What if I told you I wanted you to take all your valuables and put them in the least secure place you could find? Perhaps in the middle of your backyard. Take any cash you’ve got lying around, any watches, jewelry, iPhones and other electronics and put them in a big pile behind your house.
Next, I want you to tell everyone that your stuff is in the backyard just sitting there. Finally, I want you to put up signs in your front yard stating to the world that you have no dog, cameras or security service and that your house is a “theft-free zone”. And make sure you let everyone know that there’s nobody home from about 8-5 every day.
Then, each morning, you take the sole precaution of making sure the gate to your backyard is locked and go to work.
That’s stupid. Right? Nobody in their right mind would do that. Because everyone knows what will happen. Someone is going to steal your stuff. I mean, you’ve made it incredibly easy for them. So you’ve locked the gate. Big deal. It’s not like anyone bent on taking your stuff can’t figure a way over it.
You’ve made stealing your stuff as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
As much as some people like to think we all live in a kumbaya world, there are bad people living in it. And, unless you do something to prevent it, one of those bad people is going to take your shit.
So, you take precautions to protect your things. First of all, you don’t put your stuff in the least secure place you can find. Then, maybe you invest in some type of security or maybe you get yourself a dog. But if you don’t, you’re not going to put a sign out front telling everyone that you don’t have any.
But let’s say that you’re not only afraid of having your stuff stolen, you’re also afraid for your safety. So, you buy a gun and keep it handy when you’re at home. It’s your right. For most people anyway.
Even if you don’t have a gun, you’re going to do whatever you can to protect your stuff and the people you care about.
Any reasonable person would.
So, let me ask you this. Why would you take your children, presumably what you hold most dear, and put them in one of the least secure places on the planet? And then tell everyone where your kids are and that they have absolutely no protection whatsoever?
How does that make sense?
The only way you could make this worse would be if you posted signs everywhere telling everyone that the school is a “gun free zone” and that the people inside have no means of protecting themselves.
Oh, wait. That already happens.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the phrase “sitting duck”. If you’re one of the few who hasn’t, look it up. A “sitting duck” is defined as “something that lacks protection and is in a vulnerable position”. Tell me that doesn’t exactly describe the position we’ve allowed the government to put our kids in.
Notice I said, “our kids”. Their kids are safe because they’re undoubtedly in a private school and surrounded by a security team. While our kids go to school with no protection other than a locked door and where signs are posted encouraging someone to come in and start shooting.
Every time there’s another school shooting here in the U.S., there are invariably people who start calling for more gun laws. Their argument is that taking away our 2nd amendment rights is a small price to pay “if it even only saves the life of a single child”.
If the government was truly interested in protecting our kids, they’d take the path of least resistance. Instead of trying to remove our Constitutional right to protect ourselves, which anyone with half a brain knows is ridiculous, they should be using that right to arm teachers and train them to be the first line of defense. We don’t have to arm every teacher. But the ones who are willing to carry a weapon should be allowed to do so.
There are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States. Clearly some of those guns belong to teachers and clearly some of those teachers would be willing to carry their weapons while at work. And it could happen as early as tomorrow.
While Liberals may disagree with the concept of “a good guy with a gun”, even they have to agree that arming teachers will save at least one child. It’s statistically impossible that it won’t. So, tell me again why we’re not already doing it? Until that happens, their single-child argument rings hollow.
Those gun-owning teachers are legally able to use their weapons to protect their cash, iPhones and other shit. But they’re not able to use those same weapons to protect your kid. Someone please explain to me how that makes any sense at all.
Even if they tried, they couldn’t make schools less safe.
Which brings me to my final point.
The English language is malleable. It’s constantly changing. It wasn’t that long ago that we learned that ‘fo shizzle means “for sure” and very recently learned that “Woke” is a way to refer to someone who has their head firmly stuck up their ass.
The point is that English words and phrases change from time to time. We constantly change our language as new concepts come into being.
I think we need a new simile to describe something that is incredibly easy to do. We use the phrase “like shooting fish in a barrel” now. But shooting fish in a barrel isn’t all that easy. Because you first have to get past the challenge of finding some fish in a barrel at which to shoot. And that hardly ever happens.
But consider what we’ve done to our kids. We not only put them in one, easy-to-find place, we’ve made it so that they have no protection whatsoever.
So, it’s time to change the way we talk about easy things. Instead of saying something is “as easy as shooting fish in a barrel”, I propose we start saying “it’s as easy as shooting kids in a school”.
Because it would be difficult for anyone to come up with a way to make the most vulnerable among us even more vulnerable.
