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Sunday, May 29, 2022

Two different answers to school shootings

     The past week, I watched how two different networks viewed how to reduce the number of school shootings.  MSNBC and Fox News had two different solutions.  While MSNBC focused on reducing the availability of semi-automatic weapons of war to the general public, Fox News had solutions that talked about arming teachers and "hardening" schools.  Many of the techniques mentioned sound like we should turn schools into facilities that resemble a prison so that even a person with an AR-15 couldn't penetrate.  Here are just some of the proposed changes----installing the bulletproof glass, metal detectors, erecting doors without windows to make it more difficult for a shooter to see inside, and perimeter fencing. Not sure how many of us want to send our children into a building that resembles a US embassy in a war zone.
     The measures of hardening schools have spawned a billion-dollar industry.  As the Washington Post has written, "The frequency of school shootings in the United States has spawned a whole industry of school security companies, which hawk bulletproof backpacks, ballistic whiteboards, tourniquets and programs that train former Special Operations officers to guard schools, a market that had grown to $2.7 billion in 2018, the year that a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 people — including 14 students."
    Apparently, all it took for the gunman in the latest shooting to overcome to enter the building was a propped open door and a security guard who was not at the school at the time of the shooting.  I guess there is no limit to hardening schools that gun rights advocates will go to so that the general public can have access to weapons of war to attack schools, houses of worship, and grocery stores.  Making our neighborhoods a potential war zone seems to be acceptable to keep the Second Amendment a sacred right. 

P.S. 


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