Steve Bacher Supports Teachers, Not Guns

[The following is an email message I received from Steve Bacher, candidate for U.S. Congress in District 1 (Bucks County). I thought is worth publishing here.]

On Sunday, the Bucks County Courier Times published two opinion pieces on gun safety: one from its Editorial Board and one from Bucks County resident Jaclyn E. Miller. Ms. Miller called for Congress to pass gun safety legislation, including “stricter laws for the sale of fire-arms, background checks for mental health, longer wait periods, and the banning of assault weapons.” The Courier Times called for reducing the number of teachers or administrators at each school to pay for armed security guards (see below).

Before I get into gun safety, a brief word about student-teacher ratios: Everyone with a child in public school today knows that classes are too large. We need more teachers, with fewer children in each class, to enable more personal attention to the individual needs of each student. Cutting teachers to pay for security is not an option.

We need to make it more difficult for people to obtain military-style weapons, such as the AR-15, which was used in so many school killings. I don’t want our schools to be treated like war zones, with soldiers holding military weapons guarding them. I want safe neighborhoods, where guns are kept locked in safes in their licensed, trained, owners’ homes.

Some schools do need to improve their security systems, and these should be paid for with a special tax on gun and ammunition sales, not by stealing from existing school budgets.

Adding armed security officers is a non-solution. Parkland had a security officer. How many teachers and administrators does the Courier Times propose we eliminate so we can have multiple guards at every entrance? Their policy will lead to schools that feel like prisons and have even larger class sizes.

Even if we could fund high quality perimeter security without stealing from school education budgets, that would do nothing for the safety at nightclubs, concerts, movies, workplaces, or churches. All have been targeted by gun violence.

Most of the time, no “good guy with a gun” is able to protect us from a bad guy with a gun. That’s just a marketing slogan by the NRA to help their masters, the gun industry, sell more guns. Ronald Reagan was surrounded with armed Secret Service and police officers when he was shot. He, James Brady, Tim McCarthy, and Thomas Delahanty were all shot while surrounded by "good guys with guns."

We must stop sacrificing our children and other fellow citizens on the altar of the Second Amendment. Sensible gun reform could protect us. The United States is the only country not at war where thousands of people die every year due to gun violence. It needs to stop. Turning our schools, night clubs, churches, and public spaces into armed camps is not a solution. Only sensible gun reform is.

[Please chip in with five dollars here to help Steve get the message out that the people of Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District want sensible gun safety legislation now. Feel free to forward this message to five friends.]

Posted on 05 Apr 2018, 01:31 - Category: Voting