Following the heinous firearm-based attack on gun-free Sandy Hook Elementary, the NRA pushed a serious school security plan that included the recognition that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Their plan for defending children by securing school campuses is now summed up on one succinct plan–National School Shield.

On December 21, 2012, one week after the attack on Sandy Hook, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said:

We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents.

…Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly helpless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

…They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them — it’s our right to protect them.

What if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit the possibility that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

…How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame?

The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants this. [This will include] armed security…and teacher training.

…The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

More recently, during the February 16 airing of NRATV’s Grant Stinchfeld, NRA chief of staff Josh Powell noted that we protect celebrities, pro-athletes, and the “political class” with guns, yet leave our children vulnerable to attack.

Powell said:

It’s time we get serious. We need to get very serious about how we’re going to protect our kids, the measures that need to be put in place. The awful irony of this is when you look at athletes, celebrities, the political class, all of these people have security, and many of them have armed security. So the question is, at what point are we going to get serious enough about protecting our children and give the protections that all these other groups get?

There have been few changes since Sandy Hook Elementary. The left has called for gun control after gun control yet, by and large, our schools remain insecure and our children remain at risk. The attack on gun-free Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was a blaring reminder of this. They had an armed resource officer, but on a campus of over 3,000 students, one officer is hard-pressed to locate and stop a determined killer who is cunning enough to acquire his gun via compliance with all the left’s gun controls.

Enter the NRA’s National School Shield: a layered approach to safety to help ensure a predator who violates the outside of the perimeter of a campus can be stopped, even eliminated, before students are harmed.

School Shield requires training, installation, and acquaintance with certain communications equipment, surveillance methods, protocols, and security. The end result is a greater assurance that children can be protected and campuses spared should an attacker attempt to strike.

All these things cost money, so the NRA is providing grants to guarantee that schools in the poorest economic areas can protect their children on par with schools in the wealthiest economic areas.

By securing schools, the NRA does more than keep buildings and classrooms safe, they actually keep our children and teachers safe too.

And “safe” is a comforting word in a world full of evil men seeking a weak point at which to strike.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.