by Anya Tynio
After discussions with many individuals, including students, I believe that additional steps need to be taken to secure our schools. The use of metal detectors, locked entrance doors and School Resource Officers are reasonable, effective ways to provide safety for students and teachers. I would like to see these security changes made over the summer so as to be ready and fully functioning at the beginning of the school year.
Since these solutions are in response to a threat, we must also focus on ending these threats. In Washington, DC, it will be a priority of mine to research and investigate the reasons and motivation behind mass shootings. By doing this we can hopefully learn how to stop such tragic events before they begin.
Considering that shootings have also taken place at many locations outside of schools, I wish to encourage law abiding citizens to become proficient with firearms and to carry them whenever possible. We all pray that we would never have to use a weapon to protect ourselves or others, but having the ability to do so could save countless lives if necessary.
The author, a resident of Charleston, is a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress.
Categories: Commentary
Anya wishes to “…encourage law abiding citizens to become proficient with firearms.” I think she’s right about this. Isn’t this where our culture needs to go? Evil doers with guns present themselves in a time-restrained situation and the need is to stop them then and there, immediately. How else will this happen except with armed citizens in that situation?
Our public schools are already treated like fortresses with locked doors, metal detectors and resource officers. Families and parents can hardly get into the buildings now. Some even have an assigned police officer. These measures have been the knee jerk so-called answers to past shootings and they haven’t solved the most obvious root problem.
EVERYONE KNOWS where the GUN FREE ZONES are! The SCHOOLS! Where do you think the mentally challenged and/or evil doers who want to wreak havoc and shoot people will go and never worry about being challenged?
Why do we know armed protection is necessary as we pay for trained body guards and secret service for our Politicians, Movie Stars and Executives, but NOT for our children? If it was known there were trained armed persons in our schools to defend and protect our children, would we see these shootings stop? Could an armed person in a school building stop a shooter by force before they take out lives?
We won’t talk logically and critically about this, because it has become an emotionally charged subject for many people. FEAR is in the way. People with evil intentions murder more people using knives, hammers and their fists, but we are stuck on the subject of blaming guns very loudly, because it is “woke.”
I believe the POLITICAL FEAR-MONGERING and the lack of will for a REAL SOLUTION is a ploy to end the Second Amendment of our US Constitution. The Marxist, Socialist, Democrats, and Progressives don’t really want a solution. If they can “use each shooting crisis” to invoke FEAR into enough people, they can take control. Much like the Unconstitutional mandate of “experimental shots and masks.”
Thank you for an informed and logical proposal to protect our children.
The fear of Armed Security and Metal Detectors has to be met with the realization that without these measures ” Gun Free Zones ” never are.
Psychopaths don’t follow laws.
Thank you Anya for taking a stand. We must protect our students and schools, but Governor Scott has decided to go after law abiding Vermonters with ineffective Gun Laws. On April 11, 2018 he signed three unconstitutional Gun Laws that he helped write because according to him, he was afraid of a school shooting in Vermont. But he made no changes or improvements to make any Vermont school safer.
Once again, he has asked Congress to write more anti gun legislation instead of adding any security measures to protect our schools. The State has the opportunity, money and time to make our schools safe before the start of the next school year.
Warning: Old guy about to tell a “Once upon a time story.” Probably not suitable for kids or ‘woke’ progressives.
Times have indeed changed.
In 1964, I was a senior at Portsmouth High School, New Hampshire. Portsmouth High School at that time had an 50 foot indoor rifle range, with sound baffling, proper steel back stops for .22 long rifle ammunition and an air exchanger. Those students who were interested were encouraged to schedule ‘range time,’ usually after school hours, and to bring their .22 rifles for sighting-in and target practice, conducted under the supervisor of one of the male teachers. Teachers, both male and female, also availed themselves of range usage.
In 1964, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the coast just one state to the east of Vermont, it was not unusual to see students, and faculty, carrying their cased rifles into school and through the halls to be secured in their wall lockers or offices.The sight of ‘easy-rider’ rifle racks holding rifles and shotguns, in some student and faculty cars and trucks in the school parking lot, was common. Teenagers, and some adults, were carrying weapons around school, and nobody got bent out of shape about it…
At sometime in the last half century plus, our country has suffered serious and lingering cases of malignant snowflakeistis and rampant cupcakeism. I’m not sure exactly when, but the range at PHS has been closed, and the space repurposed. And I don’t necessarily believe that was for the better…