Less than an hour's drive from the Trump resort at Mar a Lago is the location of the Parkland shooting (Stoneman Douglas High School). Whenever there is a school shooting, I recall those from the past, especially the Parkland and the Sandy Hook shootings – both events involve a student returning to the school with an assault rifle. After Sandy Hook, NRA President LaPierre said, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun," and sparked the idea of arming teachers.
When I was younger, I worked summer camp for the Boy Scouts and was part of the Field Sports staff. Our facilities included both an archery and a rifle range (no AR's, just 22's). As a result, I was able to work the summer and earn those merit badges, as well as a couple of marksmanship medals from the NRA. I learned gun safety, shot paper targets, and was an NRA member.
In conversation, friends familiar with my teaching career ask me what I think of arming teachers. My answers is always the same: I could never shoot someone, especially a former student, and there is no circumstance in which I would not try to talk a young person out of a bad choice. Shooting is not compatible with teaching.
Back in the 1970's, the NRA clearly had a different mission.
The only way to stop a bad person is with a good person – guns play no part in the solution. As teacher Krista Gneiting explains:
It was a little girl, and my brain couldn't quite grasp that. And so I looked at her, and I just quietly said, "Are you the shooter?" And she just watched me, and I just walked up to her and I put my hand over her hand, and I just slowly pulled the gun out of her hand. She allowed me to, she didn't fight. She didn't give it to me, but she didn't fight. And then after I got the gun, I just pulled her into a hug, because I thought, "This little girl has a mom somewhere that doesn't realize that she's having a breakdown and she's hurting people."
Portugal passed seventeen thousand deaths from COVID-19 on Saturday. The US passed six hundred thousand deaths on Sunday.
cases: 165,992,004 global • 33,824,184 USA • 843,729 Portugal
deaths: 3,439,574 global • 602,458 USA • 17,014 Portugal
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