Despite being mercilessly mocked by the MSM for suggesting armed police officers be put in schools — a program the NRA dubbed the National School Shield program — the idea has quickly taken hold all around the country. From Texas to Virginia to Staten Island to Sandy Hook Elementary itself, parents are demanding that their children be afforded armed protection rather than trust their luck to gun-free zone designations that determined murderers tend not to comply with. And as the self-evident logic of the proposal has convinced parents and school administrators alike, perhaps the most surprising group to come to the epiphany that a spree killer who faces armed resistance is likely to kill fewer people is . . . wait for it . . . the Obama Administration . . .
As RF mentioned, when a dim bulb like Barbara Boxer sees the light in having an armed presence protecting our most precious assets, you know an idea has some inherent heft. And not only is the proposal’s simplicity and logic getting through to one of the Senate’s least distinguish chair-warmers, but Steven Rucker in today’s WaPo reports that,
The Obama administration is considering funding many more police officers in public schools to secure campuses, a leading Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks.
That’s right. Even VP Joe Biden – someone who’s managed to stake out a position on the wrong side of just about every major policy matter in the last quarter century – thinks cops in schools is good, too. Looks like his Civilian Disarmament Commission will recommend that the guvmint make federal dollars available to districts that want to install armed security guards and surveillance equipment.
But since giving the NRA any credit at all for the idea isn’t something that can be done in polite society, Rucker’s quick to add that whatever the feds go with won’t be “nearly as far-ranging as the National Rifle Association’s proposal for armed guards in every U.S. school.”
Not that credit really matters much. What’s important is taking steps to ensure that the next mal-adjusted bedwetter with a gun meets force with force. Armed personnel in schools is the only solution that’s been floated that would have a real, tangible effect in improving school safety and reducing casualties in the future when the inevitable happens again.
Still, not matter how blindingly simple and unassailable the logic of placing armed personnel (whether they’re cops or teachers) in schools may be, there are still plenty of lefty anti-gun groups who are still digging in their heels against the horrific thought of using guns to protect children from potential wackadoodles who want nothing more than to kill them.
But the school safety idea also faces some opposition within the Democratic base. A coalition of progressive groups — including the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Advancement Project, the Alliance for Educational Justice and Dignity in Schools — plans to release a report Friday titled “Police in Schools Are Not the Answer to the Newtown Shooting.”
“What seems like a rational solution of let’s have more security in our schools is really the NRA argument — that you fight guns with guns,” said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project. “The introduction of police officers into schools has detrimental impact on young people.”
Their calculus is simple: if the NRA is fer it, they’re agin’ it. If it costs the lives of innocent children and teachers, that’s just a cost society will have to bear to keep up the pretense of schools a pristine firearm-free utopias. There’s only so far any self-respecting “progressive group” can bend on something like this, after all.