Oh hey, lookit. A bill that would allow armed guards to walk around your kid's school has been introduced to the Florida House, because the state legislature is a fantastic entity of profound and wondrous ideas.
It's called HB 1097. And it's gonna cure all our nation's ills.
The answer to gun violence is more guns, apparently. Because the Second Amendment, or something.
Rep. Greg Steube (Betcha Can't Guess From Which Party!) is sponsoring the bill that would essentially allow school principals to designate a district employee to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds.
The Florida School Boards Association, Association of School Administrators, the PTA, and the ACLU have all expressed their opposition to this idea, but what do they know?
It's Steube's contention that if Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School had an armed guard walking around, a guy with an AK-47 wouldn't have gone and massacred people. Because Dirty Harry is nothing if not a lesson on how things should be in the real world.
"It would be a good deterrent," said Steube. "The bad guys aren't going to know how many or who's carrying in a school. They don't know if nobody is designated or if ten people are designated."
HEAR THAT, BAD GUYS?
You don't know if the janitor is really Chuck Norris or if he's just a janitor. And you don't know if there's one guy with a hidden gun, or 20, or, 10,000, or if the old-lady lunch-room monitor is really an ex-Isreali commando dressed in a fat suit like Eddie Murphy in The Klumps.
And while we're at it, why not add ninjas? Ninjas would be supercool and could also teach kids a lesson about how if they wanna grow up and be a ninja too, they need to do all their homework, while simultaneously protecting them from wackos who want to walk into the school and shoot people.
Of course, funding would be kind of a bitch for this thing, according to Saint Petersblog:
In Hillsborough County, the addition of 130 armed officers to cover every school had a price tag of $4.1 million per year.Steube's measure would require designated employees to undergo the same firearms training and background checks that it takes to become an armed security guard, and would require them to renew their training and certifications annually.
Pffffffft. Whatever.
The government wants to tax and tax when it comes to people getting affordable health care so that they don't die and leave a mountain of debt behind for their loved ones, but when it comes to arming random people and teaching them how to fire a gun at a moving target in a school, that's when things get tight? CRAZY PILLS.
Steubeeee's measure has passed the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 11-7 (holy shit! really?) and is on to the House floor.
The Senate hasn't heard the measure in any committee yet. But this is Florida, so it's only a matter of time.
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