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Here are just a few words of commentary with the aim of inviting discussion:<\/p>\n
School districts should not be in the business of promoting the carrying of weapons by teachers.\u00a0 They should not ask a teacher who just wants to impart her love of knowledge to students to now be tasked with physically protecting them, nor should a teacher feel any expectation to do so.<\/p>\n
But at the same time, I\u2019d add that schools should be willing, experimentally and as a pilot program, to permit those teachers who already concealed-carry, following the laws of their state, to bring their weapon into the school building, under the provision that they document having undergone appropriate training (the relevant training for their state plus additional training if their state\u2019s requirements are light), and that the weapon be on their body but fully concealed at all times and never disclosed to students.\u00a0 (Note, there are concealed-carry undergarments for women as well, so that it is possible even when wearing a skirt.)<\/p>\n
To be honest, some of the complaints about carrying-teachers really can\u2019t seem to keep their story straight.\u00a0 Teachers are good people, who love their students \u2014 but they\u2019re so fundamentally incompetent, twitter tells me, that, if they carried, they\u2019d start shooting the minute a boy starts mouthing off at them.\u00a0 To the best of my knowledge, the rise of concealed-carry practices in general<\/em> has not led to an explosion of hot-tempered concealed-carriers pulling out their weapon at the slightest provocation.\u00a0 And, of those small number of schools which do permit teachers to carry, I have not read of any examples of things going haywire.<\/p>\n In the news recently, \u201cInsurer Chubb says will stop underwriting NRA insurance for gun owners<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The policy itself is described as follows<\/a>:<\/p>\n NRA Carry Guard provides coverage for gun owners who face legal or other costs for self-defense shootings. The NRA website says the insurance plans are for \u201cthose who lawfully carry firearms and their families\u201d and include the cost to defend against civil and criminal legal actions and access to attorneys. Benefits also include payments for bail, criminal defense legal retainer fees, lawful firearm replacement, compensation while in court, psychological support and cleanup costs for any covered claim resulting from the use of a legally possessed firearm\u2014including an act of self-defense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, Chubb says it had actually made that decision<\/a> several months ago, not directly in response to the Parkland shooting, but here\u2019s what I find odd:\u00a0 gun control groups are cheering this decision \u2014 but at the same time, one so-called \u201cgun safety\u201d measure that they promote is in fact to require gun owners to carry liability insurance for their guns.\u00a0 What am I missing?<\/p>\n Also in the news are complaints that the NRA is buying off legislators with its \u201cblood money,\u201d and lists of campaign contributions made from the NRA to various politicians.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an article in CNN<\/a> asserting that \u201cmany in Congress have come to rely on the NRA\u2019s largesse to help them remain in office.\u201d\u00a0 But that\u2019s missing the point, as a New York Times article, with a straight-to-the-point headline, \u201cThe True Source of the N.R.A.\u2019s Clout: Mobilization, Not Donations<\/a>,\u201d reveals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really not the contributions,\u201d said Cleta Mitchell, a former N.R.A. board member. \u201cIt\u2019s the ability of the N.R.A. to tell its members: Here\u2019s who\u2019s good on the Second Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates. . . .<\/p>\n Compared with the towering sums of money donated to House and Senate candidates in the last cycle \u2014 $1.7 billion \u2014 the N.R.A.\u2019s direct contributions were almost a rounding error.<\/p>\n The N.R.A. directly donated a total of just $1.1 million to candidates for federal office in 2016, with 99 percent of that money going to Republicans, while giving a total of only $309,000 in direct contributions to state legislative candidates in 2016 and 2017, according to tallies by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks federal donations, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which tracks state-level donations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n NRA members vote, and NRA members call their legislators, repeatedly, in reaction to the message, \u201cyour Second Amendment rights are under attack,\u201d and this is what\u2019s effective, not campaign cash.<\/p>\n This is a proposal<\/a> that\u2019s circulating in conservative circles.\u00a0 The idea is this:\u00a0 allow individuals who have knowledge that someone owns guns and have reason to believe that this person might harm themselves or another, to have those guns removed, for a limited but renewable period of time, from that individual\u2019s possession.\u00a0 These laws are already on the books in certain states, and under consideration elsewhere.<\/p>\n Note that it has the support of gun-rights supporters; the author of the National Review article, in fact, just published an article in The Atlantic<\/a> defending the fact that he carries guns.\u00a0 But the Giffords Law Center also writes about this favorably<\/a>.\u00a0 Why, then, is this not under discussion in, for example, Illinois\u2019 latest round of gun regulation bills<\/a>?<\/p>\n And now it\u2019s time to mosey on over to the home office. . .<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0 own photograph.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are just a few words of commentary with the aim of inviting discussion: On armed teachers School districts should not be in the business of promoting the carrying of weapons by teachers.\u00a0 They should not ask a teacher who just wants to impart her love of knowledge to students to now be tasked with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[252,644,902],"class_list":["post-8660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-guns","tag-mass-shootings","tag-nra"],"yoast_head":"\nOn Chubb\u2019s NRA pull-out<\/h3>\n
On the power of the NRA<\/h3>\n
The Gun Violence Restraining Order proposal<\/h3>\n