After Wayne LaPierre spoke of the NRA’s desire to help make children safer by using its own money and resources to train teachers and work with police departments to have an armed presence at every school that wants it, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former RNC chair Michael Steele joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg in crying foul.
Said Christie: “In general, I don’t think the solution to safety in schools is putting an armed guard because for it to really be effective in my view, from a law enforcement perspective, you have to have an armed guard at every classroom.”
This is absolute lunacy. And if we followed Christie’s line of thinking for our homes, we’d have to conclude that having a gun at the ready by the bed at night is a waste of time unless we have a family member armed and on watch at every entrance to the house at all times as well.
You see how silly such thinking is?
In the real world, shooters who seek out victims in schools would have no idea where the armed guard was. But by using surveillance technology, which the NRA wants to help provide, and limiting building entrance access to one point, which the NRA wants to show schools how to do, the armed guard would know exactly where the shooter was.
Moreover, if teachers with concealed carry permits are trained by the experts the NRA wants to supply, they will learn how to take defensive positions with their students, as well as how to engage and kill the shooter should he enter their room. In this way, they would be part of the larger, “multifaceted” plan LaPierre described.
By the way, this is exactly the kind of thing Governor Rick Perry (TX) and Governor-elect Mike Pence (IN) are talking about implementing in their states.
And then there’s Michael Steele, who said Mr. LaPierre’s comments about putting armed guards in schools was “haunting.”
Mr. Steele has it all wrong. What’s haunting is not the thought of guns being used to defend children, but the all-too-recent experience of sitting in front of the TV as news reporters describe the carnage that befell defenseless children, teachers, and administrators in a Connecticut school building.
Gov. Christie and Mr. Steele need to come to grips with the fact that this isn’t some abstract experiment. Far from it, this is the reality politicians have created by using Gun-Free School Zones to announce to the world that our children and their teachers are sitting in classrooms with no means of self-defense.
It’s high time we make use of armed security and show our children we love them as much as the sports stadiums, passenger jets, and government buildings we hire armed security to protect.
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