How lame. Guns are the ticket; everyone knows that. The more the merrier. And so I here wish to submit a modest proposal to go about arming our teachers, in the best interest of our state's education. First, they need to carry the most appropriate guns. Salesman Humberto, from the American Shooters Supply and Gun Club on Boulder Highway, says: "In today's society, you don't want to be caught with a revolver when your opponent will probably have an automatic." Therefore, we will stick with the rapid-fire artillery. We can arm female teachers with the LadySmith 9mm pistol. It weighs less than 25 ounces, carries nine rounds, and can easily fit into the top drawer of a teacher's desk, where no doubt kids know not to trespass. Old teachers, who no longer possess the physical strength they once used to lash students with rulers and paddles, can carry a Ruger .22, for its thin, long barrel is known for its killer accuracy, even when shot with a feeble hand. A .45 automatic Colt pistol is a standard gun for police, and thus, if Senator Beers' bill passes, it will be perfect for teachers, too. And nothing would suit a principal better than the Remington M7600—the kind of rifle with which hardcore hunters take out our state's monolithic elk—because in these unruly days at the CCSD, with kids bringing shotguns to school (as one did at Eldorado High, various media sources reported, on December 12), our guns need to be bigger than theirs.
And then we'll have to train school personnel to use their firearms, just as Senator Beers proposes. The American Shooters Club offers concealed-weapon courses to large groups for $80 a head. With 16,000 teachers in the CCSD, that amounts to $1,280,000. Which is just a fraction of the $78 million the Clark County School Board plans to allot for school safety measures, part of the additional $1 billion for which they agreed to ask lawmakers just one day after Senator Beers announced his intended bill to arm teachers. (Senator Beers, for that matter, came out against the additional funding, stating that there was no accountability attached to it. To that I say we arm lawmakers with guns.)
Senator Beers' proposal is the first of its kind in Nevada, but it's not an original idea. Utah recently made it clear in law that schools can't prevent concealed-weapon licensees from carrying guns on campus; and overseas, the same goes for Israel, where a cessation to school violence since they armed teachers is the proof Senator Beers uses to justify his proposal. Munier says another alternative to arming teachers is a principle the PTA always stresses: parental vigilance. I couldn't agree more. I know if I were a parent, I wouldn't want my child to square off with one of his teachers—as all kids do at some point in their academic careers—at a disadvantage. Hell, I'd arm him with a bazooka, just for safe-keeping.
In this way, I can foresee the district's 16,000 teachers and 300,000 students in a state of perpetual qui vive—standing off with one another, staring each other in the eyes, just waiting for the other to make the first move.