Irish writer Oscar Wilde said, commenting on his 19th century tour of the American West, that “an armed society is a polite society.”

In my own life I’ve heard from my Colombian cousins that during the cocaine wars in that country during the 1980s there was one strange positive side effect. There was very little non drug related crime, as everybody was armed. If you tried to knock over a liquor store and drew a weapon, there would be several armed bystanders ready and willing to ruin your day.

People, especially American tourists visiting Colombia, were advised to publicly wear a gun in a holster and let it show as a deterrent to kidnapping by Marxist terrorists or other violence. I can tell you, it worked. Posh boutiques then sold fashionable brand name handguns in stylish colors and designs. Women especially favored purse sized 25 ACPs.

In May 1974 this happened in Israel, from various sources, Palestinian terrorists “headed for the Netiv Meir Elementary School, where they took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage on 15 May 1974, in Ma’alot. Most of the hostages were teenagers from a high school in Safad on a Gadna field trip spending the night in Ma’alot. The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. On the second day of the standoff, the Sayeret Matkal (Israeli Special Forces) stormed the building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.” After that Israeli teachers and school aides were armed. Ma’alot has not been repeated.

And finally, we may recall, from USA Today in December 2019, that a “man pulled out a shotgun inside a North Texas church on Sunday and opened fire…Two congregants, both volunteer members of the church’s security team, drew their weapons and confronted the gunman, fatally shooting him and saving an ‘untold number of lives’ at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, a town of about 17,000 people near Fort Worth.”

Thus we need to ask ourselves: Would the evil lunatic who shot children in Uvalde have had second thoughts if he knew he would be confronted with an armed response at the outset of the massacre? If a teacher or member of a school security team had been armed and engaged the killer, how many fewer families would be facing unspeakable sorrow tonight?

As we can see from the actions in that church in Texas in 2019, an armed team can save lives. Lots of them. So the answer to Uvalde is not gun control, a scheme favored by the left to neuter the citizenry. It is an expansion of gun acquisition, training, and an encouragement of Americans to embrace their rights under the Second Amendment. If for no other reason than to once again prove Oscar Wilde right about human nature.