Don't let the absurd ploy to arm teachers distract you - By Eugene Robinson
By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer February 26 at 7:42 PM
The deliberately outrageous idea of arming classroom teachers is nothing more than a distraction, a ploy by the gun lobby to buy time for passions to cool. Don’t get sidetracked. Keep the focus where it belongs — on keeping military-style assault rifles out of civilian hands.
The National Rifle Association and its vassals in the Republican Party would like you to exhaust your outrage on a possibility that is, from the start, impossible. Picture one of your grade school or high school classrooms. Imagine a loaded gun in there somewhere. Even on an average day, without an active shooter stalking the halls, the question is not what could go wrong. It is how many dead or wounded.
President Trump has touted the idea, but he tipped the NRA-GOP hand on Saturday with a tweet: “Armed Educators (and trusted people who work within a school) love our students and will protect them. Very smart people. Must be firearms adept & have annual training. Should get yearly bonus. Shootings will not happen again — a big & very inexpensive deterrent. Up to States.”
“Up to States” means abdicating the federal government’s responsibility and urging state legislatures to waste time and effort debating whether to mandate that instruments of death be introduced to classrooms. Are parents going to be confident the gun is securely locked away and that no student will ever get his hands on it? That, in an emergency, the teacher would know how to use it? That an assailant wouldn’t simply shoot the teacher first?
According to the New York Times, police officers in the nation’s largest city — men and women who are highly trained and periodically tested for firearms proficiency — hit their targets only a third of the time. During actual gunfights, the paper reported, officers’ accuracy drops as low as 13 percent. The idea that teachers would somehow do any better is ludicrous, as is the idea that most teachers and their powerful unions would agree to such a horribly bad idea.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-let-the-absurd-ploy-to-arm-teachers-distract-you/2018/02/26/4003d4fc-1b36-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html
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I frequently learn a new term from his writings as well. Today's: "vassal"
He's always the best on any panel, the smartest voice in the room. Thanks for posting! 
