Don’t let ploy to arm teachers distract you
WASHINGTON >> The deliberately outrageous idea of arming classroom teachers is nothing more than a distraction, a ploy by the gun lobby to buy time for passions to cool. Don’t get sidetracked. Keep the focus where it belongs — on keeping militarystyle assault rifles out of civilian hands.
The National Rifle Association and its vassals in the Republican Party would like you to exhaust your outrage on a possibility that is, from the start, impossible. Picture one of your grade-school or highschool classrooms. Imagine a loaded gun in there somewhere. Even on an average day, without an active shooter stalking the halls, the question isn’t what could go wrong. It’s how many dead or wounded.
President Trump has touted the idea, but he tipped the NRA-GOP hand Saturday with a tweet: “Armed Educators (and trusted people who work within a school) love our students and will protect them. Very smart people. Must be firearms adept & have annual training. Should get yearly bonus. Shootings will not happen again — a big & very inexpensive deterrent. Up to States.”
“Up to States” means abdicating the federal government’s responsibility and urging state legislatures to waste time and effort debating whether to mandate that instruments of death be introduced to classrooms. Are parents going to be confident that the gun is securely locked away and no student will ever get his hands on it? That in an emergency the teacher would know how to use it? That an
assailant wouldn’t simply shoot the teacher first?
According to The New York Times, police officers in the nation’s largest city — men and women who are highly trained and periodically tested for firearms proficiency — hit their targets only one-third of the time. During actual gunfights, the paper reported, officers’ accuracy drops as low as 13 percent. The idea that teachers would somehow do any better is ludicrous, as is the idea that most teachers and their powerful unions would agree to such a horribly bad idea.
The fact that the GOP and the gun lobby are pushing this nonstarter is proof of how worried they are that the Parkland massacre has the potential to provoke real change. It’s not so much that Republicans would enact sensible gun control, but that voters might replace them with Democrats who will.
That is why NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre spent much of a foaming-at-themouth speech Thursday making the insane claim that Democrats, if elected, will impose some kind of socialist tyranny.
“You should be anxious and you should be frightened,” he warned at the annual meeting
of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
LaPierre charged that Democrats “want more restrictions on the law-abiding,” which is an odd way to describe school shooters.
The unhinged LaPierre wildly lobbed every cultural and racial grenade he could get his hands on. He railed against Black Lives Matter, the FBI, George Soros, college professors — and the media.
All this squealing can only mean that the NRA and Republicans think they’re in trouble.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who has an A-plus rating from the NRA, has come out in favor of raising the minimum age for gun purchases from 18 to 21. Some other Republicans agree, but the NRA’s strategy is never to give an inch.
With the Parkland students continuing to speak and inspire, could common-sense gun control be the issue that turns expected Democratic gains this November into a historic wave? That’s up to you. Ignore all distractions, and keep your eyes on the prize.