Since nobody seems much interested in inpatient treatment for mental illness, we suggested the other day that schools should be "hardened" as targets of interest to violent, suicidal crazies. I wrote:
If we choose to continue to tolerate free-range nutters, we need to harden the target - the schools - with fences, entrance control points, cameras, etc.
Obviously I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines, see what The Daily Wire reports today.
Every Tennessee private and public school will have the resources necessary to hire an armed guard if Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) gets his plan through a Republican-led legislature.
Lee’s plan would place an armed school resource officer (SRO) in every public school and provide funding for private schools to hire armed guards with the same level of training as those in public schools. Private schools would not be forced to join in on the program.
It also reports the following along the same lines.
Earlier this week, Tennessee Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty announced that they will introduce The SAFE School Act at the federal level. The legislation seeks to establish “a $900 million grant program that will allow both public and private schools to train and hire veterans and former law enforcement officers to serve as school safety officers, hire off duty law enforcement officers, and provide funding to harden schools and increase physical security.”
Almost no one is completely happy with this sort of choice. Making schools resemble minimum security prisons with armed guards isn't a cheerful, happy image.
The alternatives may be worse. Mass incarceration of mentally disturbed patients most of whom never hurt anybody or continued toleration of one or more school shootings every year.
N.B.: It is way too late to try to round up all the guns in this society. By some calculations the guns in private hands outnumber our citizens.
