David Simon, creator of The Wire, puts it in perfect context:

[dixiegrrrrl]

Link to tweet

[dchill]

1. What could go wrong?

[Initech]

3. We need to start asking that question with everything they propose!

Build a wall? What could go wrong?

Deport all illegal immigrants? What could go wrong?

Arm teachers? What could go wrong?

An armed militia guarding every classroom? What could go wrong?

[dchill]

5. Elect a pathological liar president?

What could go wrong?

[Beartracks]

6. Keep electing Republicans? What could go wrong?

[joshdawg]

9. This! You nailed it!

Vote all republican congressvermin out! Period!

[tclambert]

33. Clearly the students also need to be armed, in case an armed teacher attacks them.

[BigmanPigman]

2. As a first grade teacher for over 15 years I envision

parents coming into the classroom for Parent/Teacher report card conferences while armed...is that what we will also be facing? I do not want to go down this road! Teachers are already leaving the profession due to low pay, long hours, little respect, high student loans, illness/high stress, etc. This would be the nail in the coffin for the profession.

[Beartracks]

7. Part of the conservative anti-education agenda, perhaps?

Their agenda doesn't need, or even want, an educated populace anyway. Their votes and voodoo economic theories depend on ignorance, a lack of critical thinking, and an unquestioning obedience to authority.

==========

[Hermit-The-Prog]

25. attack on public education

My state legislature is gung-ho on concealed carry teachers. Tonight, the local news aired a segment where a school board member said he'd pull his daughter out and home school her if the only fix was going to be arm the teachers.

Cut funding, ban science, arm the teachers -- that yields less confidence in public education, less participation, less willingness to fund it, more malleable (ignorant) voters. It's a circle of destruction.

[onetexan]

32. correct, its RW lunacy

[Cracklin Charlie]

51. Where would the pulled out students then be educated?

Yes, Betsy Devos, in expensive private schools.

Just like you planned it, you inappropriately grinning lunatic.

[AJT]

29. +1000

[lastlib]

38. Bingo! fits right in to the theory I have held for a long time!

Winner, winner, taco dinner!

[haele]

16. Heck, as a teacher, how are you going to handle Little Billy's parents when you gave him a bad mark?

And they decide that since you're armed, they're going to come to the Parent/Teacher conference armed too...and they aren't going to accept that their little Angel was acting out or being defiant. They're going to make your life a living hell because Little Billy is the perfect kid at home...

Fortress America, home of the hair-trigger temper and the fearful.

Haele

[BigmanPigman]

19. That is exactly what I was implying!

Parents can be very threatening!

[handmade34]

27. when I taught

I would never had considered carrying a gun... and as a parent, if I found out that teachers carried guns, I would take them out of school

[sarge43]

56. I suspect that's one of the unspoken aims of this draconian idea.

Repugs and the money men behind them want to do to the public school system what is being done to the prison system: Take it out of public control and turn it into another profit pump.

[OhNo-Really]

4. Translated for the Trump folk

Arming teachers is a crazy idea and will mean our country is being flushed down the toilet

[lapfog_1]

8. let's see

single point of entry with high fences around every school
metal detectors.
SROs armed with AR-15s
teachers armed with concealed handguns.

We are simply cutting out the middleman in the school to prison pipeline.

4 and 5-year-olds would end up going to "prison" right away. A brightly colored prison with naps and exercise yard (oops I mean playground ), but a prison nonetheless.

And once they are treated like prisoners they will behave like prisoners.

[Gabi Hayes]

11. We cant even get to the office from the mailroom at our school without our electronic ID pass card

Every room is locked ALL THE TIME.

EVEN THE GYM

[Merlot]

12. We are simply cutting out the middleman in the school to prison pipeline.

And once they are treated like prisoners they will behave like prisoners.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Also note that for-profit schools will be the pipeline for for proift prisions.

[Cosmocat]

15. This from the ass clowns who scream

WE NEED OUR GUNS TO PROTECT US FROM THE GOVERNMENT!

J ...
H ...
C ...

[Iggo]

18. Hopped up?

[bronxiteforever]

10. Kick and recommend. Brilliant.

[jalan48]

13. Great post. Thanks.

What kind of adults would be be produced by such a system of "education"?

[hibbing]

14. He's got a strong Twitter game n/t

[zaj]

17. Great post, up until... "abattoir"

I spent 3 years in a PhD program, and I had to look up that word.

If our side learns to project a little less sophistication, it will help a lot.

"School teachers carrying firearms and readied for gun battles in grade school classrooms is a level of social pathology that signals the end of any viable, coherent society. Travel such a path, and the barbarism and fearmongering of the American slaughterhouse can only accelerate."

[maddiemom]

20. I remember this as an ninth grade vocaulary word, because I was teaching a novel in which it was

used. Come on, you can't really have studied at the PHD level. Are you a Republican troll hoping to dumb things down?

[madamesilverspurs]

22. It's not in common usage.

I think the point is not to "dumb things down", rather to make the message easily comprehensible for the greatest number possible, including those for whom such words were never part of an education experience. And, no, I'm not a Republican troll.


.

[Sophia4]

55. What is your PhD in?

Not French, I hope.

