Shoot to Save

Do you read In From the Cold? It’s a compelling stop in the blogosphere for those of us who have lived normal lives — “normal” in the sense that we’ve never been out in the cold doing the sometimes dangerous and always necessary work that rough men have to perform to keep things going around here.

This time, go see how school shootings can be prevented…how they have been stopped in their tracks. Hint: dialogue with those who would shoot or torture children isn’t an option. Beslan’s carnage — which converted Columbine to a small blip on the radar — should have cured forever the Dialogue-to-the-Death-Ditherers. But it didn’t: open your local newspaper and see them, still dithering with Iran.

Spook86 notes telling comparisons between, say, the Chicago school systems’ preparedness (none) and those of other school districts in this country. He has the information on how Israel stopped the jihadist practice of terrorizing schools, combined with a positive experience here. And, no, in neither case did they use carrots to stop the bad guys:
- - - - - - - - - -

Even among districts with an anti-terrorism plan in place, there is virtually no discussion of another option for increasing school safety: arming teachers and administrators. Israel implemented a similar program in the early 1970s, after a series of bloody Palestinian attacks on Israeli schools. Armed staff members were supplemented by parents who patrolled school grounds with automatic weapons; the attacks quickly stopped and the terrorists began to look for other targets. It’s also worth noting that the school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi, was halted by an assistant principal with a gun. When shots rang out, the principal retrieved the weapon from his car and confronted the gunman, who quickly surrendered.

To… umm, paraphrase Spook86, fat chance of that happening here on a wide basis. He says there are 100,000 schools in our country. Few of them are engaging in the requisite tough thinking required to protect our children, who are at the mercy of those from the psychological left, those who never met an enemy (besides conservatives) that they couldn’t love:

Local police departments, the NEA and the PTA would probably recoil in horror at the prospect of armed staff members and a “parent patrol” providing security on school grounds. But in a war where every town is a potential target, all options should be on the table, particularly if they provide a deterrent presence that could discourage or prevent terrorist attacks.

…77% of the nation’s schools lack security cameras; half do not have security personnel on campus. Seventy percent lock some, but not all, of their doors, and virtually all leave their front doors unlocked. In today’s potential threat environment, that’s tantamount to a welcome mat for your local psychopath—or an Al Qaida cell.

At the opposite end of the spectrum in keeping our children “safe,” see Education Wonk’s top post, the saga of an experienced, passionate school teacher who was suspended by her principal for taking children to an art museum — a field trip whose permit the principal herself signed. The children actually viewed — gasp! —nude statues. I’ll bet these are the same folks who ridiculed Attorney General Ashcroft for his views on nudity.

But synchronicity seems to be at work here, so if it’s any consolation, the Wonk’s post for today presents the question: Has The Time Come For Pistol-Packing Educators?

Hey, maybe this shark has been jumped? Lord, let’s hope so.

Meanwhile, if you can arrange your life to live in reduced circumstances or genteel squalor in order to protect your children by schooling them at home, I urge you do so. Having home-schooled the Baron’s Boy — a hair-tearing, exhilarating roller coaster ride — I can assure you it’s worth it not to feel that lump in your gut every time your kid disappears behind those school bus doors.

Consider the tradeoff: so you don’t go on expensive vacations. So you drive a cheap car. So you learn the fun of shopping at Goodwill and eating at home. But you get to keep your kid. Small price, I’d say. A kid in exchange for gadgets and gewgaws… you choose.