Teacher training: Ready, aim, fire

My brother fired a pistol only once in his life. He had owned the gun for a day when he killed himself. He left a note of thanks for the guy in the police department who handled his application quickly and without question. He had made his decision to die but needed the weapon to do it. He was not alone. Every year, about 25,000 people in the United States commit suicide as he did.

Others die by gun, but not by choice. Since 1999, beginning with Columbine, 185 kids, teachers and others have died, victims of the rage and bullets of madmen. After a school shooting, the country mourns for about four days, according to surveys. Then details of murder recede, if not disappear, from memory and concern.

But there is one empty chamber that is more dangerous than my brother’s pistol, or a loaded AK-47. It’s the space between the ears of those who propose a cop in every elementary school or gun-toting teachers to protect kids from harm or death. (Senators who talks of local option, like Sen. Chuck Grassley are dodging the question, looking for votes, not solution. It is a cop-out.)

There are 87,498 elementary schools in our country and a guard at the front door of each of them is not likely to save a single life. Even an agitated shooter can fire a rifle accurately from a football field away. The guard should learn to quack as an alarm. He is a sitting-duck, and not likely to discourage a deranged assassin.

What about arming teachers? There are over 3 million in elementary schools. Arming them all with a 9 mm. or a .45 would take $900 million dollars, maybe more. I would add the cost of holsters. A gun locked in a desk drawer is not much of a deterrent and one left on a desktop, a lethal plaything for a kid who thinks it’s a toy. A gun at the ready demands a holster or an absurd chain around the neck.

According to the gun lobby and captive conservative senators, the haters have Second Amendment rights to kill as they thwart the government (a four -letter word) from taking over? If that were a danger, those guns might be a solution. But there is none and it is not.

When was the last time the tyrannical federal government stopped by your house to tyrannize you. What was it like? No one can really describe it because it has never happened and there is absolutely no reason to believe it will. The feds are not a problem, guns everywhere is. Each day in our country, 12 kids die from a gun fired by a family member, themselves, or probably someone they know. That is their Second Amendment right. The Uvalde murderer was too young to legally buy cigarettes or alcohol in Texas, but buying a gun was easy and OK.

There is no way we are going to stop the school killing entirely. We all know that. But doing nothing, loosening the laws, or babbling about local option is an invitation to continuing carnage.

There is a Columbine or Uvalde in Iowa as it is everywhere in our country. Let’s not wait for our four days of mourning.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”