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Gun control: pro, con, or stuck in the middle
by Roxana Popescu
Gun control.
Just try saying those words without provoking a reaction.
Like the other social issues preoccupying our nation in this era — immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage — the gun debate cuts deeply into what Americans believe about morality, rights granted by the Constitution, universal human rights, and the responsibilities the individual and society have to one another.
As the nation’s leaders in Washington wrangle with firearms policy in the wake of Sandy Hook, a divided America is struggling with questions about accountability and next steps. Some blame the carnage of video games, incapable parenting, the suffocating fog of bullying, depression, mental illness. Others blame guns.
San Diego has had more than its share of notorious shootings. In 1979, a teenage girl killed two and wounded nine at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Carlos. When asked why, she offered this inscrutable answer: “I don’t like Mondays.” The 1984 shooting at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro was one of the nation’s deadliest, with 21 people dead. In 2001, a gunman killed two and wounded 13 people at Santana High School in Santee.
But this region is far from united in rejecting or embracing gun control. A 10-minute drive from downtown puts you in hippie heaven or rodeo central, depending on which way you go on Interstate 8, but gun owners and opponents cross class, geographic, educational, generational and party lines. The county’s social, economic and demographic complexity is a product of its expansive backcountry culture, its historic military presence, its teaching and research institutions, its progressive voices that span generations, its immigrants and transplants, its beach culture, its vocal and silent minorities — all sharing the same county, the same neighborhoods, the same grocery stores, sometimes even the same homes.
Take Bundy Drive, a quiet residential street in Santee, a few blocks from Santana High School. It’s the kind of place where people keep their garage doors open and family cars line driveways of well-tended houses. As pretty and cohesive as it all looks from the outside, inside live people with completely different world views.
Here are the stories of three neighbors: A mother who almost lost her son in the Santana shooting, an Ohio transplant who sought refuge from bullying by getting involved with his church, and a Little League dad who owns a rare 1910 pistol. One of them believes in strict gun control, one believes in no gun restrictions and one balances delicately in the middle.
Guns as instruments of tragedy and death
San Diego, CA_1/29/2013_On Bundy Drive in Santee in three different homes, three different sides to the gun control issue in the wake of the Connecticut shooting that killed so many children. John Gastaldo/U-T San Diego/Mandatory Credit: John Gastaldo/U-T San Diego/Zuma Press — John Gastaldo
This is how you put a school on lockdown: Step one, move all children to a classroom. Step two, close and lock all access points and secure the perimeter. Step three: set up a command center and transfer authority to law enforcement until the threat has been contained.
In his career as a school administrator, Pat Keeley has had to make the call three times for security threats. Once, when he worked in California’s Central Valley, three feisty young longhorn bulls stampeded through the campus.
Gun control: pro, con, or stuck in the middle
by Roxana Popescu
Gun control.
Just try saying those words without provoking a reaction.
Like the other social issues preoccupying our nation in this era — immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage — the gun debate cuts deeply into what Americans believe about morality, rights granted by the Constitution, universal human rights, and the responsibilities the individual and society have to one another.
As the nation’s leaders in Washington wrangle with firearms policy in the wake of Sandy Hook, a divided America is struggling with questions about accountability and next steps. Some blame the carnage of video games, incapable parenting, the suffocating fog of bullying, depression, mental illness. Others blame guns.
San Diego has had more than its share of notorious shootings. In 1979, a teenage girl killed two and wounded nine at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Carlos. When asked why, she offered this inscrutable answer: “I don’t like Mondays.” The 1984 shooting at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro was one of the nation’s deadliest, with 21 people dead. In 2001, a gunman killed two and wounded 13 people at Santana High School in Santee.
But this region is far from united in rejecting or embracing gun control. A 10-minute drive from downtown puts you in hippie heaven or rodeo central, depending on which way you go on Interstate 8, but gun owners and opponents cross class, geographic, educational, generational and party lines. The county’s social, economic and demographic complexity is a product of its expansive backcountry culture, its historic military presence, its teaching and research institutions, its progressive voices that span generations, its immigrants and transplants, its beach culture, its vocal and silent minorities — all sharing the same county, the same neighborhoods, the same grocery stores, sometimes even the same homes.
Take Bundy Drive, a quiet residential street in Santee, a few blocks from Santana High School. It’s the kind of place where people keep their garage doors open and family cars line driveways of well-tended houses. As pretty and cohesive as it all looks from the outside, inside live people with completely different world views.
Here are the stories of three neighbors: A mother who almost lost her son in the Santana shooting, an Ohio transplant who sought refuge from bullying by getting involved with his church, and a Little League dad who owns a rare 1910 pistol. One of them believes in strict gun control, one believes in no gun restrictions and one balances delicately in the middle.
Guns as instruments of tragedy and death
San Diego, CA_1/29/2013_On Bundy Drive in Santee in three different homes, three different sides to the gun control issue in the wake of the Connecticut shooting that killed so many children. John Gastaldo/U-T San Diego/Mandatory Credit: John Gastaldo/U-T San Diego/Zuma Press — John Gastaldo
This is how you put a school on lockdown: Step one, move all children to a classroom. Step two, close and lock all access points and secure the perimeter. Step three: set up a command center and transfer authority to law enforcement until the threat has been contained.
In his career as a school administrator, Pat Keeley has had to make the call three times for security threats. Once, when he worked in California’s Central Valley, three feisty young longhorn bulls stampeded through the campus.
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