Wonder why Obama’s gun grab legislation tanked – and, beyond that, why Obama quietly tried to appropriate the “guards in schools” idea for himself?
Because the American public – the part west of the Hudson and east of the Sierra Madre, anyway – is closer to the NRA than they are to Obama:
After the NRA school-guard strategy was roundly denounced as outright crazy by the pundits, — the editors of theNew York Times called it “delusional, almost deranged” — President Obama came out with … aproposal for armed guards in schools. It is no small feat for an out-of-touch, on-the-ropes organization to get the president to basically endorse its signature policy proposal at a time of national debate.
But, then again, it turned out that 55% of Americans supported the NRA proposal. Turns out, it was the people calling it crazy — like the editors of the New York Times— who were out of the mainstream.
Meanwhile, pundits denounced gun-rights activists who said that the right to bear arms is in part a protection against government tyranny. Only a crazed militia type could possibly believe that, right? Except that — go figure — 65% of Americans see gun rights as a protection against tyranny. And only 17% say they disagree. Once again, it’s the critics who appear to be out of the mainstream.
We Second Amendment Human Rights activists have always known this, of course.
We just have to keep coming back and proving it every few years.
And I suspect we always will.
Aside from the many schools which now have on-site officers assigned as full- or part-time liason or school resource officers (SROs), there was a time when just about every department assigned a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) officer to grade and middle schools.
When discussing the ill-conceived program with friends and acquatntances and pointing out it’s uselessness, they would almost all agree, but follow that up with, “Yes, but it’s nice to have a cop in my child’s school.” This was both pre- and post-Columbine.
They clearly had no problems whatsoever with an armed police presence (even though the early D.A.R.E. protocol prohibited the officers from being armed – no doubt to appease a soccer mom or two, but that was done away with quickly).
If they anti-armed presence crowd is smart, they’ll see which way the wind is blowing and abandon the stance. Fortunately, many local school districts eliminated their budgetary contribution to D.A.R.E. and those officers are often switched to SROs.
If your schools don’t have an SRO program I would humbly suggest that you try to get the local PD to start one. It is very useful, cost effective, and even puts an armed presence in your kids’ school. Keep that last part quiet though …