The Donald is causing anti-gun types to lose their minds: and it’s beautiful to watch
The Brisbane Times reprinted a Washington Post opinion piece today from a US school teacher. It’s hysterically entitled:
Why I will never carry a gun in my classroom
It’s the answer to a question that no one asked. No one asked Victoria Barrett to carry a gun in her classroom. By all indications, no one wants her to carry a gun. Anywhere. Ever.
The imaginary question
Victoria is one of millions of people suffering a collective delusion: they’re fantasising that this week, in the wake of a Florida school shooting, Donald Trump asked school teachers to carry a handgun at school. He didn’t.
Trump suggested that a small percentage of suitably qualified and experienced school staff voluntarily carry concealed weapons. Why did he suggest this? The Guardian (of all papers) quoted Trump justly:
Referring to Aaron Feis, a football coach who used his body as a shield to protect a student during the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, the president continued: “If the coach had a firearm in his locker when he ran at this guy – that coach was very brave, saved a lot of lives, I suspect.
“But if he had a firearm, he wouldn’t have had to run, he would have shot him, and that would have been the end of it. This would only obviously be for people who are very adept at handling a gun. It’s called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They’d go for special training and they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone. Gun-free zone to a maniac, because they’re all cowards, a gun-free zone is: ‘Let’s go in and let’s attack, because bullets aren’t coming back at us’.”
School teachers, off-duty police, off-duty security guards and other reliable members of the community would be a huge deterrent to crime if they could choose to carry sidearms following appropriate training.
Saying that in public drives the anti-gun folks absolutely crazy, because the evidence of its success is borne out in every US state that allows concealed carry permits. These are the folks who would like victims to wait for police to arrive. In the recent Florida shooting, a sheriff’s officer was right outside and refused to confront the shooter, as ABC reports:
The armed deputy assigned to the campus of a Florida high school during a deadly shooting last week stayed outside the building during the attack and failed to engage the shooter, the county sheriff has said.
As a consequence, Scot Peterson, on duty as the school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, resigned from the department, said Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who earlier had suspended the officer from the force.
He did not say if Mr Peterson would face criminal charges.
Mr Israel said he decided to suspend Mr Peterson after viewing a video that showed the deputy’s actions during the rampage that killed 17 people.
No one wants to see any criminal misuse of firearms, let alone mass shootings. Maybe instead of answering imaginary questions, we could focus on how to practically solve real problems, like Trump is doing in this case.