Steve CoxKonto zweryfikowane

To be very clear, and I'm closing this up: our neoliberal definition of "safety," now as a matter of course involves and demands people dragooned into dying for it. The run/hide/fight mantra, the talk of "delaying" shooters?

What this means, very practically, is that we expect people to rush killers armed with military-grade weapons, to use their own bodies as barriers, to soak up bullets and force shooters to reload, to buy time and keep them localized until the authorities arrive.

And I can't imagine a more nutshell example of neoliberalism than this: demanding a nation's citizens - training our children - to throw themselves like human sandbags against a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place, but that does, because of profit. /end

(I realize, looking at the length of this, I probably could have just made it into an article for somebody. If any editors are interested in an expanded version of this, there's much more to say, and I'd be happy to write it, drop me a DM or an email).

Arming teachers is the short-term solution. Not all teachers. But allowing teachers to *volunteer* to be subject to the sane background checks and training (modified for schools) as Air Marshals would be a massive help to prevent/quickly end these shootings.

I mean, it's a triage measure, but I know a lot of teachers (and am one myself) and the idea of getting caring pedagogy done while also being in condition yellow (and presumably ready to potentially kill one of your own students) is pretty grotesque and it's insane we're there

It is. But we have somewhere between 320 and 645 million *unregistered* guns here. And building an AR-15 w/ an 80% Lower takes no skill and minimal effort. Pandora’s Box is open. And our healthcare system is terrible, so diagnoses of dangerous mental illnesses are rare. 1/2

So, as Alinsky said, we must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. As it is, if we want to protect kids *now*, this is, I believe, the best way to do so. Just as with Air Marshals on planes. Proven concept and can be instituted quickly. 2/2