[anneboleyn]

35. I have a Ph. D., and I knew what abattoir meant (wasnt it used in The Jungle? Its been years

since I read that book). I also seem to remember it being used in the HBO movie about Temple Grandin (woman with autism who was responsible for ground-breaking research that advocated for the more humane treatment of animals on their way to slaughter). But I definitely knew what it meant...what do I win? I also don’t think it’s “obscure” — the point is beautifully expressed. Fussing about one word seems absurd to me.

[maddiemom]

47. Yes, "The Jungle."

Admittedly it was in my early years of teaching (end of Sixties, early Seventies) and in above average classes. A+ for you!

[anneboleyn]

36. In The Jungle (I think I knew it as well)

[NJCher]

37. he was going for alliteration

Great post, up until... "abattoir"

that's why he used abbatoir.

fearmongering of the American abbatoir can only accelerate."

[BlueMTexpat]

44. That doesn't speak well

of your PhD program.

Just sayin' ....

[luvtheGWN]

57. Not sure if it's because I live in an officially bilingual country but

the word "abattoir" has always been used up here (when discussing where cattle and pork go to their ignominious deaths).

This business of virtually (well, actually, literally) turning public schools into prisons is just so, so scary. The only thing I can do is encourage my American expats to get out and vote in the November mid-terms (it's okay, they are ALL Democrats). The GOP is destroying my next-door neighbour, inch by inch, dollar-soaked policy by policy, and idiot President by idiot President.

[zentrum]

21. Abattoir indeed.

They are hoping to make us numb about living in a militarized police state.

[mgardener]

23. Who would watch the kids ?????

While the teachers ar trying to kill a shooter?
Who would get them to safety or keep them safe?
What the hell is the matter with these people?
Do they even think before they speak??????

And since Congress does not want to do anything, I think it only fair that guns should be allowed in Capitol hill!!!!!!!
Why should the rest of us have to fear for our lives.

[Hamlette]

24. this is so spot on

[Eliot Rosewater]

26. People, remember one thing, the NRA exists ONLY to sell guns and they want to sell

as many guns as they can no matter the deaths.

But, if BLACK people and LATINO people and MUSLIM people all had AR-15's, you would see shit change overnight.

[warmfeet]

28. Spot on.

Arming teachers is the end of the road. If that happens, we can no longer claim to be a civilized society. We can no longer claim, even the hint of, moral authority to the rest of this world. Endgame.

[Honeycombe8]

30. "Abbatoir": Slaughterhouse. (I had to look that up!) nt

[Poiuyt]

31. Me too

[Honeycombe8]

43. +1. Glad it wasn't just me. But learning a new word is a good thing. nt

[BlueMTexpat]

45. I remember family dinners

when each one of us had to select a word at random from the dictionary so that we would all learn its meaning and how to spell it.

One night, the word "abattoir" came up and yes, it was an American English dictionary. I was about ten at the time (I'm now in my 70s). My brothers and sisters were all younger. None of us ever forgot that word or its meaning.

We may occasionally get tripped up on its spelling: one "b" and two "ts."

Later I studied French, which is its origin. It stems from the verb "abattre"which means, among other things, to kill or to slaughter. The French word has its origin in Vulgar Latin, the source of so many words in contemporary Romance languages.

[anneboleyn]

34. This is beautifully expressed damn. This makes me cry.

[Ferrets are Cool]

39. How very, very true this statement is.

[alfredo]

40. I fear for the younger generations.

[dixiegrrrrl]

41. My grandparents raised my parents thru worse than this.

The Depression, WW2. and they did not know how any of that would turn out, including the question of being invaded by foreign troops, which was a real fear in the beginning of the war.

But...yes...my generation and those to follow have lived thru a golden post-war time in this country, and we can now see that turning sour, a lot of what we take for granted is under serious attack.

The students in Fla. do give hope, tho, don't they?

[alfredo]

48. Over population, and resulting climate change will cause massive migrations out of affected areas.

Central valley has an expiration date. The drought, low snowpack, and depleted aquifers could, at the least cause higher food prices, and shortages. The corn belt will be a desert. Cattle farming will have to move east, and so will Big Ag. Forget about fish.

[dixiegrrrrl]

49. Meanwhile, the "Disaster capitalists " are buying up land and water rights.

And we will see more countries have upheaval, more refugees, some from natural events, some from deliberate events ( think Yemen).

[alfredo]

50. Coca Cola is real bad about buying up water rights.

[A HERETIC I AM]

42. Eloquent

[Sarg]

46. We're already there.

A "viable, coherent society" would not have allowed the gun situation to reach the current crisis levels. Armed teachers trained for combat with school shooters was merely the logical outcome of the existing pathology.

So this will be the next political battle that rages: the right wing will demand taxpayer funding of armed teachers, and vilify anyone who objects as a socialist who hates the Constitution. Wayne Little Peter has already started banging the drums with this message.

[misanthrope]

52. Regarding the "abattoir vs. slaughterhouse" component of this thread

From where I don't recall but I've long been under the impression "abattoir" refers more specifically to the area of the facility where the animals are exsanguinated, perhaps related to a receptacle that receives the blood. If this is the case, it would make Simon's usage of the word even more appropriate as it would call to mind "bloodbath" and the messiest, most visual aspect of such a scene.

[dixiegrrrrl]

53. That was my understanding.

Here in the US, we use the word slaughterhouse.

[misanthrope]

54. Right but under that definition

they aren't entirely redundant or synonymous as a slaughterhouse would be the entire facility and an abattoir could be one component of it. A slaughterhouse could contain an abattoir, could it not?