No action is worse
I'm done, I'm done talking about this with endless babble of the same babble that was the babble one, five, ten, twenty, fifty and so on years ago.
Babble, babble, babble.
Public safety is expensive, yet we don't want proactive social programs because people mislabel them socialism. Babble.
We think taxes are too high yet we want schools to to do things that cost money. Babble.
Regulate guns, Babble.
I have the right to bear arms. Babble.
Stop the endless babble.
Yes, I'm talking to you on social media. Yes, I'm talking to you politicians. Yes, I'm talking to you TV station journalists and newspaper gotcha sensationalism types.
What are the outside-the-box solutions? Let's talk about those. Seriously, what are they?
Don't give the "give guns to teachers" crap. I know several teachers past and present that shouldn't be within a 100 miles of a trigger. And those are the types who would be first in line to sign up. Get me drunk and I'll name names and beg you to change my mind on this.
It is costly to put in metal detectors. Metal detectors become cumbersome. Security guards cost money and generally speaking are needed to help facilitate metal detector protocols and so on. And having security officers simply there to mostly sit at a desk all day reading a magazine seems a waste of time, money and opportunity.
Folks scream "it's not the guns, we have a mental heath issue!" OK. So we need more mental heath providers paid for out of taxes? Agreed, so we can raise taxes then right? And are you going to listen or think more of your rights are being infringed upon when you're deemed not stable enough to own a gun. This country is loaded with lawsuits on this very topic.
That brings us to gun bans and/or regulations. What do you do with the millions of guns out there already? Regulate ammunition? That could be a long-term solution, but certainly not an immediate one. Again, what is already out there stockpiled?
We circle the bowl after a series of gun tragedies and it never completely flushes, but we walk away from the stall and make it the next guy's problem. Then it's gone from our cares until we hit Taco Tuesday and the discomfort sets back into our gut.
Maybe we shouldn't always wait until we have a mess to get serious about fixing the problem?
The lobby for the right to bear arms folks is willing to spend billions to protect gun ownership rights.
Billions.
(Imagine if billions were spent on education and protective measures?)
So if the lobby is strong and has that pesky piece of legislation called the Bill of Rights backing up their arguments each and every time, why put our energy there? It's been like running up against a brick wall for decades and those trying to breach it can't even find a way to work together to scale the damn thing.
Maybe it's time to go around it?
Maybe it's time to realize the wall isn't even scaleable or takes too much energy to try to penetrate or circumvent?
We do not want a police state either, so... let's consider this as a starting point for a discussion. Warning, if you start babbling incoherently, I'll likely just figure you're a wall not worth scaling.
Public schools are state government agencies with weird little twists like school boards made up of citizen "watchdogs." They are also predicated to follow federal education standards. So if they are government entities can we think more about other government resources that are elsewhere in our communities to combine and use the space of schools as offices?
For example, can local and state police have satellite offices with two or three officers running their shifts out of the school? Their office is actually in the school and one officer is always present.
How about local national guard facilities, do we need a separate facility and grounds for them? what if active national guard units go with smaller details and they train at schools using the grounds to work out and drill? They could also be on hand to help educate kids on the military and if trained correctly maybe other areas.
Why have a counseling center in their own building? Can human services be split up so that their juvenile counselors and advocates have offices in schools too?
The pandemic showed us the possibilities of how teams can work from independent locations instead of always having to be in the office together.
So why can't we take school campuses and rethink them? Don’t just bring the resources to the school occasionally, but station them there.
I'm sure there are countless other solutions. But we can’t find any of them until we cut through the babble. The only thing that is guaranteed to fail is doing nothing. We have proved that over and over again.
It’s time to stop the yelling, eliminate the babble and genuinely do something more than talk.
Enough is enough!
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