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Sam Harris published an informative and thoroughly researched post about gun violence on his blog yesterday. It’s definitely worth a read but it left me disappointed. I typically agree with most everything Harris says. He has the enviable ability to distill most topics down with such lucidity to make almost any idea sound obvious. However, while there is much to agree with in his piece, he unfortunately falls victim to certain contradictions.

Harris points out that 55 million children were at school the day 20 children were murdered in Newtown, Conn. He adds that 543 people have been killed in mass shootings since 1982 while there were 564,452 total murders during that time — meaning mass shootings comprised only 0.01 percent of all murders in that span. Harris also notes that the rates of violent crime in America have fallen 22 percent during the last decade and 18 percent over the last five years. However, in spite of the perspective these numbers provide, he still advocates for armed guards at schools. Huh?

While a world without guns is more or less a pipe dream, as Harris asserts, placing well-trained armed guards at our nation’s schools is equally — not to mention financially and mathematically — idealistic. Current budget numbers bear this out. For example, the Department of Defense budget is now $633 billion — or roughly 25 percent of the federal budget. Education (and job training) only comprises 3.6 percent of the federal budget — or approximately $92 billion. The DoD currently has 440 bases (to include the National Guard and Reserves) in the continental United States. However, there are 98,817 public schools in this country. What do these numbers have to do with each other? Let me explain.

The DoD is responsible for the security of its bases whether home or abroad. Until recently, most bases within the United States used contracted security at their gates. They are now hiring police officers to fulfill the roll. A quick search on the federal government’s employment website, USAJobs, shows that the majority of officers are being hired at the GS-05/07 pay grade. That means the starting salary range is approximately between $28,000 – $44,000 (depending on locality adjustments).

Take a minute to digest those figures. The Department of Defense, which comprises 25 percent of the federal budget and maintains security of a modest 440 installations, can only afford to pay professional police personnel $28,000 – $44,000 for their protective services. How can it be considered even remotely feasible that another federal department, with less than 0.6 percent of the funding and responsibility for 98,817 buildings, will be able to train, arm, and pay guards for every facility? The very idea is absurd. Local municipalities simply cannot be expected to absorb this expense.

(I do realize and admit that federal education funds make up a fraction of local school districts’ budgets, but state funding for education has been in decline long before this latest tragedy. Don’t expect much help there either.)

So what is America to do? The answer, I believe, is to wait. Violence is on the decline and guns will never be outlawed — nor should they be. But more guns are not the answer. If they were, the United States would have solved this problem years ago. America is simply going to have to outgrow its obsession with guns. In the meantime, America can stop reacting to violence in such spectacular fashion. The truth is, we simply can’t afford it.

Osama bin Laden released a now somewhat famous video in 2004. In it, he declared his mission to bankrupt the United States. He is quoted as saying:

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

Was he wrong? The answer is sobering. The United States is estimated to have spent a staggering $6.6 million for every single dollar Al Qaeda spent carrying out the attacks on 9/11. In addition, it’s difficult to ignore the economic and emotional strain America has experienced in the last decade of warfare; the massive bureaucratic overhaul in Washington by the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security; or the erosion of basic freedoms and rights to privacy during the “war on terror.”

America needs to resist sweeping reactions to singular tragedies. Doing so will rob violence of its power to influence our society — a power it doesn’t deserve. Until we are able to do this, we will bankrupt ourselves fighting violence in a world that is becoming persistently, albeit gradually, more peaceful. When any aspect of society is altered or forfeited because of one violent action, it emboldens and accommodates violence even more by allowing it to affect a greater number of people and validating the perpetrator’s intent.

I don’t want my daughter going to a school with guns. I want her to forgo concern for weapons, not be dependent upon them. Getting educated under armed guard would be tantamount to institutionalization. The sacrifices required to make that happen would render public education unworthy of the trouble anyway. Our resources would be better invested in cultivating a more enlightened and educated generation of Americans. How much of our national identity and public liberty are we prepared to continually sacrifice on the altar of fear, no matter how unlikely its consequences?

A story that has resurfaced in light of the Newtown tragedy is that of Anders Behring Breivik; the gunman who took 77 lives — most of them teenagers — during a calculated mass shooting rampage in Norway in July, 2011. Brievik was found competent and given a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison — a penalty that baffled many Americans. How could the citizens of Norway stand to not only spare this man’s life, but also guarantee his release at the relatively young age of fifty-three? One of the surviving victims, Bjorn Magnus Ihler, summed it up like this:

“That’s how it should work. That’s staying true to our principles and the best evidence that he hasn’t changed society.”

When will America be able to provide that answer?