Army veteran: We need stronger gun laws
An Arms Race We Can’t Win
By ANDREW JENSEN, NYT
In 1999, I was a student at Chatfield High School, in Littleton, Colo., where students from nearby Columbine High were diverted after 13 people were killed in the April 20 massacre there. After graduating, I joined the Army. When friends and family asked why, I replied that the tragedy made me realize that the people you love can’t always protect themselves. Serving, I thought, was a way to help them.
My career as an infantry officer included two years in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of miles from Aurora, Colo., where my dad, my brother and his fiancée now live, less than a mile from the movie theater where James E. Holmes fatally shot 12 people last week. And they’re just the kind of fun-loving, adventurous people who would go to a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
After years of training and war, I’m left wondering: can you ever really protect people you care about?
As a veteran, should I register for a concealed-carry license and always be armed? Even then, would I, as a trained rifleman, really be able to shoot a single person through a cloud of tear gas in a movie theater full of people screaming and running? What if I started shooting and there was another person with a gun in the crowd?
(More here.)
In 1999, I was a student at Chatfield High School, in Littleton, Colo., where students from nearby Columbine High were diverted after 13 people were killed in the April 20 massacre there. After graduating, I joined the Army. When friends and family asked why, I replied that the tragedy made me realize that the people you love can’t always protect themselves. Serving, I thought, was a way to help them.
My career as an infantry officer included two years in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of miles from Aurora, Colo., where my dad, my brother and his fiancée now live, less than a mile from the movie theater where James E. Holmes fatally shot 12 people last week. And they’re just the kind of fun-loving, adventurous people who would go to a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
After years of training and war, I’m left wondering: can you ever really protect people you care about?
As a veteran, should I register for a concealed-carry license and always be armed? Even then, would I, as a trained rifleman, really be able to shoot a single person through a cloud of tear gas in a movie theater full of people screaming and running? What if I started shooting and there was another person with a gun in the crowd?
(More here.)
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