Getting it right

Common sense heard from again

FRANCIS BACON told the story of a quarrel rising among the brethren in the year 1432 concerning the number of teeth in a horse’s head: “For 13 days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the 14th day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith.”

Surely the devil made him do it. Whoever heard of using common sense—horse sense?—when theory is at stake? Why do what you know works, when there are ancient chronicles to fetch?

Every now and then, even government can discover common sense, which is getting less common these days. Take, for best example, the school safety commission that Gov. Hutchinson put together a few months ago. Maybe it’s because the subject is so dear—the safety of Arkansas’ school children—but even this government commission came to the most sensible conclusion the other day:

Schools are soft targets. Harden them.

The school safety commission has decided to recommend schools have armed folks on the inside in case armed folks on the outside try to get on campus. The best choice would be uniformed school resource officers, which means cops. And that has always been best practice. Uniformed police have patrolled Friday Night Football since memory runneth not to the contrary, and we haven’t heard many complaints. Why our children need police protection on Friday nights but not Thursday mornings has never been adequately explained.

In those cases in which a school can’t afford a police officer, the next best solution is to take a few volunteers on campus—a vice principal, a coach, maybe a science teacher—and put them through training and subject them to even more background checks, maybe even mental exams, and allow them to carry on campus. The state is moving quickly in that direction. Which means schools are necessarily becoming less and less soft.

The opposition to these efforts seems steeped in theory. One person with Moms Demand Action told the papers that increasing security won’t deter school shootings. Where she got that idea is anybody’s guess. We thought increasing security to deter school shootings was exactly the point.

“I don’t think more guns in more places is the answer,” she told the press. “I think they need to do more to prevent school shootings.”

Gentle Reader can be forgiven for being a bit confused. This commission was put together for the very purpose of preventing school shootings, and one of its 19 recommendations is to have at least one armed person on campus standing between our kids and the crazies. Another thought from the concerned parent: “I am concerned that they’re putting a lot of the responsibility for this on teachers who are underpaid and overworked anyway.” And, we’d add, they’ll be over-dead, too, if another mass killer shows up on campus with only a No Guns Allowed sign holding him back.

It should be noted, for the record, that no teacher would be required to pack a gun on campus. These would be trained volunteers only.

Red flag laws would be super. And we’ve advocated for them in the past. More mental health services for students can only be a good thing. But we’d note that a recent FBI study found that only 25 percent of mass shooters had been diagnosed with mental illnesses. Which means 75 percent were not. Early warnings might not help prevent the majority of these shootings. However, an armed officer on campus should mean a quicker response.

Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once noted that a page of history is worth a volume of logic. You can argue the merits of a theory till the cows come home, but if the theory doesn’t work in practice, what’s the point? Look to what works.

A police presence works. Armed security works. Locks and cameras work.

Our schools, our teachers, our children deserve what works. Thankfully, the commissioners seem to get it, if others do not.