Should Schools Have Armed Security?

     So in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, the NRA came under a lot of heat for proposing that the public schools have armed security in them. The level of criticism leveled I think showed how a lot of the people who were calling for both sides to come together and have a meaningful discussion on the issue were not really serious about this. The real irony has been those who claimed that the NRA and Wayne LaPierre had lost credibility on the issue for proposing this, yet who considered themselves credible on the subject as their proposed solution is the so-called "Assault Weapons Ban."

     A few points I wanted to make on this proposal of the NRA's though:

1) Many of the critics say that the NRA's proposed solution to guns in the schools is more guns. That the NRA's solution is for there to be armed guards in the schools who will shoot it out with the gunmen in such events among the children, and thus the NRA loses credibility. Their (the critics) solution is instead to get the guns out of the hands of the shooters in the first place. Well the the problem with this is that for one, it's virtually impossible to get the guns out of the hands of the shooters. Even if we banned the further sale and manufacture of all guns in this country, there's millions out there in circulation right now (and a whole lot of additional ones have flowed out with the panic buying that has occurred in the wake of the shooting). So it would be virtually impossible to stop the shooters from having guns at any point in the near-term.

     But let's say that we repealed the Second Amendment and then went on acquiring all the guns in circulation. Provided that this could even be done, it would likely be a multi-decade process to get all the guns out of circulation. So even if one would prefer to to do this, banning all guns, I would think that while that was being done, it would make sense possibly to put armed security into the schools.

     So even if one disagrees with the NRA's proposal as an end solution, it would still make sense as a near-term temporary solution for some decades until all the guns could be rid from society. The gun-grabbers' plan would involve a period of leaving the schools unsecured for the years to decades it would take to get all the guns out of circulation.

2) Some say that the children, even if protected by armed security, will not be any safer when outside of the school in say a supermarket or a mall (Chris Wallace said this to Wayne LaPierre in his interview with him on Fox News Sunday). Well to this I say, if that's the line of reasoning, then we might as well get rid of the special standards for engineering and construction that we have for school buses. Because it makes no sense to require those buses to be built to any special standards because the children are not going to be secured by those standards when they are riding in vehicles that are not school buses (like their parents' car/minivan/SUV). And we may as well also get rid of the security in the IRS buildings, because surely the IRS employees are not safe when out and about either.

     The reason for securing these buildings and vehicles is because they hold a large number of a certain type of personnel that needs protection. In the case of an IRS building, you have a large number of IRS employees all concentrated together in one building. Such buildings are thus ripe targets for those who might want to harm IRS employees. Sure, they could try to go after individual employees outside of the building, but there are a lot who would just want to rage against the IRS itself and mass-kill IRs employees. And if the whole building is just left wide open for someone to just walk in, well that's asking for an attack at some point.

     With a schoolbus, you have a vehicle that carries a large number of children. If something bad happens to the bus, thus a large number of children could either be injured and/or killed. So we require the buses to be constructed to special standards. With a school, you have what is a warehouse filled with children for a good portion of the day. Such a building is a major target for anyone intent on slaughtering children. Such a person is likely not going to go to a mall or a supermarket. Yes, individual children will be at more risk, but only to a general mass-shooter who wants to shoot at anybody or to someone after a specific child. Regarding a person intent specifically on slaughtering children in large numbers, they are going to head to the building filled with children, preferably one labeled as a "Gun Free Zone." And even if they just want to shoot up a large number of people period, adults or children, schools are ripe targets for this.

     So the NRA's suggestion is, just like with the schoolbuses and IRS buildings, we should increase the security of the schools. It is not a fail-safe solution, but one that can help prevent future mass shootings. It is often pointed out that Columbine had security and that didn't stop the shooters. But a third of the schools in the country already have armed security, so it must work to some degree as a form of deterrant, or there would be no point in investing money in it. The amount of security return the security provides must be worth the cost of investing money in it, or I doubt the schools would continue to do so.