Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion

Utah:

The Salt Lake Tribune has an excellent opinion piece on the recent school shooting. Utah is, the piece points out, one of the only places in the nation in which a qualified adult can carry a concealed firearm on school property. Defending yourself and the student body in other places is legal, but the tools which make it practical for the average school-teacher are not.

The author points out that there are not many options left for addressing the issue of school shootings. The conditions which existed for this last one were:

* No guns allowed per Minnesota and tribal law.
* A guard and metal detectors present at entrance.
* The shooter was on home study, barred from school grounds.
* He was too young to own, let alone possess, firearms, per state and tribal law.
* The firearms were not obtained from a gun show.
* The firearms were legally registered and came from the home of a law enforcement officer.

What additional laws would have prevented this?
It is difficult to use the law to constrain someone who has decided to die in the course of a violent act. Other tools than law are needed at those times.

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