Saturday, December 15, 2018

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Safety Commission Votes To Arm Some Teachers

Uh-oh...this isn't going to go over well...
   Is it the right decision? Don't ask me. How should I know? I suppose that, as long as the guns are secured properly and quickly available to teachers who know how to use them, they're fairly likely to be a net positive, no? Mass shootings...if we're only worried about the mass ones...which...for some reason we seem only to be...are so rare that they're almost not worth preparing for beyond telling students to "run, fight, hide". Or, y'know, cower in place and wait to be slaughtered...which seems to be the policy at some schools.
   But these shooters tend to be cowards, so far as I can tell--many of them feel tormented, but seem afraid, even when armed, to go after their tormentors, preferring to kill indiscriminately. (Just one more crazy aspect of this crazy phenomenon.) But anyway: hardening the potential target is a good idea, supposing that the downsides aren't too down. It's always possible that an armed teacher himself could flip out, or make some really terrible mistake. And, given how extraordinarily rare mass shootings are, it seems like even small risks like those might outweigh the relevant advantages.
   Incidentally, we shouldn't have to figure this stuff out for ourselves...you'd think there'd be experts who know how to think about all this better than we do. But so much in the vicinity of the social sciences is skewed so decidedly to the left that I suppose we are stuck trying to figure this out ourselves.
   Anyway. Interesting development, that's for sure.

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