
Armed teachers no answer to school safety
By Dorothy Inman-Johnson
Special to the Outlook
Turning teachers into gunslingers instead of respecting and honoring the job they were hired to do is one of the most insane solutions to preventing mass shootings at schools that I have heard. I was a teacher for 28 years, and I guarantee not one day of that 28 years did I wake up thinking I really want to add law enforcement to my more than full-time job educating my students. The fourteen to eighteen year old student survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have articulated why this is such a bad idea; and proven themselves to be so much smarter than state legislators, Congressional leaders, and the President who have been peddling the idea of teachers with guns as the answer to preventing another gun massacre in schools.
First, if teachers and the gunman were all shooting at each other, chances are many more students and teachers would have been killed by cross fire than the seventeen. It would have been like the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Second, when law enforcement finally entered the building they would have had a hard time determining who was the culprit, with several teachers welding firearms; possibly leading to another tragedy in which the wrong people are shot by police officers. Third, it takes very little thought to develop a school safety plan that really works if elected leaders would just show the guts to stand up to ridiculous mandates and campaign bribes from the NRA. Here are a few sensible solutions to the problem.
1. Install video monitoring systems at schools and metal detectors. Every state and federal government building has these systems installed. Why should politicians be better protected than our children? Further, since these state and federal elected officials created the problem with these permissive gun laws that make us all unsafe, the state and federal government should appropriate the funds to equip schools, not local tax payers, instead of arming teachers.
2. Congressional approval of universal background checks that will flag those purchasing guns who have a violent history, reports of mental illness, or threats of violence against others or themselves; and immediately make the information available nationwide to state and local law enforcement data bases.
3. Ban the sale of military style weapons to civilians. Neither the NRA nor anyone else can be taken seriously claiming such weapons are a right under the Constitution to defend their home or bag a deer on a hunting trip. The goal should never be to have civilians with a bigger arsenal than the law enforcers and military we count on to protect us. It was never the intent of the Second Amendment that each American household become a “militia”.
4. Require that all guns be licensed and registered in each state. Some states, including Florida, do not require a license or registration for guns brought in from other states.
5. Mandate that the same gun laws are followed for firearm purchases at gun shows, and impose a penalty for violations.
The Parkland students, who survived the massacre at their school and launched the #Never Again campaign, have been so eloquent, smart, and effective in confronting elected leaders at the state and national level for taking NRA blood money that NRA leadership is at a loss to respond to them. So, instead, they are spreading false claims that these young people are puppets of Democrats and the liberal media. This youth campaign is organic and took shape within twodays after the school tragedy, and has been going full steam ahead without the involvement of the Democratic Party. The media has only correctly reported the fierceness, passion, and intelligence of these youth leaders like David Hogg, Emma, and Ryan. With corporate sponsors dropping the NRA like the plague, NRA leaders are running scared for the first time in over 20 years and know they would be on the losing end attacking these children who are also victims. So they are going after their usual, convenient target, liberals and the media. This time it won’t work.
They have awakened a sleeping dragon, young activists, that has mobilized against them nationwide. Many of these students will be eligible to vote in the 2018 Mid-Term election in legislative and congressional races; and others will be voting age in time for the 2020 presidential election. Nothing scares politicians more than the NRA’s money except a well organized electorate mobilized against them. And these young people can count on the support of most Americans, who by margins of 80 to 99 percent support common sense gun laws advocated by the #Never Again movement, including parents and teachers who care deeply about school safety, and disagree that teachers must become armed school security.
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