There was another horrific school shooting in Santa Fe Texas last week, and predictably it has unleashed a torrent of purple prose regarding what Washington should do about it—ranging from more gun control to more mental health funding to more school safety funding and much more.
Au contraire. As horrible as these incidents are, there is flat-out nothing that Washington can or should do about it….except keep its cotton-picking hands off the matter entirely.
That’s in part because gun control won’t work in a gun-obsessed nation where there are already more civilian guns in circulation (380 million) than people (327 million) and because Washington is way too broke to fund more education and mental health programs, which should be a local responsibility anyway.
The truth is, there are 13,500 school districts in America with boards elected by the local citizenry and which are funded primarily by heavy property taxes levied on the same. It is their job to assess the operations of these schools and the threats of gun violence that may arise from either within the student body or from outsiders who may enter the schools.
If after careful investigation and review of the pertinent facts, the threat of gun violence is deemed to be real and palpable—and we’d bet in thousands of school districts it would not be—then there is a ready solution as unpalatable as it may seem.
To wit, don’t arm the teachers or pick a losing fight with the NRA; just keep the students disarmed by sharply limiting the number of entrances to the schools and require rigorous airport-style screening at the doors.
The demented shooter at Santa Fe, with his black trench coat, pistol and shotgun could never have gotten through the metal detector and likely wouldn’t have tried; and the same is true for the shooters at Great Mills, Parkland and the predominant incidents before.