Every Child Left Behind, Except Congress'

File Under: With Both Barrels

It is disturbing that self-defense, or protection of students in the case of very small children, comes into the discussion of teachers being able to teach.  At one point in our history, teachers who chose to do so, carried firearms for their personal protection. Nevertheless, every decision from whether teachers would be allowed to administer corporal punishment, to the ratio of students to teachers in a class, to whether when/how many new text books are purchased, to do we hire new teachers/give out salary increases - all these decisions, including should teachers carry firearms, require our consent by actively or passively voting for or against them.

We could ask why since 1966 or even just since Columbine and Virginia Tech: the Constitutional right to carry on campus has not been restored, schools have not been hardened, crisis prevention/intervention plans implemented/improved, and every school does not have a resident law enforcement officer like Carolyn Gudger who prevented a disturbed man from killing anyone at a Tennessee high school in 2010? Well the answer is obvious.  If the legislature that provides your schools with funds for all those wonderful life-saving initiatives is only concerned with reducing the capacity of firearm magazines has already, by slashing education budgets, categorically stated that teachers are over-payed and textbooks are too expensive, who or what do you think they are truly concerned about?  They do not care if your children are properly educated, but now you are to believe their hearts are moved by your children's safety?

Why was it NOT time to do something in 2006 when a sick man stormed an Amish schoolhouse, with what appeared to be a rape kit, and ultimately murdered and maimed ten girls ages 6-13? Was it not the time because he did not have an AR-15/AK-47 variant during that atrocity? Was it not the time because the number of deaths was a single digit number?  Was it not the time because the victims were from a fringe group, not main street America suburbanites? Was it not the time because no one on either side of the aisle in Congress wanted to screw up their electoral prospects for 2008 on an unpopular legislative issue?  Was it not the time because FEMA, the authorities, the Media, Congress, and anti-gun lobbyist did not have the time in the wake of an actual tragedy to collude against the American people by playing upon their heart strings?  Maybe now is the time because the incumbent government has been given another four-year hall pass, and we finally get to see exactly what "change" we signed up for.