The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education in Montelier, Ohio voted unanimously on Wednesday night to allow handgun training for four custodians, who will then tote firearms on the school’s campus. In an explanation of this policy that echoes the National Rifle Association’s infamous claim that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” school Superintendent Jamie Grime claimed that “having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect.”
And so the drive to militarize our schools continues, reaching ever newer and greater degrees of silliness and potential lethality for our children….
I lack the vocabulary to adequately describe just how phenomenally stupid and misguided this idea is. No disrespect to janitors, but if they’re a school’s last line of defense…well, that to me is a pretty sorry statement. If an armed security guard couldn’t prevent the Columbine massacre, how can we expect an armed janitor to fare any better? “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is a fallacy that simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Nor is there any research to back up the contention that more guns equals more safety and security. It simply isn’t true…and yet the NRA and the gun nuts will scream it from the rooftops until their last breath. Unfortunately, believing something to be true, or having convinced yourself that something is true, doesn’t ipso facto make it true. The only thing more guns guarantee is more gun homicides.
There are ways to make our schools safer, and they have nothing to do with putting more firepower in the halls of little Johnny’s elementary school. We all want to protect our children, but why not do it in a way that doesn’t have the unfortunate side effect of actually placing them in GREATER danger? Why give into the knee-jerk- and wrong- belief that arming teachers, administrators, nurses, librarians, aides, and/or janitors is the best way to increase security and safety? Do the gun nuts not understand the dangers inherent in arming those unfamiliar with handling firearms and expecting them to react appropriately when faced with a life-and-death situation?
Everyone wants to do the right thing and ensure that our children’s schools are safe…but would it be too much to expect that we work to increase school safety and security in a thoughtful and realistic manner? Introducing more firepower- particular arming janitors- is hardly the answer…unless that answer is to kill even more innocents.
