By CECIL BOTHWELL

 As anyone would expect, Asheville City Council, along with thousands of other local government bodies around the country, has received many demands for increased school safety following the recent horrific slaughter in Newtown, Conn.

All of us share the sadness and anger engendered by a too-often-repeated episode of mass murder of innocents, but those of us elected to local office cannot escape the mandate to secure public safety. That is, after all, one of the principal functions of local government.

Unfortunately, Buncombe County’s government has historically demonstrated a lamentably low concern about illegal firearms. A state audit of former Sheriff Bobby Medford’s evidence locker discovered upward of 325 guns missing. Sheriff’s deputies told me that they’d witnessed Medford  selling guns from the locker, and at least one person testified that Medford had offered to give her a weapon from that cache.

Today, five years after the audit, the Asheville Police Department has still not received identifying information on those 325 missing guns. Concern about disposition of those criminal weapons seems remarkably slim.

One possible way to address the question of school safety is the addition of school safety officers. That’s the approach advocated by the National Rifle Association and other gun-sales lobby groups. Such an approach seems to me to avoid reality.

At the extreme end of the “arm them all” argument we hear advocacy for putting guns on the hips of every teacher and principal in America. This idiotic idea flies in the face of all rationality, given that even the best-trained law enforcement officers miss their targets most of the time. More wildly flying bullets during a crisis do not constitute a solution.

Mass murders at schools are extremely rare, however horrific the outcome of any one event might be. Guarding against extremely rare events with expanded police presence might feel good, at least momentarily, but how many citizens are willing to pay for heightened police presence on a continuing basis?

Armed officers have not prevented mass murders at multiple sites. Why does anyone imagine that one more officer at one more school will work some kind of magic?

We currently have a team of school resource officers who counsel students and teachers and guard city schools. But that effort is spread thin. To guard every entrance point of every school would require dozens more trained, armed and equipped officers. Are City taxpayers willing to pay hundreds or thousands more each year for such enhanced protection? Are you personally willing to pay $500 more each year? $1,000?

An alternative proposed by the NRA is provision of volunteer guards drawn from NRA ranks. That sounds somewhat reasonable until we confront the question of liability, and insurance. The cost of liability coverage for volunteers wielding guns is not inconsequential. The NRA has not volunteered to pay for such insurance as of this writitng, and there is no guarantee that volunteer guards will offer any higher level of mental stability than the general population.

Other points of intervention in the world of firearms are cheaper and arguably much more cost effective.

City ordinances currently ban possession of firearms on city property by anyone other than law enforcement officers. It’s time to enforce that law in regard to gun shows.

Gun shows. Whew!

Is there any arguable public good served by operation of gun shows, other than facilitation of private sales that could fairly easily occur on a one-to-one basis?

Looked at from another angle, is there any “legal” activity in America that’s less beneficial to the public weal?

Yet, somehow, gun shows continue to claim rental space on Asheville City properties. 

It’s long past time to ban gun shows at all city-owned properties, including all recreation parks, the Civic Center, and the WNC Agriculture Center.

Even the best regulated gun shows —those that mandate background checks on all purchasers — contribute to the general acceptance of a weaponized culture.

In most of the modern world gun ownership is proscribed and gun deaths are rare. But here, where gun ownership is extolled by a radical fringe, gun ownership is extolled and gun deaths are relatively common. 

We can do better.

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Cecil Bothwell is a member of Asheville’s City Council and does not own a gun.