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Soon our legislature will convene in special session to address youths, and the laws which emerge will doubtless be amplified versions of laws which already don't work.
As best I know, it's already illegal to shoot at people
(unless you're a federal agent, of course). If the current
sentences don't dissuade young shooters, why would longer
sentences? Does any punk actually think that way? I
would have shot last week because it was only 10 years, but
I'll hold my fire because now it's 20 years.
Clearly, new approaches are needed. One possibility is an extension of the Condom Theory, of which we heard during the hearings for Dr. Jocelyn Elders as U.S. Surgeon General.
The Condom Theory holds that kids are going to have sex anyway, so the school should instruct them in safe and responsible techniques, and even issue prophylactics. Just how any young person who gets flustered by purchasing a three-pack of Trojans is sufficiently mature to be a suitable sex partner is something I don't understand, but there's a lot I don't understand these days.
By analogy, we could assume that kids are going to tote guns anyway, so the school should instruct them in safe and responsible techniques: secure storage with firearms and ammunition in separate locked cabinets, proper aiming to minimize collateral damage, soft bullets to reduce ricochets, that sort of thing. The school might even issue dum-dum 9-mm rounds.
This should get right-wing support, since the NRA believes in firearms education. Liberals could hardly support school-issued condoms and sex education while opposing school-issued bullets and gun education. After all, owning a gun is a constitutional right, and you can't say that about having a sex life.
But something tells me that this would never pass -- it would cost money, for one thing -- and so we must look further.
Consider that many urban neighborhoods already resemble siege zones -- non-combatants huddle indoors.
Then note that the Colorado Air National Guard needs a place to train with its noisy F-16 fighter jets. Many residents under two proposed sonic-boom corridors -- the Wet Mountain and San Luis valleys -- are people who live there precisely because they abhor noise.
Cities are clamorous anyway, and if the only folks on the streets are gang members, the weekend warriors could practice strafing and precision smart-bombing, too, during their low-level training runs.
Other possibilities loom. Why not bring back public stocks for offending gang members? Jail time might be a status symbol in that culture, but a few days of being pelted with eggs and produce along the Sixteenth Street Mall would be humiliating. Or exile gang members to some rural redneck county where every pickup has a deer rifle -- teach them how it feels to be in mortal fear for every moment, and they may change their ways.
We know longer sentences won't do the job, but you don't need three guesses to predict what the legislature will do.
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