A Real Democracy Will Always Have "Soft" Targets

(The photo above from Chattanooga is from the website of CNN.)

In the wake of the shooting deaths of five members of our military in Chattanooga by a terrorist, Governor Rick Scott of Florida is moving National Guard recruitment centers in that state to National Guard armories. He said they will remain there until the guardsmen can be armed -- and if it can't be done another way, he wants to give them concealed carry permits. Some other governors are considering doing the same thing in their states.

I can understand how these governors feel. It is a tragedy when citizens are killed, whether military members or not -- and they just want to try and prevent that from happening in the future. That's laudable, but I question whether the action they want to take will do much good. If those who were killed had been carrying a gun, it would have made no difference in the Chattanooga killings. The killer could still have pulled up outside, and filled the office with bullets before those inside could have reacted.

While recruitment centers could probably be turned into much harder targets by placing armed men outside with military rifles, would that really solve our problem? Wouldn't terrorists just choose another soft target -- a mall, church, nightclub, etc.? Is it even possible to protect all of the targets open to attack? I submit it is not. We couldn't protect everyone even if we turned this country into a police state (which many seem to want to do) -- and it certainly can't be done in a democracy.

One of the most protected individuals in our democracy is the president. And yet, the Secret Service will admit that a determined individual who is willing to die would have a credible chance to succeed in an assassination. What makes us think that everyone else could be protected from an equally determined individual?

I wish that wasn't true, but it is. Our police (from local to the federal level) do a very good job of protecting Americans, but they could never prevent all incidents of mindless terrorism. The question we need to be asking ourselves is just how much of our freedom are we willing to give up for the illusion of safety? Do we want to live in a police state? or a society where everyone is armed?

We also need to admit that we bring much of this on ourselves by refusing to act to keep guns out of the hands of as many dangerous people as possible. The fact is that any terrorist, criminal, or dangerously unstable person can legally buy any kind of firearm they want in this country. Why do we allow that?

No democracy can be made completely safe from the nuts in the world. There will always be soft targets in a democracy. But we could do better than we are doing -- not by arming more people, but by acting to close the loopholes in our background check law.