Opinion
By Stephen L. D’andrilli, Ceo And President Of Arbalest Group, LLC.
New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Nation’s public schools exist for one purpose: to educate our children to become productive members of society. Something hinders that: school shootings.
But public school shootings need not happen and should not happen. Yet, these incidents do happen. And that says something odd and disturbing about our politicians and prominent groups, like the influential teachers’ unions, that let these incidents happen.
When they happen, our nation suffers, and that suffering extends to every American: man, woman, and child. So, then, why do they happen, and who is to blame?
There were four major school shootings in the past three decades: Columbine in 1999, Sandy Hook in 2012, Stoneman Douglas in 2018, and, most recently, Robb Elementary in 2022. Each of these incidents is unacceptable. All were preventable. What do these shootings tell us?
Too many elected officials, school boards, and teachers’ union leaders propose solutions that don’t work. They aren’t interested in listening to parents who, increasingly, have little voice in the matter of their children’s education and no voice in the matter of their children’s personal safety while in school. Their solution to school shootings proposed boils down to one thing: “Get Rid of the Guns.” A simplistic Democratic Party slogan becomes a societal policy stance that endangers the most innocent of Americans, our children.
“Get Rid of the Guns” is what the public hears. It is the universal solution provided and the solitary message conveyed.
It’s a National trend. Federal, State, and affiliated Union officials all espouse it, including the powerful United Federation of Teachers (“UFT’) that represents nearly 200,000 dues-paying members.
The UFT publishes a newsletter called “New York Teacher,” which keeps its members apprised of union policies, positions, and news. As a dues-paying retired NYC teacher, I receive copies of the newsletter.
On May 25, 2022, one day after the Uvalde, Texas incident, the UFT published its“Resolution to stand against gun violence.” In form, this “Resolution” presumes a consensus reached by UFT members.
The last sentence of the UFT’s “Resolution” elucidates where the UFT expends its energy ——
“RESOLVED, that the union supports Governor Hochul’s measures in New York, reaffirms its longstanding support for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as other gun safety laws, and will work with the American Federation of Teachers at the national level both to overcome the obstacles to these commonsense safety measures and to organize other means of harnessing the power of our local and national organizations to confront and end this ongoing national tragedy.”
One month later, on June 16, the UFT published a follow-up article titled “Delegates decry deadly school shooting,” which expanded on its “Resolution to end gun violence.”
I was both troubled and angered by this one-sided news reporting and pontificating.
Reference to “Gun Violence” in the title of the “Resolutions” establishes the theme of the UFT leaders’ sole approach to dealing with school shootings.
The word ‘Gun Violence’ is a narrative tool, a Democratic Party establishment talking point, recited and reiterated constantly, and echoed by the legacy Press. The UFT’s leaders buy into this, regurgitating the same tiring refrain. This is deliberate, and it isn’t benign. The use of the expression “Gun Violence” promotes a dangerous way of thinking, encouraging bad policy choices.
The Nation’s decision-makers divert scarce taxpayer resources away from implementing effective measures to secure our public schools and direct those resources into measures that make schools less safe. The UFT leadership has become a useful pawn of the Biden Administration’s bad policy.
It has learned nothing from the tragedies that have befallen other school districts around the country, so caught up as it is in the fiction of “Gun Violence.”
Dwelling on that fiction prevents consideration of and implementing constructive solutions to school shootings.
I could not sit idly by, allowing the UFT’s remarks to go unchallenged. I wrote a letter to the editor explaining my concern, suggesting concrete ways it could secure the City’s school system. The UFT published my letter on November 3, 2022, adding the title, “Where is the school security plan?” But the editor made changes to the letter I did not authorize, involving a fundamental idea made, thereby undercutting the import of the salient point I sought to convey:
An effective solution to school shootings requires the “hardening” of schools against aggressive armed assault.
The editor struck the word, ‘hardening’ from my letter. That was no accident. But why did the editor do this? That single word encapsulates the basic strategy for securing school buildings from armed assault. Hardening physical structures against armed assault isn’t a novel idea. Federal and State Governments have applied it to airport terminals and courthouses around the Country for many years. Security in these buildings is extraordinarily tight. Protocols are assiduously enforced. That explains why shootings in these structures are extremely rare or nonexistent.
Hardening Structures Against Aggressive Armed Attacks Works.
Seeing this success, many school districts have adopted hardening protocols to thwart school shootings. Those that do and that see to the enforcement of those protocols do not experience the tragedies that afflict districts that don’t use them. Why aren’t these protocols universally applied, given their obvious effectiveness? How can any rational mind fail to apply them? They should, but don’t. The UFT doesn’t and isn’t about to. Why is that?
I and my business partner Roger J. Katz, an attorney, and a former public school teacher himself, have written extensively about this, posting our articles on our website, the Arbalest Quarrel.
And Ammoland Shooting Sports News, the web’s leading Shooting Sports News Service for the Second Amendment, Firearms, Shooting, and Hunting and Conservation communities, republished five AQ articles: January 25, 2016; June 15, 2016; February 26, 2018; March 17, 2018; and May 26, 2022.
By “hardening” our school buildings we protect the life and safety of our children, teachers, and staff. And the use of trained and armed resource officers is imperative in any effective approach to hardening schools against armed aggressors.
But the Biden Administration will have none of that. And, so, the UFT isn’t interested in hardening the City’s schools. And it is particularly resistant to employing trained and armed resource officers in the schools. This stubborn stance is an ominous sign of bad things to come. This lax attitude invites school shooting incidents. It may be only a matter of time before a New York City school suffers this horror.
The Biden Administration bears singular responsibility for enabling this violence.
In a May 2022 Press Briefing, reported in the New York Post, prompted soon after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Biden’s Press Secretary pointedly said:
“ ‘I know there’s been conversation about hardening schools, that is not something he [Joe Biden] believes in,’ Jean-Pierre told reporters at a White House press conference. ‘He believes that we should be able to give teachers the resources to be able to do their job.’”
This wasn’t a mistake by the Press Secretary. The next month, on June 2, 2022, as reported in Breitbart, Joe Biden himself confirmed he doesn’t support hardening school buildings.
“President Joe Biden delivered a 20-minute prime-time address about gun violence on Thursday in which he mentioned a litany of gun control policies without mentioning the need for hardening school security . . .” [and] nowhere throughout his speech did he mention the need to place armed security guards on school campuses or bettering school security overall.”
Since the Biden Administration is adamantly opposed to using armed security officers in public schools and explicitly discourages the application of any steps to harden school buildings to protect children, this dissuades the UFT leadership from pursuing “hardening” as a solution for New York City schools. Many other school systems across the Country follow the Biden Administration’s policy. This invites a shooting incident in New York City schools. And, given the size of the New York City school system, one of the largest in the Nation, a tragedy is likely inevitable.
No one, in their right mind, would dare use, or even think of using, children as sacrificial lambs simply to gain public sympathy and support for a radical agenda directed to the disarming of Americans. Or would they?
Nah! Ridiculous!
About The Arbalest Quarrel:
Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.
For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com.
