The
following is from Donald J Trump’s twitter account. You may have heard of him. He is currently the President of the United
States. Read the tweet and then let me
run some thoughts by you.
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
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Armed Educators (and trusted people
who work within a school) love our students and will protect them. Very smart
people. Must be firearms adept & have annual training. Should get yearly
bonus. Shootings will not happen again - a big & very inexpensive
deterrent. Up to States.
10:54
AM - 24 Feb 2018
Ok, the first sentence is not something over which I will
quibble. I assume unarmed educators and
trusted people within a school also love and protect out children. They have done so in each instance of a mass
school shooting.
This firearm adept thing is a horse of a different
color. To be adept is to be
skilled/proficient. Unless you go to the
range regularly you will not be adept with regards to use of a firearm. Marksmanship is a frangible skill. It requires regular dedicated practice. You may know how to clean, point, and fire a
weapon. That does not make you
adept. I am not even going to address
the skills required to manage a live fire zone which includes innocent unarmed
bystanders.
These armed educators and trusted people who work within a
school must have annual training. If
annual training is all you are providing to people wielding weapons in schools,
you are guaranteeing failure. There will
be physical security issues with regards to weapons. There will be accidental discharges. There will be improper unauthorized use of
force.
According to POTUS’ tweet “Shootings
will not happen again-…”. I
will type this very slowly, so you can understand. As long as weapons are available with
virtually no oversight with regard to their acquisition the shootings will
continue. The difference is the teacher
will be the first person shot if an active shooter has reason to believe they
are armed.
According to 45 the arming of educators and trusted people
who work within a school will be “a big & very inexpensive deterrent.”. No doubt it will be big. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics
there are approximately 2.4 million primary and secondary teacher positions in
the U.S. For the purposes of this
demonstration I will not count the “trusted people who work within a
school”. So, we start with 2.4 million
teachers. Let’s eliminate 1/2 of them as
either unqualified and/or unwilling to bear arms. That leaves us with 1.2 million who need to
be equipped and trained. A decent 9mm
magazine fed semiautomatic pistol can run you anywhere from $250-$400. So, let us say the average cost is $325. This equates to $390,000,000 to provide a
pistol to each teacher to be armed. Of
course, a pistol without ammunition is a rock/stick. I will assume 208 rounds annually to maintain
proficiency and tactical readiness. This
leads to a cost of about $80 per teacher to be armed, so there’s about
$96,000,000. If there is only 1 training
session per armed teacher annually and each teacher can train without an instructor,
the most conservative estimate I can possibly suggest is $15/teacher for
$36,000,000. The cost of equipping the
teachers to be armed with a pistol was estimated at $390,000,000. Assuming every teacher can maintain their
weapon in a serviceable fashion forever and retiring teachers supply new teachers
with their weapons then this is a 1-time cost.
Ammunition and training are annual costs estimated at $132,000,000. The first year would run about $510,000,000,
about ½ billion. For whom is this
inexpensive, especially considering the recent tax cut contributing to a
decrease in revenue and increase in borrowing and deficit spending?
However, to
be honest, Trump does say this would be borne by the States, so there should be
no federal economic affect. I do wonder
if the feds will offer some type of liability insurance for states or school
districts at a low cost or if that will need to be purchased on the open
market.
Whaduyathink?
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