What you are saying, in your emotionally charged and therefore knee-jerk reaction to this sickening event, is that you are ready to allow criminals to dictate what rights are allowed the law-abiding. Predictably, one person commits a crime and the tools are erroneously blamed, and then the cry goes out to punish millions of people who didn't do it. Can you rationally validate this argument? No.
I own guns for the same reason that police own guns. Regardless of whether or not I am officially anointed by the State is irrelevant. Despite what you have been indoctrinated to believe, there is no difference.
If I had been in the vicinity of this crime, I would have taken active steps to prevent it, armed or not, regardless of the armed status of the adversary, bare-handed if necessary, with guns, preferably. I've done it in the past, and will do it in the future if need be. The mind is the weapon; all the rest are merely tools.
I would hope we could all curtail the 2nd Amendment debate on this thread and save it for another time. This is not the time or place for such. This wasn't a large public school. It was a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of the country. Nothing short of two armed men posted at the school every school day would have stopped this evil man - and that simply will not happen at every one-room Amish school (and there are thousands of them). We need to realize that guns cannot stop all evil - that sometimes, evil will destroy the most vulnerable to targets just because it can, and there is nothing we can do about it but mourn afterwards.
well said, Joe. While I agree with dirtboy about this not being a 2A debate, I have to say that, when reading your other posts, you ascribe to the sheepdog vs. sheep mentality and I think that's what you were alluding to. Unfortunately, it seems that in this area of the country, there may have been too few sheepdogs and that is what permitted this tragedy to happen.