The Right Path to School Safety

 

The dust has largely settled from the massacre in Uvalde, TX, and facts — what few we have gotten — can now be analyzed with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight.

Once again, local police who should have been able to confront a maniacal killer chose, instead, to 'play it safe' and wait until the shooting had died down before putting their own lives in danger.  In the end, it was actually a Border Patrol officer who engaged the shooter and ended the standoff.  Reliance on paid, trained professionals has once again proved to be the wrong path to school safety.

Some have suggested that combat veterans, having been in high-stress situations analogous to school shootings, ought be hired as school security guards.  The drawbacks to this should be obvious:  a fair few of the candidates may already suffer from PTSD, and might be more of a danger than a help and, as we have seen before, even paid, trained professionals are often "as useless as tits on a bull".

Allow me to offer a modest proposal:  While not all teachers will be able to act as first responders, to suggest that no teachers will be both willing and able to do so is, frankly, not borne out by the experience of many school districts across the country.  Therefore, I suggest that school districts be mandated to offer to all willing and qualified teachers and staff a "training and readiness stipend" not less than 6% of the employee's annual compensation, in exchange for which the employees will be expected to carry their own firearm (concealed) during their work day.  Whatever training the district deems necessary will be provided by the district at no cost to the employee.

It is clear that school shootings only occur in schools and districts where teachers and staff are prohibited from being armed in their own defense.  There are no countervailing examples.  There have been no school shootings at schools in districts where teachers and/or staff are permitted to be armed during their work day.  The solution to school shootings thus suggests itself:  no districts may be permitted to disallow self-defense by its teachers or staff.

We should expect that "school shootings" will become the stuff of legend, and the few that do still occur never rise to the level of "mass shooting" (4 or more dead per incident).  Anyone who objects to this plan has the obligation to put forward an alternative that, even if only theoretically, works.  Failing that, zip your lip.