Guns and Drugs

There are problems with the arguments on both sides. The fact is Australia does not have a major drug war on its boarder, like the United States. This drug war has an insatiable appetite for high powered weapons on both sides of the border. Gun ban or no, guns will flow back and forth along the American boarder in the company of recreational drugs that Americans and westerners demand.

Guns and drugs are interwoven in an unholy alliance that is inseparable. This is just a hint as to how complex a subject and debate we are facing. When new laws are passed where will we place the newly convicted? No one has addressed the fact that American prisons have a record population and there is simply no more room for the additional prisoners more gun control will surely create.

Of course Americans love their guns as much as they love their cars and will not be divorced from them easily. Hunters, recreation sportsman, skeet and trap shooters all feel entitled to ownership; and oh yes, that small thing called the Second Amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms, upheld by the lands highest court. Yet millions of other Americans fear guns, believing them to be evil and calling for them to be banned.

Murder Rates and Gun Control

Some areas, such as Chicago, Ill. have the highest gun related murder rate in the country, yet some of the strictest gun control laws. Why, illegal guns and drugs, the unholy alliance. Yet New York City—a larger city with one of the busiest shipping ports in the world and similar strict gun control—had the lowest murder rate by guns since the police department began creating statistics. This is a remarkable accomplishment as a result of modern strategic policing, with the aid of all of the latest software and surveillance equipment Homeland Security money can buy, and an esprit de corps second to none.

We face a terrible dilemma: create a feel good solution that will not likely accomplish what we are trying to do, save ourselves, from ourselves. But in the shadow of Newtown, to do nothing is unimaginable. While we debate, we and our children are faced with a continuing real risk.

In this instance, the goal of risk management is to protect our schools, school yards, universities, summer camps, places of recreation, malls, trains, buses, places of work and worship, from an evolving profile of mass murderer. Mass murderers whose weapons have included semi-automatic high-powered rifles, rapid fire pistols, common fertilizer combined with gasoline to produce bombs with a blast of such ferocity and power, it can be detonated from behind the bomb barriers and still destroy a large office building. Common barbecue propane tank bombs, similar in power to the fertilizer bomb, bombs surgically placed in the abdomens of suicide bombers, and the diabolical list infinitely continues in the imagination of the deranged and determined.

Safeguarding People and Property

While we wait for the progressively slow progress of democratic legislating, one answer that can address the painful reality we face is highlighted by three basic principles of protection:

1. Assessment
2. Preparation
3. Action

Property owners and those insuring them must assess each unique building, location, or area to be protected in order to identify its security weaknesses and strengths. They must assess the best methods to counter the weaknesses and the risks.

This will entail preparing a plan to include layers of security methods, with each layer presenting obstacles and slowing an assailant down to allow time for police or specially trained armed guard response. As for preparation, devise an evacuation plan to move civilians either away from the threat or into secure portions of the facility that will act to slow the assailant further. This will allow more time for the police to respond.

Action includes awareness and practical ongoing training for the staff, and for the group being protected, so that each knows what to do, and when to do it to best ensure survival of a mortal threat. This is similar to required ongoing fire drills, tornado drills, hurricane, and disaster drills.

The overall aim is the Golden 10 Minutes of Survival to allow police and rescue response, deployment, and interdiction.

Security preparedness and security drills, it is now apparent, should be new lexicons. So while the debate rages on, democracy takes its slow, imperfect course, and one type of legislation or another is passed, the good news is each school district, village, town, summer camp, place of business and place of worship can reassess the generally inadequate current approach to security measures, and effect a remarkable difference. It is good business, makes sense, and meets the moral challenge of our time.

Anthony C. Roman is CEO of Roman and Associates, a global insurance & corporate investigation, risk management, and security consulting firm. He is a frequent contributor to CNN, MSNBC, CNN International, Associated Press, New York Times, Crain's New York Business, and New York Newsday. He is the software designer of WEB TRAC, a claims, legal, risk management and security intelligent software program. Roman may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @RomanSearch.com, Twitter and Facebook.