16 Mar 01

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Arms Room Franchise

I wrote a note on my hand about a week or so ago about another school shooting. Of course by now everyone has heard about the shooting out in Santee, California. It's another abused kid gone nuts, another one of us weirdos, who was picked on and harrassed. I identify, even though I don't sympathize. This was a wrong, wrong, wrong, horrible thing, but it very much points out how far we still have to go not only in teaching our kids about how to react to stress and abuse, but also about how to treat their peers in general.

Of course, this will further arouse the gun control activists, and perhaps they have a point. It is true that gun control measures don't have all that much affect on crime in general, such as drug running and theft and pimping and such. Criminals embedded in the system will get guns, and most legislation will not affect them in the least.

But school shooters, that's a different story. These kids get their guns, either by gift or by theft, from their parents, or from friends or family. Gun control proponents can make a pretty strong case that tighter restrictions might have made the difference between life and death in nearly all these cases.

So, what's to do? I know.

Arms rooms. We need arms rooms. We need something like what the Army has, centralized points where you can safely store your weapons, and not have to worry too much about whether Skip steals the key to the gun box.

The idea is this - an arms room needs to be physically secure. In the Army, arms rooms are generally in the basements of big old buildings, with nice thick concrete walls and zero windows. They are gated and fenced off at multiple points, with deadbolts as the locking devices. When you put your weapon into an arms room, you are issued an identification card. When you go back to get your weapon, you must surrender the card and you must be the person on the card. Every weapon entering and leaving the room is logged, and the serial number is on record always. Your weapon belongs in your assigned slot. It's all very orderly, very precise, and very strictly enforced.

Now imagine a franchise chain of these, all over the country. People who have guns for hunting purposes, or for neato cool purposes, will have a nice safe place to store them, and still have access to them when they need to. Should a crime occur allegedly involving a weapon normally stored there, there will be evidence as to when it was taken out, which could be very useful in determining the truth about the crime. There would be witnesses, and since I'd insist on bouncers and video cameras, these also would be useful for the safety of both the customer and the public.

Of course, people who keep firearms for personal defense would probably not get much use out of this, unless, like some PIs I know, they have several different work weapons and have no need to carry them all at once. They can store away the ones that aren't currently in use. But the arms room would be no substitute for the nightstand, for those who do that.

One problem is overhead. Thick walls, heavyweight fences, hefty locks, heftier bouncers, alarms, and video equipment aren't all that cheap.

A corrollary problem is insurance. Insuring something like that has got to either be impossible, or prohibitively expensive.

What about zoning? Who would wanna live or work near an arms room?

Hmmmmmm... 

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