Reducing School Shootings Smartly

The Florida school shooting, like the many before it, horrifies most of us and we want them to stop; but it ain’t that easy. It is more complicated than gun control and the 2nd Amendment. It is more complicated than arresting someone for a social media posting and the 4th Amendment. It is more complicated than screaming at the President, protesting the non-action of Congress and blaming the FBI, although in this case they are nakedly guilty of inaction. Sometimes you need to go all the way back to the beginning. Every cop starts his career walking or riding a beat and that is where we have to go to better prevent school shootings. One of the most effective ways to reduce crime is the presence of police officers. A cop on the corner with a gun will make most would-be criminals think twice. So a simple stop gap measure to reduce such incidents would be to have cops include stops at schools within their beat. It is a statistical fact that most police time is not spent fighting crime but preventing it. Cops on the beat stopping at schools at unpredictable times as part of their daily activity could create a significant barrier to someone contemplating becoming a “professional school shooter.” I can hear the complaints already, but it is a suggestion that could be integrated easily into an officers daily routine and would probably be more successful than protests by terrified students and activity by gun control advocates or the NRA. Such a plan could be implemented nationwide easily and would not require any more resources than currently being spent on law enforcement. Give it chance, it’s for our children.

The Immigration Solution

The U.S. Senate has gone home after failing to pass four separate immigration bills. This turns out to be the expected result because in truth neither party wants reform that works. Both sides want reform that works for their donors and their party’s goals if you believe what you see and read. Democrats have gambled they will not be hurt by their failure to resolve DACA. Republicans in the House are continuing to work on the Goodlatte Bill. The DACA deadline is approaching. The solution for President Trump should be easy; just enforce the existing law. But, an intransigent Congress, a runaway Judiciary and a swamp filled with alligators and snakes in the Executive Branch makes it difficult. The largest number of illegal aliens are those that have overstayed their Visas. Some have overstayed more than 25 years and have never been visited by the INS. Try that as an American in Mexico and you find its Immigration Policia at your doorstep.  It seems that while taxpayers work their butts off paying taxes, many INS employees consider their jobs paid vacations and enforcing immigration laws has become the pervue of the Courts. It is time for the President to demand INS begin contacting and deporting Visa overstays. Let’s start there and see what happens.

Social Media Should Not Silence Jihad

Intelligence agencies are now asking that social media providers (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) do more to filter out objectionable materials like sites used by ISIS to recruit terrorists, hate sites and the like. It is a big mistake. Once we start filtering the internet it is only a matter of time until it is censored and then the question becomes who decides. The solution to this dilemma is for intelligence agencies to do their job. The FBI, CIA, State Department and the branches of military intelligence have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of personnel who could be assigned to combing the web for Jihad recruitment sites and use current technology to shut them down or make them unworkable. Listening to these agency heads whine is sickening and listening to them ask Facebook to do their job is insufferable. The job is difficult, but far from impossible.