The other day, I was speaking to an Australian, attempting to explain to him how American Progressives view simple solutions to rampage school shootings, such as allowing armed military and police veterans to protect schools, as they do in Israel, to be “Off the table.”
This hypothetical exchange between a “Naive Progressive” and an “Old Hand Progressive” was the result:
Naive Progressive:
I am concerned about Trump talking about allowing teachers with police and military experience to be armed to protect schools. Should we get ahead of this by adopting it as our policy, and requiring them to be highly regulated? Then they could become part of the government, and on our side.
Old Hand Progressive:
That sounds plausible. It is not politically correct. Remember, the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. You have to look long term. The idea of allowing armed teachers to defend schools works against us in many important ways.
It undermines our hard fought for creation of gun free zones in schools. We have the Supreme Court on our side there! We have managed to extend gun free zones to a thousand feet from the boundary of every school! It makes the carry of guns illegitimate in nearly every city in the nation. We are building from that base to extend gun free zones to parks, day care centers, public buildings. It is far too important a goal to undermine with a policy that allows non-police to be armed in schools. Can you understand the terrible danger to impressionable minds when students know their role models are carrying guns to defend them?
It subverts the important principle that defense through the use of force is not legitimate. If we are to disarm the people, they must be convinced that using force is never the answer. Only the government can be trusted with armed force. Using force in self defense creates the illusion: some peoples’ lives are more valuable than others. More guns is always the wrong answer. Only the government has the wisdom to know who should be protected and who should not.
What if one of these “school protectors” got lucky, and stopped a school shooting? We already have problems with that. I can tell you, confidentially, there have been one or two bizarre cases. They are appropriately downgraded and ignored by most of the media, most of the time. But if many schools had armed protectors, the examples would be harder and harder to suppress. The rubes are notoriously gullible. What if there was video of an armed old white man stopping a school shooter? It could destroy decades of progress.
Consider the message it sends about the military and police. We have made gains in showing how police and military veterans are not to be trusted. This undercuts that important goal. The current military and police are notorious bastions of toxic masculinity and racism. Retired military and police are much worse! To allow them to carry weapons shows they are trusted in an unequivocal way. It sends exactly the wrong message.
Retired military and police tend to be old white men. They cannot be trusted to be politically correct. Retired police and military are the last people we should allow to be armed.
Mass murder in schools is one of the strongest points we have to push to increase gun safety by disarming the people. The emotions are strong. The optics are great. If we allow the NRA to win on this front, it will be immeasurably harder to pass sensible gun safety laws.
To obtain a Progressive government, we have to “break a few eggs”. The lives of a few mostly white school children are minuscule compared to the hundreds of thousands of lives we will save by disarming the population.
In a sense, the whole planet is at stake. If Progressive values are undercut, billions will die from climate change. Only strong, centrally manged world government can manage climate change in an effective way. The toxic masculinity of the United States stands in the way of saving the planet. The Second Amendment is a manifestation of that toxic masculinity.
From a long term view, a few pampered, white, first world children are a small price to pay for saving the planet.
This is the way those of the Progressive, Leftist, or Cultural Marxist persuasion look at the issue. A few lives today are a small price to pay for obtaining Leftist power. Once they are in power, everyone will become much better off …. even if they have to kill a few million people in the process.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
