Protected by the math department

Senator Marco Rubio was a featured speaker at a town hall meeting. He’s pretty good at showing charm and empathy or whatever it is politicians do. Then Cameron Kasky came up on stage. During the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. student Kasky hid in a closet with his brother.

Kasky: “So, Senator Rubio, can you tell me you won’t be accepting a single penny from the NRA?”

Rubio: “People buy into my agenda.”

Kasky: “So you won’t take more NRA money?”

Rubio: “That’s the wrong way to look at it. People buy into my agenda.”

Kasky: “In the name of the 17 people who died, you can’t ask the NRA to keep their money? I bet we can get people to give you exactly as much money.”

Beyond that, Rubio’s answer was irrelevant. To me this exchange shows that Rubio wants what the NRA is peddling and the NRA buys into Rubio’s agenda because they like the pro-gun aspects of it.



In response to this particular shooting the nasty guy has proposed arming teachers. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos starts the rebuttal with just the financials. Arming and (minimally) training 750,000 teachers would cost about $1 billion. Ask any GOP politician for $1B in books and teacher pay.

Commenters supply a lot of other reasons why this is a bad idea.

* Even professional marksmen – soldiers – are terrible shots when under stress.

* If teachers had guns the shooter would target them first. Even if a particular teacher is unarmed.

* “Parents terrified that this literal life and death experiment will be performed on their children.” We do not want our children to be caught in the crossfire or even witness such an event.

* Shooters like collateral damage. Teachers would want to avoid it.

* Do we want our students to sit in classes with teachers who are visibly armed?

* How does a teacher keep it out of the hands of the kids yet have it quickly available when a shooter walks through the door? How does the teacher make sure a student doesn’t use the teacher’s gun to become a shooter?

* How do the cops, when they finally arrive, tell the difference between a shooter and a teacher with a gun? Those cops can identify colleagues through uniforms.

* Is a teacher going to have much effect using a handgun facing down an AR-15?

* What happens when a teacher’s gun is missing?

* Teachers are notoriously underpaid and can be stressed out. How do we prevent a teacher, after a really bad day, turning the gun on a student having a really bad day?

* Who do you arm at the movie theater, another target of shooters? The high-school aged ticket-taker?

* Would the GOP agree to arming black teachers?

* Are we going to start hiring teachers based on whether they are willing and able to engage in a firefight?

* President Reagan was surrounded by Secret Service and was still shot. The math department from the local high school would surely offer more protection.

* Want to arm teachers? Let’s also arm senators and remove the security checkpoints in senate chambers.

Conclusion: really bad idea.


I’ve written about students taking it on themselves to include protest in their high school curriculum. Curtis Rhodes, Superintendent of schools in Needville, Texas had declared that students who disrupt or walk out in protest over guns will be suspended.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville responded:

Take the suspensions, kids. Trust this old lady that, in the grand scheme of your life, a mark on your record definitely won't matter. But standing up for your principles always will.

Commenters respond that explaining such a mark would delight college admissions officers.

Twitter user KingofTorts also responded by saying such walkouts and protests are free speech rights. He offers lawyerly services to students who are suspended.



This a suitable cartoon for the situation. A takeoff on this one from last October, which came out after the nasty guy visited Puerto Rico and did a particular act while there.



McEwan tackles the idea that mass shooters must be mentally ill.

There is no mental illness that causes someone to pick up a gun and start murdering people, and only affects men.
…
Women are routinely accused of being "crazy" in every conceivable way and for every conceivable reason in every other aspect of our lives.

We are "crazy," we are "insane," we are "hysterical," we are "emotional," we are "irrational," we are *every euphemism for mentally ill under the sun*, we are "psycho bitches."

But when it comes to mass shootings, suddenly women are so uniquely sane that our failure to have the mystery mental illness that causes "people" to pick up guns isn't even remarkable.

We're crazy when men need us to be crazy to avoid accountability and we're sane as the day is long when we don't want to talk about toxic masculinity or access to guns.
…
If mental illness is the primary issue, then why is only men who are picking up guns?

So, says McEwan, let’s talk about toxic masculinity. And access to guns.