Armed Guards in Schools? I Think Not
Sadly, more and more schools are buying into Wayne LaPierre's insanity -- oops, I meant, logic -- that schools need armed guards to be safe.
As Justin Green writes in The Daily Beast, some schools in very rural areas are too far away for the police to respond quickly. So in Missouri, for one, they've turned to installing armed guards in these schools. And the townspeople love it.
Excuse me, but I don't see how having any kind of weapon in a school is a good thing. I believe the Columbine killers used their armed guard's gun against him, did they not?
Closer to home, and Newtown, some schools have indeed voted for people to patrol their halls with guns. Enfield, Conn., is one, which is pretty funny because this is a town with less than 45,000 residents, where the population has only gone up .1% since 2000 and which is located in the suburbs, rolling hills, to be exact.
A Florida mother has handed out a $12,000 check for armed guards in her daughter's school. And a bill right now is making its way through Indiana to mandate armed guards in schools, according to Joy Resmovits. This state would be the first in the country to do so.
Who's going to be patrolling these halls? Cops? Concerned citizens? A person like George Zimmerman? Who's going to be training them?
I realize it's an instinctive thing to want to protect your kids, especially after such an unspeakable tragedy. But I can't stop focusing on guns that fall into the wrong hands, and the effect the knowledge of guns in school would have on the teachers and the kids.
One teacher said she didn't want to work in an "armed camp." And I'm afraid that's just what this would become, while not doing anything -- as NRA members say about gun control -- to prevent the next tragedy.
The good news is that this is the first time in 20 years, according to The New York Times, that we've even talked about gun control. The NRA has been successful in the past at cutting it off at the knees. But now, experts say, the pendulum has swung back the other way, with 90% of people believing background checks -- and beefed-up ones at that -- are necessary. LaPierre is fuming in his bunker.
No one knows where any of this will go. Some still say, as meager as it is, that background checks, won't go forward. But I'd like to believe that Congress, looking into the faces of those brave, distraught parents, will behave like human beings and for once, do what's right.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/15/missouri-where-parents-are-ok-with-armed-teachers.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/indiana-armed-guards-schools_n_3009778.html
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2013/03/27/news/doc5152d768b8a23663554807.txt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/laurie-lauria-florida-mot_n_2527327.html
As Justin Green writes in The Daily Beast, some schools in very rural areas are too far away for the police to respond quickly. So in Missouri, for one, they've turned to installing armed guards in these schools. And the townspeople love it.
Excuse me, but I don't see how having any kind of weapon in a school is a good thing. I believe the Columbine killers used their armed guard's gun against him, did they not?
Closer to home, and Newtown, some schools have indeed voted for people to patrol their halls with guns. Enfield, Conn., is one, which is pretty funny because this is a town with less than 45,000 residents, where the population has only gone up .1% since 2000 and which is located in the suburbs, rolling hills, to be exact.
A Florida mother has handed out a $12,000 check for armed guards in her daughter's school. And a bill right now is making its way through Indiana to mandate armed guards in schools, according to Joy Resmovits. This state would be the first in the country to do so.
Who's going to be patrolling these halls? Cops? Concerned citizens? A person like George Zimmerman? Who's going to be training them?
I realize it's an instinctive thing to want to protect your kids, especially after such an unspeakable tragedy. But I can't stop focusing on guns that fall into the wrong hands, and the effect the knowledge of guns in school would have on the teachers and the kids.
One teacher said she didn't want to work in an "armed camp." And I'm afraid that's just what this would become, while not doing anything -- as NRA members say about gun control -- to prevent the next tragedy.
The good news is that this is the first time in 20 years, according to The New York Times, that we've even talked about gun control. The NRA has been successful in the past at cutting it off at the knees. But now, experts say, the pendulum has swung back the other way, with 90% of people believing background checks -- and beefed-up ones at that -- are necessary. LaPierre is fuming in his bunker.
No one knows where any of this will go. Some still say, as meager as it is, that background checks, won't go forward. But I'd like to believe that Congress, looking into the faces of those brave, distraught parents, will behave like human beings and for once, do what's right.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/15/missouri-where-parents-are-ok-with-armed-teachers.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/indiana-armed-guards-schools_n_3009778.html
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2013/03/27/news/doc5152d768b8a23663554807.txt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/laurie-lauria-florida-mot_n_2527327.html
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