment Zones', and why they won't work...
Solution 1: Provide adequate security checkpoints to ensure people cannot come onto the property armed.
Problem: A campus or mall is too large of an area with too many entrance points. Even with high security fences, unless somebody was stationed every 50 feet, people could still smuggle guns or people across and retrieve the gun after going through the checkpoint.
Solution 2: Force people to go through a single checkpoint with metal detectors at the entrance.
Problem: A metal detector with the sensitivity set low enough to detect a gun would also be sensitive enough to go off on keys, change, belt buckles, watches, etc. The time to pass several thousand people through a somewhat adequate security checkpoint can be easily seen at your local airport. You also run into the same problem as solution #1. Checkpoints can be bypassed.
Solution 3: Prevent a person who intends to commit a crime from coming on the property.
Problem: You don't know who is the threat until they have already started because the bad guys look just like the good guys.
Solution 4: Prosecute people who commit gun related offenses in Gun Free Zones to the fullest extent of the law.
Problem: Our legal system and even our Police Department is a reactionary system, not a prevention system. If you do this, we will do this. For any illegal action, there will be certain consequences. This is done in the hopes that the threat of a consequence will be a deterrent to crime. The trouble with that is; if you have somebody that is prepared to die, and intends to die, to carry out whatever plans he has, he is impossible to stop because of the very nature of our legal system. We could only punish him afterwards, and if he kills himself, we are kind of left holding the bag. A punishment based system, just doesn't work if they guy is willing to die. It's even less effective if he wants to die.
As has been proven many times before, the only way to prevent a crime from occuring or from escalating are for there to be good citizens at the crime's location, who are legally armed and willing to stop that crime. So, it appears to me, the only way to 'fix' gun free zones is to abolish them.