“You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the Lord,” Leviticus 18:21.
On May 24, 19 children were killed in a school shooting — the 27th in five months — in Uvalde, Texas. In the aftermath, Republicans trotted out their same old tired solutions. A perennial favorite is arming teachers. As a retired teacher who has gone through active shooter drills, I’ll explain how that would work.
It’s a typical school day. I’m at the front of the classroom, teaching. I suddenly realize there is a shooter in the school. Maybe I hear gunshots, or I might hear the screams of a teacher down the hall as she and her students are being murdered.
I run to the classroom door and lock it (assuming it locks from the inside). I put a cover over the window in the door and turn out the lights. I get my students under their desks or against a wall, as we had rehearsed.
As I’m doing this, I’m also getting my gun out of the gun safe, because only a dangerously irresponsible person would leave a gun where students could get to it. I’ve already practiced for countless hours, on my own time. As I unlock the gun safe, I pray that the gunman will wait until I have the gun in my hand.
Once I have the gun, I find a position where I am somewhat sheltered but where I can see the door. I know that when the gunman bursts through the door, bullets spraying, he will probably be wearing body armor, so my one shot in that split second had better be a head shot. If it’s not, my students and I are dead.
That is the reality of how arming teachers would work. Any teacher worth his or her salt will first make sure their students are safe, and then worry about shooting the gunman. No teacher is going to run into the hall, guns blazing, hoping to take down the shooter before the shooter gets him or her. That only happens in Republican fantasies.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, thinks having just one door in or out of the school, with an armed guard, will solve the problem. Here’s the reality. First, no fire codes would permit such an arrangement. Any public building needs several means of egress in case of fire or other emergencies. People must be able to exit a building quickly.
Second, a school shooting at Westside Middle School, Jonesboro, Arkansas, on March 24, 1998, exposes the major flaw in this plan. On that day, Andrew Golden, 11, asked to be excused from his class. He pulled a fire alarm and then ran to join his friend Mitchell Johnson, 13, in a wooded area near the school where they had stashed several weapons.
As students filed out of the school, the boys began shooting. They killed a teacher and four students and wounded 10 other students. An armed guard at the door wouldn’t have prevented this massacre.
We know there are solutions because other countries have implemented them. One example: On March 13, 1996, a gunman entered a school in Dunblane, Scotland, and killed 16 students and one teacher. Unlike the United States, Scotland wasn’t prepared to sacrifice their children on the altar of the gun gods. They tightened up their gun laws and there hasn’t been a school shooting in the entire United Kingdom since. And the UK is a free, prosperous, non-authoritarian democracy.
Motor vehicle accidents used to be the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers. To stop the carnage, we implemented tougher safety laws such as mandatory seat belts and better child car seats. The death rate dropped.
In 2020, the leading cause of death among children became firearms; that death rate is growing. We don’t seem to have any sense of urgency to improve gun laws. Too many people, including the current Supreme Court, are willing to sacrifice our children as they promote even looser gun laws around the country.
Many people claim to be “Pro-God, pro-gun.” What did Jesus say about weapons, swords being the guns of the day? Matthew 26:52 – “… all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” That doesn’t sound like an endorsement.
Pagans sacrificed their children to the god Molech. We are the only country in the world sacrificing our children to guns. When will we wake up?
Jeanette Strong, whose column appears every other week, is a Nevada Press Association award-winning columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.
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