According to the NRA President and Executive Vice President, we need to station armed guards in each and every American school. Aside from costing tens of billions of dollars, the fact is that armed guards have not prevented past school shootings, and indeed they increase the likelihood of innocent victims being caught in the crossfire. But then, such niceties have never bothered the NRA, not when a return to the Wild, Wild West within our schools is possible.
Since those NRA leaders are fond of quoting the trite and tired saying that "it's not guns that kill people, it's people who kill people" -- actually and more accurately, people with guns kill people, but then the NRA is not one for fine distinctions -- here is my proposal for reducing substantially school and workplace shootings: Ban Those Bullets! This proposal would include banning all high capacity bullet-delivery systems for automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons, except for valid and justified law enforcement and military purposes. Severe penalties for possessing, let along using, such bullets and related equipment, would reinforce the prohibition on them. There is no valid civilian purpose for such bullets and bullet-delivery systems, which are primarily used for threatening, robbing, wounding, and killing people.
The NRA is very fond of citing that part of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution which allows "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." The opening portion of that Amendment, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," is not nearly as popular with the NRA and other gun advocates, as it makes clear that there must be a valid purpose for our right "to keep and bear arms." America's Founders never intended guns ownership and use to be a free-for-all, nor could they have envisioned the development of assault weapons, IEDs, and the like. The horrendous shootings in Newtown, and Aurora, and Tucson, and so many other locations, had nothing to do with a "well-regulated militia" -- they have been the result of disturbed people's easy access to weapons of mass killing.
The best resolution we can make for 2013 is to reduce American gun violence to the much-lower level prevalent in other civilized nations, where access to weapons is much better-controlled, and assault weapons are banned. And that is a resolution which the National Rifle Association needs to adopt, the sooner the better. Until then, let's Ban Those Bullets! It is the least that we can and should do.