Dan Cogley – 1/24/13

This page was last updated on January 24, 2013.

Keep guns out of schools; Dan Cogley; Beaver County Times; January 24, 2013.

Previous Cogley letters I critiqued were “Pennsylvania not proud,” “Poor people do create jobs,” “Government should not invade private lives,” “Why vote Republican,” “We need more Democrats,” “Try trickle-up effect,” “Elderly will be hit under GOP policies,” “Let politicians try unemployment,” and “Cuban missile déjà vu.” My personal favorite was “Why vote Republican.” Cogley letters I didn’t critique include “Question in need of an answer” (4/7/11) and “Suggested cuts they won’t make” (3/14/11).

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Having guns in school or around a school, I don’t believe is the way to go. If you have an armed guard in a school, and a group of students get together and over take the guard, take their gun and kill someone, a teacher, a student, who do we blame then?”

[RWC] I guess anything is possible, but I think Mr. Cogley is really reaching with this hypothetical scenario. Mr. Cogley’s scenario sounds like something you’d see in a prison movie. If you have a school in which “a group of students [would] get together and over take the guard, take their gun and kill someone, a teacher, a student,” you have a real problem and it has nothing to do with an armed guard. Further, if a mob like the one Mr. Cogley described wants to kill someone, it doesn’t need a firearm.

“Do we add more guards, a tactical assault unit on the roof of every school. [sic] How about some common sense, get ride [sic] of assault weapons in the public, high-capacity clips and armor-piercing bullets. [sic] Have these weapons at a shooting ranges [sic], you check them out, and back in when you are done.”

[RWC] Folks like Mr. Cogley don’t appear to understand the purpose of the right to bear arms in the Pennsylvania Constitution and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“It will not stop the shootings, but you will stop mowing down people 30 or 100 at a time. The Brady Bill proved this. I hope we can err on the side of caution.”

[RWC] Mr. Cogley is the second writer in two weeks who doesn’t seem to know what the Brady Bill is. The Brady Bill (Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act) was signed into law in 1993 and it remains in effect.

Like Larry Mason, it’s possible Mr. Cogley is confusing the Brady Bill with the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act [aka the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB)]. The FAWB provided for its repeal 10 years after its 1994 effective date. The act expired in 2004 and was not extended. As a reminder, the mass shooting at Columbine High School (13 murdered, 24 wounded) took place in 1999, five years into the “assault” weapons ban. The killer in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre (32 murdered, 17 wounded) used two semi-automatic pistols (one 9mm, one .22 caliber), neither considered to be “assault” weapons. The vast majority of handguns (semi-automatics and revolvers) sold in the U.S. fire a single shot per trigger-pull.

Finally, consider this excerpt from a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Justice: “Should it [the FAWB] be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs [assault weapons] were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban. LCMs [large-capacity magazines] are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes, but it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.”