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NRA calls for armed guards in every school
National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre calls on Congress to pass a law putting armed police officers in every school in America during a news conference at the Willard Hotel Dec. 21, 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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The National Rifle Association broke its silence today on last week’s school shootings. The NRA unveiled a plan to put armed guards in every school in the country. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre says that’s the only answer.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he says.
The NRA is calling on Congress to “appropriate whatever is necessary” to put armed police officers in every school in the country. So, what would be necessary? A lot of money.
Mo Canady is head of the National Association of School Resource Officers. He says it would cost $80,000 per year for one armed school guard, including salary, benefits and equipment.
“The training of this person, making sure they’re properly equipped," he explains. "You know, a lot of departments certainly provide patrol cars.“ So, if you wanted to put a trained, armed officer in every school in the country, you’d have to plunk down almost $8 billion per year.
The NRA says, if there’s not enough money for that, it can provide armed volunteers for schools. But volunteers also come with a cost, according to gun control expert Robert Spitzer, at the State University of New York at Cortland. He says schools would need to screen volunteers and add more liability insurance.
“The insurance issue is a significant question especially when it’s somebody who might be a volunteer, or somebody who had training once, and perhaps that training therefore would have lapsed,” Spitzer says.
Some school security officials say guns are the least cost-effective option. Larry Johnson is head of security for the Grand Rapids, Michigan school district. He could have armed the district’s guards, but decided not to. He says counseling is more effective.
“I think in the end counseling is cheaper, and I think counseling is going to go much longer," he explains. "It’s going to get a bigger bang for our buck here.”
And, Johnson says, counseling helps troubled kids become stable adults. So they’re less likely to go on a shooting spree after they get out of school.
As a 25+ year law enforcement executive, with over 20 years experience in school safety today’s press announcement by the National Rifle Association (NRA) demonstrates the NRA lacks any real understanding of critical incidents that occur on a school campus. While I do applaud their calling for School Based Policing at schools, the idea of arming teachers and volunteers at schools borderlines on insanity. Further, the majority of schools do have crisis plans and train their staff but having the NRA involved in the actual emergency response lacks logic. I can’t imagine having to have those police officers who respond to critical incidents at schools having to distinguish between those can carry guns and those that can’t in what may be split second decisions. We don’t need to create the OK Corral on a campus. Laslty, the NRA is not the right organization to train campus professionals on how to address school safety or critical incident response. Their mission has been advocating more firearms as the solution to firearm violence, which is not what our schools need. http://www.schoolsafety911.org
I had a friend get shot during school in the chest. I heard that he bled quite a bit. Luckily he lived. We had a full time plain clothes police officer on campus. If you go the NRA route, one security person on campus won't be enough.
As far as volunteers, wasn't there some neighborhood watch guy that shot and killed an unarmed kid in a hoody because he "thought" the kid was a threat?
Part of the problem is that there's so many guns readily available - some with 30 round clips. Another part of the problem is deep mental health issues gone untreated. And then there's Wayne's world.
I applaud the NRA for thinking outside of the box. Usually, you can count on right wing groups like the NRA to call for less government. But in response to the tragic killings in Connecticut, the NRA is proposing more government. Specifically, police officers at every school. That's out of the box thinking. “The only way to fight bad guys with guns is with good guys with guns” is what I think I heard the spokesperson say. In other words, don’t eliminate the problem, because we probably can’t at this point. Instead, escalate the problem!
There is still a question about how to pay for police officers at every school. For that I have a suggestion: Let's levy a tax on every weapon and all ammunition sold in this country. Just like tobacco, alcohol and gasoline. The tax should be set high enough to pay for the extra police as well as a consolation fund for any survivors of future tragedy. Maybe with support from the NRA, we could raise enough taxes to even make some progress towards avoiding the fiscal cliff!
