Joe Henderson
Some good ideas about gun control came out of the Legislature this week. Arming teachers isn’t one of them, though.
The proposal in the House Appropriations Committee to spend $400 million and put resource officers in every school, beef up mental health treatment, and reinforce buildings to make them safer – all good.
As always when guns are involved though, lawmakers go a step too far.
In this case, Republicans pushed through by a party-line vote the school marshal program championed by Rep. Jose Oliva that would authorize designated teachers to have and, if necessary, use firearms.
Yes, it still has to reach the governor’s desk and even then would still be up to individual school districts to decide if they want to implement the plan.
Even so, it’s bad.
Bad. Bad. Bad.
That’s not just me saying this.
Students, parents and teachers who lived through the horror of the Parkland massacre pleaded, cried and did their best to convince the committee that the proposal was whacked and would only make a horrible situation worse.
Gov. Rick Scott says it’s a bad idea.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio opposes this.
No matter.
The Republican Rifle Association – oops, I mean Republican representatives in the Legislature – will always err on the side of more guns.
The irony, of course, is that the NRA Grand Dame herself, Marion Hammer, lobbied to defeat the bill because it also includes a measure that would push the minimum age to buy a gun to 21.
She called it an attack on the Second Amendment.
No, Marion … what happened in Parkland is an attack.
Shooting 17 people to death with a high-powered weapon is an attack on the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
A few mild restrictions on who can own a gun like that is not an attack. With that in mind, it’s not like Hammer’s legislative lapdogs voted to ban the sale of assault-style weapons or anything.
The committee vote to introduce more guns into public schools it shows the basic belief of those who voted in favor that only a good guy with a gun … blah, blah and furthermore, blah.
Let’s look a little closer at that, shall we?
In a situation like last week, an armed teacher would have been expected to be controlled and cool amid chaos – scrambling, screaming, terrified students, the echo of gunfire from the killer and fallen bodies.
Would the marshal be expected to head into the hallways and track the shooter, or just stay in the classroom and protect students there? And what if police do arrive on the scene and see a teacher moving through the corridors with a weapon?
Even if they don’t just shoot the teacher first, there would be more wasted time trying to prove that this is the good guy.
How they could vote for this idiotic proposal after hearing from those who experienced the Parkland horror beg them not to take that step is sad – but not surprising.
It does set up a potential test for Rick Scott.
If this idea of arming teachers works its way through the process and becomes law, Scott could still veto it – and boy, wouldn’t that bring an interesting twist to his assumed-candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
That’s getting ahead of things though.
Like I said up top, some good ideas came out of Tuesday’s discussion in the appropriations committee, and much of what was proposed makes sense and should become law.
But arming teachers?
Horrible idea. But when it comes to the expansion of guns into everyday life, that never seems to matter.
