Re the president’s proposal:
I suppose it appeals to some people as very nice thinking on the surface: let’s arm teachers at schools. Surely the bad guy will think “oh no, I better stay away.”
Still, there could be a couple of problems with this reasoning:
First, the bad guys are not noted for think rationally. They might attack anyway or plan their assault differently.
Maybe it will keep them away; maybe not. Perhaps there will be a barrage of gunfire and the shooter will be killed before he gets to a total of 17 dead. Maybe only 5 or 10 kids?
Second, it’s not clear if every shooter is obsessed with killing students or just killing a lot of people generally. What’s to keep the bad guys from switching targets? Instead of a school, another public place with lots of people.
That’s the trouble with proposals that react to a crisis after it happens. The proposed solution might have helped prevent the tragedy had it been implemented, but it wasn’t–and there really isn’t much of a guarantee that the belated change will prevent or limit the damage of the next mass shooting.
Instead of always reacting after the fact, we certainly could use a lot more pro-active thinking to prevent individuals from reaching such a nihilistic mental state in the first place: moral education, anti-bullying monitoring, jobs and job training, social services, mental health facilities, etc.
Unquestionably, we could pass stricter gun control laws to prevent potential shooters from acquiring weapons of mass destruction which is what an AR-15 assault weapon is.
Keeping an assault rifle out of the hands of guys like Nikolas Cruz would likely save far more lives than an armed teacher preparing to do battle with a shooter on campus.
Maybe progressive social policies in the areas of education and social services aren’t as dramatic as imagining gunfire erupting and students screaming and fleeing every which way, but in the long run we need to fix the underlying issues that produce the shooters in the first place.
Arming teachers may sound like a plausible solution on the surface but that’s all it is–a scratch on the surface of a very complex situation. We have a much deeper problem that runs through the very fabric of our society.
Until we find effective ways to address the social issues that produces a Nikolas Cruz in the first instance, talk of meeting gunfire with gunfire will not likely end gun violence in America.
It will only change the shape of the phenomenon in a new direction, but as for preventing all such violence before it begins? Not hardly.
For that, we would need to create a peaceful world and rededicate ourselves to building a new America, the likes of which we have never yet seen.
