Solutions

I am thinking about solutions--to the horrific problem of extreme gun violence in our country.

My primary interest is not the right to possess guns. Actually, the Second Amendment says--keep and bear arms. And in that amendment ARMS are not defined. There are some weapons you can't have--NCBR weapons (yes, I had to look it up; it means Nuclear, Chemical, Biological and Radiation).

So right there a limitation has been made.

What I want to offer brief comments on some of the types of solutions that have been advanced to solve the problem of gun massacres in schools.

Here's a sampling:
Stockpile rocks in classrooms so if a shooter bursts into the room, students can throw rocks at him (or her) rather than passively waiting to be shot.I am speechless at this suggestion. If someone held a gun and was intent on killing people and someone threw a rock, what do you think the shooter would do? 

Teach students first aid, so they can spring to the rescue of their fallen classmates and teachers.  And do what? Recent articles have detailed the horrific internal damage an AR-15 wreaks on the human body. The Atlantic magazine described it this way: "One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem."

But, sure, go ahead, teach first aid.

Arm teachers. A proposal has been widely floated to arm teachers--maybe every teacher or some teachers specially trained. So they could?  So they could return fire.In a wonderfully delicious ironic way, there have been a few recent incidents where teachers DID have a gun in the classroom.  And... (drum roll) ... in one instance the teacher inadvertently shot himself; in another the gun accidentally discharged, hitting the ceiling and dislodging some tile which fell on a student below, thereby injuring that student.

Yeah, arming teachers sounds like a terrific idea. Oh, do you want teachers to also -- teach?  baby-sit your children at times? make sure the children learn everything? prep the students for mandatory test?  buy school supplies because public school funding is diminishing? work long hours at school and then long hours at home, prepping or grading papers? 

Improve security in schools presumably so that EVERYONE entering a school has to go through security including metal detectors.  I can understand why this suggestion has appeal. In fact one of those recommending it was the father of a Parkland student who was killed.  But I think we need to examine the sheer numbers.

Well, now--let's see: in 2013-14 there were 98,271 public schools in the U.S. (In a delicious irony, that stat comes from the U.S. Department of Education website...but don't tell Betsy DeVos...)

How many public school students are there? Again, thanks to the U.S. Department of Education we know there are 50.7 million students who enrolled in the fall of 2017.  So, let's see--using airport security as a model, for improved security in public schools you would need metal detectors in every school, and at every entrance if the school has more than one entrance. You would need trained security personnel to screen the backpacks that are being put through scanners.  You would need to keep that security in place ALL DAY LONG, and evenings too when there are after school activities.    

Oh, what about outdoor athletic events?  

Do you want to hazard a guess as to how much time would be chewed up just getting kids into school?  If you assume that each student can be cleared in 5 minutes (how long does it take you to get through airport security?) then the total time would be 5,700,000 minutes or 95,000 hours.  Obviously that's not every school, but if you know the number of students in your public schools in elementary and secondary schools, you can do your own multiplier.  The school district where I live has 11,059 students. So each day, assuming a 5 minutes clearance time, my school district would be using 95,000 minutes to make schools more secure.
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Food for thought--how much less complicated would gun control be? (Please note the phrase is CONTROL, not BAN.)