By Nathan Barton

A Baker’s Dozen ™ Actions to Prevent, Mitigate, and Prevent Armed Attacks on Schools in The Fifty States

There are constant screams about “banning guns” and raising the age, increasing screening of gun-buyers, and many other measures to “prevent” armed attacks (or at least attacks using guns) in schools. Most of us (and anyone able to reason moderately well without excessive emotion) knows that these will not work. These “solutions” have risen to a crescendo since the Valentine’s Day killing spree in Florida, punctuated by the March 14th nationwide children’s crusade.

However, there are some things which could reduce the threat of armed attacks on and murder in the public schools. Some of these have been discussed and even proposed on a limited basis, others apparently not even touched on:

1. Eliminate the federal “gun-free zone” established in and around schools. These zones create hunting preserves. The rate of such attacks has increased constantly since these zones were established.

2. Get as many children as possible out of these public, government-run and tax-funded institutions, which are little more than day prisons and an attractive target to evil and mentally damaged people.

3. Allow concealed carry explicitly in all locations, including schools. Especially by faculty and staff.

4. Allow open carry explicitly in every location, including schools. Schools might want to, and be justified, in requiring that teachers and staff who openly carry are adequately trained, but that should be a decision between employer and employee.

5. Provide training to teachers and staff on use and impact of guns and other weapons, even if they do not want to own or carry a weapon. Such training should include actual observation and (barring conscientious objection) firing of weapons on a shooting range, including observation of targets (such as jugs of water, wood, and some kinds of metal) which have been fired at.

6. Work with civic and other voluntary groups to establish local, voluntary security zones around schools, at varying distances out (depending on terrain, 1000, 2000 and 3000-feet). These zones would include local residents and workers who volunteer and are trained to identify, notify and respond to attacks in an appropriate manner, both with and without local law enforcement, and who agree to shelter and defend students if necessary.

7. Encourage news media to NOT, under ANY circumstances, identify killers or would-be killers by name or show their picture in any media outlet or any circumstance other than appearances in court. Obviously this cannot be made illegal in a free society, but should be discouraged by any voluntary method possible (such as boycotts, letter writing, protests, and individual contacts).

8. Remove armed police (and as much as possible, ALL police, including private police hired by the school), from schools and campuses. Including truant officers. Security can be provided by staff and volunteers, especially parents and older family members.

9. Provide gun education classes in junior high school (middle school) to ALL students, with limits only to certain activities for those with conscientious objections. This class would include the standard “hunter safety” training and gun safety training, but would also include science and engineering of guns, ballistics, effects of fired rounds, and the history and importance of firearms. Such might best include very explicit imagery (if it can be done in “sex ed” then showing dead and wounded people without neat sheets and bandages can certainly be deemed acceptable).

10. Stop turning schools and school campuses into fortresses or prisons which both trap staff and students and which create a fortress mentality.

11. Have teachers address firearms in the same way that public school teachers are required to teach about the Bible and religions: neutrally, without bias and without derogatory terms or negative references to gun culture, hunters, or anyone who might use a gun for non-criminal purposes. If a teacher cannot pray in class (or even allow a student to pray out loud in class), because it violates the first amendment, then how can they teach and propagandize against arms when that attitude is contrary to the second amendment?

12. End zero-tolerance. Allow play use of toy guns (and fingers turned into “guns”) in pre-school, kindergarten, and grade school, but with the opportunity to teach basics of gun handling safety. Stop demonizing weapons. For many decades, schools did not ban weapons, and contained many, but there were few mass murders of students or staff and few attacks.

13. Encourage the responsible, trained, and practiced use of firearms by students under adult supervision. Field junior high and high school level shooting competition teams at the same level of participation as football, basketball, baseball/softball, and other intermural and interscholastic sports. Recognize and honor those student athletes who use firearms (and other weapons) effectively, safely, and morally correctly.

Of these baker’s dozen, some are fairly easy to implement. Some are frankly beyond the realm of possibility in today’s climate. But we must stop the vicious cycle of attacks, failures to prevent or respond, and recriminations and panic.

None of this is a total solution. Because the problem is more than just “in the schools.” Our society has rotted for decades, and we are living a nightmare as a result. There cannot be an instant turnaround, but we do know enough to figure out what does and does not work. So-called zero tolerance has and will continue to fail. Taking away the God-given rights of millions and millions because a few, even a few dozen, killers are out there makes no more sense than taking medicines off the market because some people misuse them, or banning cars or airplanes because there are accidents in which people are hurt and killed. Virtually anything can be made into a lethal weapon and used to kill people in schools: cars and trucks, fuel and Styrofoam, lab chemicals, cleaners, and even the natural gas or propane used to heat the school.

It is not the tool that is dangerous – easy to use or not. It is the hand using the tool. Whether we are speaking of students filled with hate and self-loathing because of their abuse at the hands of others, or psychopaths who see an easy target in “gun-free” schools. Or something else.

Which brings me to a final point. What else can we do to prevent school killings and violence?

Teach basic morality to children beginning in preschool. Not just tolerance and sharing and not stealing and anti-bullying and such, but the ability to deal with anger, self-control, respect, the rightness of defending yourself and others from aggression, and accepting responsibility for your actions, while respecting and honoring those who defend others and are prepared to do so. And the stupidity of using alcohol or other drugs (including prescription drugs) to solve mental and emotional issues. Maybe even teaching the value of human life, whether at home or abroad, out of the womb or in it.

Mama’s Note: A lot of good ideas, but few that will be accepted by the liberal/socialists who control the government “schools.” Most of these things would be totally unacceptable to the parents of children in these “schools,” much less the teachers and administrators. That is not a small hurdle, by any means.

And then, there is the obvious truth that’s pretty much ignored everywhere. The greatest danger to school children is not a mass murderer. Contrary to what the media would have us believe, these events are rare, and not getting any worse. But the indoctrination of all the children with the false history, socialist and politically “correct” insanity goes on day after day. Not to mention that these children are generally not learning how to read, write, or much of anything that would be useful to them as productive adults. The twisted “values” and morality that is taught varies greatly by location, but is not insignificant either.

Only parents are responsible for their children. They, and their voluntary support structure of family and community, are the only rational, logical providers of either education or safety. And that, ultimately, is the only long term and effective answer – to a good number of problems.