By Christopher Peak Santa Monica
In response to your Oct. 7-8 guest commentary “The dirty little secret of ‘Gun-Free School Zones’”: Many studies have been conducted and show that an increased number of guns wouldn’t be good. This would lead to even more deaths due to accidental shootings and suicides. I am a student, so I know that teenagers are very impulsive, and with a gun, could make a decision they would regret for the rest of their lives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported,“American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.”
Should we really increase the number of guns and make this rate even higher? History is also against everyone having guns. Many school shootings are conducted by the students themselves. Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Workman apparently “forgot” about the Columbine High School shootings, in which two students killed 12 other students and a teacher, wounded 24 others, and then committed suicide. Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Workman wrote,“If what’s happening at schools today is ‘progress,’ we might be better off — and a lot of students would still be alive — if we were back in those unenlightened days when school kids riding down country roads with.22 rifles across their bicycle handlebars alarmed nobody.” On May 21, 1998, at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., Kip Kinkel used his.22 rifle to kill his parents and two students, and wound 25 others.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 13, 2006. Read the original PDF.