This morning, Shaquille O’Neal went on 77 WABC’s Curtis and Cosby and spoke on Parkland, school shootings, and gun violence in an interview with Rita Cosby:
I think the quick fix now, the government should give law enforcement more money. Give more money, you recruit more people, and the guys that are not ready to go on the streets, you put them in front of the schools. You put them in front of the schools, you put them behind the schools, you put them inside the schools.
Shaq’s opinions on gun violence and gun control are not unique—especially for someone like Shaq, who was brought up on a military base. However, Shaq and people who agree with Shaq’s logic must acknowledge the pitfalls in this train of thought.
Number 1: The government cannot simply just give law enforcement more money. Where ever you live, your state’s finances for public protection is provided for within a budget made up of multiple different public entities. Pumping more money into police protection ultimately will decrease the budget for other governmental services that are arguably of equal importance.
Thus, if the government were to just “give cops more money,” in the grand scheme, we would have to take away money from other services like public education and possibly lay off some qualified teachers. We might have to let go of several cops in order to increase salaries for just a few cops, or even let go of firemen to supplement the increase in pay for police officers. Government funding is not that cut-and-dry. There’s give and take from a bunch of different angles in balancing a state’s budget.
Number 2: cops are trained to be cognizant of their surroundings when they are going to fire their weapons. Unsurprisingly, an optimal area for exchanging gunfire is an “open area.” By contrast, schools have walls, corners, classrooms, sharp angles, glass, and other fire hazards, in addition to all of the innocent student and teacher bystanders. So, schools are clearly not optimal areas for exchanging gunfire because schools are simply not open areas.
In other words, school buildings can magnify a fairly obvious issue in dealing with guns: when bullets miss their targets, they ricochet. Thus, adding more guns to this equation can potentially put victims in greater danger.
Still, according to Shaq:
We need to be pro-active and not re-active
However, we should also make sure that our ideas for addressing gun violence and gun control are responsible.
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