Teachers in the United States have the most unique of job descriptions: educating, mentoring, honing young minds, and taking a bullet.
They may want to talk with their union and see about getting a salary increase because that kind of work seems to be a bit more dangerous than calculus problems.
President Donald Trump thankfully provided a helpful solution to this growing issue of crazy dudes shooting up teachers and students; teachers could carry guns. Seems reasonable; give these educators firearms training, assault training and let them carry around a firearm while teaching kids whether the Oxford comma is past its prime in the English language (for the record, there’s still some place in English for this unambiguous tool).
It’s also nice to know that the president is a hero. In a recent press conference, in his own words: “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
There’s much to be thankful for when a president points out his willingness to jump into the fray after the fact.
The president was referring to an officer who remained outside of the school during the recent Florida school shooting. Some say the officer’s a coward. Frankly, if there was some sort of gun control in the United States that officer might not even have to make a fateful decision of staying or going into the school.
The question of gun control has become so politically confusticated by this so-called “God-given right to bear arms” that the NRA has successfully pitted Americans against each other. What’s worse is the United States is fearful of terrorists they fail to look in their own backyard at the individuals shooting up kids and adults.
Things are so loose down there that in some states a 13-year-old boy in Virginia can buy a gun on his first try without identification.
I can think of a number of issues that are more regulated than gun ownership in the United States: buying liquor and cigarettes, lottery sales, marriage laws, women’s reproductive rights. But guns, well, they’re a God-given right and folks will be damned if they’re going to let anyone infringe those rights. I hate to tell you this but that so-called right is infringing on the lives of students and teachers.
It’s incredible to me that cigarettes, which have been found to cause long-term health issues such as cancer are more restricted than firearms, which are major sources of deaths in the United States.
So what’s the real issue about? Is it about gun rights or the bottom line?
One certainly has to hand it to the National Rifle Association (NRA). That group has managed to keep the issue so politicized that the country’s venerable leaders refuse to do anything about it. That organization’s got such a stranglehold on lawmakers that when students went to protest gun laws during school hours, a superintendent threatened suspending them from school.
In another more recent instance, lawmakers in Georgia threatened to pull tax breaks for Delta Airlines after it pulled support of the NRA. First of all, why is Delta getting all these tax breaks and secondly, since when was the United States a dictatorship? Seems like democracy has taken a back seat for the sake of profits.
According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, firearms and ammunition growth over the years is, “nothing short of remarkable.” The report, found at www.nssf.org shows just how well the firearms industry is doing.
Couched with the conversation of economic impact, the NSSF is pleased with such growth. And the numbers are so good, it’s hard to dismiss them: 301,123 jobs created in 2017, $15 billion in wages with an economic impact of $51 billion.
This begs the question: What’s a life worth and how do profits fit into that equation?
There’s nothing wrong with being a firearms enthusiast or hunter, but being a crybaby about seeing some form of gun control — one which looks at the safety of its citizens — is shortsighted, selfish and downright dangerous.
Don’t agree? Just ask the parents of the 151 folks who have died since the 2010s (Wikipedia provides a list of school shootings in the United States that go back to the 1800s) in school shootings how they feel about gun control.