Saturday letters
Guns and Israel in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the day: Pay for school safety officers with a gun fee
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, offers a sound response to gun violence in our schools. He proposes an armed safety officer in every elementary school in America.
If LaPierre’s “armed safety officer” means a trained, uniformed police officer, I see obvious benefits. Schools would have a central point of responsibility to prepare for and respond to violent acts, educators could concentrate on education instead of school violence, and students would have routine opportunities to react positively to a uniformed police officer.
The Virginia Board of Education identifies 1,173 elementary schools in Virginia. The minimum annual cost of a school safety officer (using Roanoke Police Department data) would be approximately $40,000. Therefore, LaPierre’s recommendation in Virginia would cost approximately $47 million annually.
Last year, 202,170 firearms background checks were conducted in Virginia. If each background check equates to one firearm purchase, then a School Safety Fee of $232 added to the cost of a firearm would pay for one safety officer in each Virginia elementary school. With NRA support, now is the opportune time for the Virginia General Assembly to respond to the school violence issue.
ROBERT F. CANOVA
ROANOKE
January 5, 2013 - 9:43 AM
This is a great idea but why stop at just that amount? Maybe we could add some for extra police and hightened partols around town. How much? Well, I donno say maye an additional $500 per gun. And while we are at it let’s add at least another $100 to compensate anyone injured by a firearm and maybe another $100 to pay for their medical care. So if we put the total high enough we could basically bring a halt to gun sales entirely and that what we really want, right!
OOPHS! Almost forgot. The left is responsible for the greatest surge in firearms and ammunition sales in probably HISTORY. The availability of specific types of firearms has gotten really tight and the prices! A 223 which you might have gotten for $1200 back in October will set you back at least $2300 today and certain models of original designed Colts or Armalite’s are going for up to $4000. As to 223 ammo. Down at the gun show they are selling a lot of non gun stuff. There is even one vendor there selling Fudge…YES FUDGE. Buy 5 pounds of fudge and get a free box of 20 223′s. American marketing at it’s best.
1) I agree Bubba. Let’s make it so difficult to buy and keep a gun that the second amendment becomes meaningless. It’s worked really well for conservative Christians that want to do away with abortion completely. They just make it so difficult that Roe v. Wade is ineffective. They’ve got the right to an abortion but not the means.
That’s a great work around. Add in costs! I like it.
2) How do you figure the left is responsible for a surge in gun sales? It seems to me you should blame those buying the guns. Got data on their political beliefs?
I think some very savvy gun sellers have made puppets out of a lot of people and rather than notice, they credit “The left”. The gun culture has more lemmings than either political party it seems.