President Donald Trump and a number of conservative activists claim to have found a solution to the nation’s heartbreaking epidemic of school shootings: arming schoolteachers. Straight out of the playbook of the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers, this idea offers a particularly disturbing twist on the standard “more guns” lines we’re used to hearing. Not even in his darkest moments of imagination could George Orwell dream of such a thing—a free, democratic society imposing a bizarre pax balistica upon its children.
The primary school in my district, which my 2 1/2-year-old son will attend in a few years, employs 42 teachers. If each one is armed, that represents 42 opportunities for human error to leave a gun in reach of a child.
That’s 42 opportunities for a depressed child in an emotional moment to have access to a gun.
That’s 42 opportunities for an angry child, in need of counseling and in the midst of an argument, to have access to a gun.
Multiply that for every teacher in every school across the country.
The arithmetic is terrifying. Even if we accept the absurd argument that placing a gun in every classroom would reduce mass shootings, it takes little effort to imagine the gruesome consequences of Trump’s proposal. In place of mass shootings, childhood suicides and homicides would skyrocket. A grotesque trade-off.
And all that is before we even consider the emotional and psychological impact of subjecting our children to this academic police state. What sort of adults will these children become if they are educated at gunpoint?
Fortunately, the incompetence of Trump and his fellow Republicans is likely to save us from this dystopian vision. It seems unlikely that their bumbling could coalesce into actual legislation. Still, the fact that they have seriously offered such an option demonstrates in the plainest and starkest way possible that they are unfit to hold power in Washington.
— Matthew Gruhn, Glen Ellyn
Note from KBJ: Matthew Gruhn wants his children's school to remain a killing zone. Father of the Year!
