Instead of making it harder for people to bring high capacity assault type weapons into schools, the NRA’s solution to keeping kids safe is to bring more guns into schools.  What a great marketing strategy!

I’m not saying that in some schools, in some neighborhoods, trained, disciplined, armed police are not warranted.  But guns in most schools?  Who would have thought that Sandy Hook or Columbine or Virginia Tech would have needed armed faculty and staff?  Do we arm 400,000 – 900,000 school personnel with all the attendant screening, ongoing training, cost and risk just in case someone (who probably could have been prevented from buying a gun or ammo by a background check) comes in with a gun? Granted this is terrible when it happens, but it is rare. And with background checks for guns and ammo, perhaps much rarer.  How about making it really, really hard for someone who is unbalanced or pathological to get a gun that can kill a lot of kids and teachers really quickly.  I mean except for law enforcement, security personnel and the military, who has the need or the right or the propper training to shoot that may bullets so quickly with people around?

Except for gun and ammo manufacturers, who will be able to profit by risking kids and teachers’ lives, here are just a few reasons why guns in schools instead of universal background checks and bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines is a terrible idea.

  1. A person intent on killing can probably fire all 31 bullets of their Bushmaster with a high capacity magazine before the person or persons in the school with guns could even unlock their guns. Probably 2 or 3 magazines.
  2. Unless the school personnel had equally powerful firearms, who would want to face a semi automatic assault weapon with a 30 or 100 bullet magazine?
  3. Even a well trained school principal who is a great shot and has an assault weapon can still get shot and killed by someone who has an assault weapon and murderous intent.  Even if the school defenders walk around all day with head-to-toe body armor, they are not impervious to some types of bullets.
  4. The walls in schools are not bullet-proof and having people spraying bullets at each other in the hallways has a good chance of increasing the number of bullets fired during a situation and not necessarily reducing the number. The more bullets fired, the more likely someone will get hit.
  5. Homes with guns are more likely to have someone injured or killed by a gun than homes without guns, even when factoring deaths caused by home invaders.  Unless the school personnel’s’ guns are locked up, how many kids and teachers are going to get shot because someone didn’t realize the gun was loaded or wanted to see what the gun in the main office was like or thought it would be funny to take the gun from the holster of their teacher.  Putting hundreds of thousands of guns into schools (vs. having no guns in schools) sounds like hundreds if not thousands of accidental deaths waiting to happen.
  6. If there are guns in the school and the school weapons expert is injured or killed, more guns are available for the nut job who is attacking the school at that time. Hell, why not just come into the school unarmed or armed with a concealed weapon and get the school’s assault weapons cache.  Those weapons are expensive so why not use the school’s?
  7. Police who are in the line of fire wear body armor. Guns don’t protect children from getting shot and killed unless the shooter is shot and killed first.  The shooter comes in all prepared, with body armor, as many magazines as they can carry, hand guns and assault weapons in hand. School personnel will have seconds to scramble, get into body armor, get their guns and ammo and get prepared to kill someone, something they will likely not want to do.  They also have the added burden of having to be careful not to shoot anyone but the gunman.  I guess this means they must be trained regularly in one of those mazes where friend/foe targets pop up.
  8. Will the gun manufacturers or the NRA pay for the extra training, weapons, body armor and of course extra insurance the school will need (liability and combat insurance for teachers)?
  9. Will the NRA fight to prevent gun and ammo taxes from being imposed to cover these imposed costs of gun ownership or will they forcefully impose these costs on everyone so they can profit?
  10. What are the rules of engagement and who is responsible for kids and teachers that get killed or maimed in the cross fire or from stray bullets?
  11. It takes years of counseling to recover from being the victim of a school invasion. What about the life altering experience of a teacher/protector who doesn’t save all the kids or accidently kills a student?
  12. Can an invading gunman or their family sue the school district for using excessive force or inadequately trained school protectors?
  13. Who pays for the medical and life-long care or death benefits should a school staffer accidently kill or maim a student or other teacher?
  14. Who is responsible if the training is not as good as it should be and the teacher with the gun is killed while defending the kids, or kids are killed by the teacher’s weapon?