"Arming Teachers"

This phrasing keeps popping up, as though there's some nefarious NRA plan to order teachers to form ranks in the gymnasiums (gymnasia?) of America, where they will each be issued a brace of sixguns in a buscadero rig and a GOP party registration form.

The reality of things is that we already have plenty of armed teachers in America, it's just that in all but a few enlightened states, they can only be armed at the grocery store and the mall and the gas station, not at work. In most states, they're not even protected by "gun in parking lot" laws that shelter employees of private employers, since the entirety of school grounds is usually verboten terrain for firearms.

"Well, what will keep some disturbed kid from snatching the teacher's gun?" The same thing that keeps them from snatching the teacher's gun at the grocery store and the mall and the gas station: they don't know it's there because that's how concealed carry works. The same thing that saves me from having long, dull conversations about the best brand of JHP with every gun otaku with whom I'm stuck in a checkout line will prevent the hypothetical gun grabs the antis are conjuring.

"Teachers should be teaching, not the last line of defense for their students!" Hey, guess what? They're already the last line of defense for their students. That's not a decision you or I or even they get to make; the asshole who decided he wanted to grab some headlines makes that decision. The teacher's only decision is how effectively they want to do it. If you want to be an ineffective ablative meat shield, that's on you, honey. I've already decided that I ain't goin' out like that.

Here's the thing: As long as there are guns, there are going to be a certain amount of shootings, just like as long as there are booze and cars, a certain percentage of people are going to drive drunk.

The guns aren't going away. There are more of them in this country than there are people. States that have passed draconian restrictions on the scariest-looking guns report single digit compliance rates. The sort of creative little doucherockets who think the Columbine shooters were role models are gonna be able to get their hands on guns for decades to come no matter what improbable legislation you ram through today.

The single most viable thing we could do to stop school shootings (and most public mass shootings in general) is as unlikely as wishing all the guns into the corn field, and that's to have a near total media blackout on them. But as long as shooting a bunch of classmates remains the easiest way to get to the top of the news cycle, get your own Wikipedia page, and ensure more people know your middle name than the president's, we're going to continue to incentivize these little shits.

That leaves one really effective solution: Eliminating victim disarmament zones. Nothing takes the cachet off your trenchcoat massacre more than being shot in the ear by the pink Kel-Tec .380 of Mrs. Perkins, your remedial grammar/comp teacher.

And that's the thing! There's no need to force teachers to play hunter/killer SWAT commando. The training requirements outlined in Florida's hasty-ass legislation are ridiculous, and I say this as someone with a reasonably extensive firearms training resume.

The shooting problem here is the easiest possible one there is. There's no need to go in search of anybody; just get all the kids out of sight of the locked classroom door, post yourself up in the blind spot against the wall between the doorway and your young charges, and wait. If the disturbed youth somehow manages to force the door, you send him to the respawn point like a proper camper.
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