Adam Lanza’s acimchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a horror. Yet, since 1996, there have been at least fifty similar public-school massacres, including Columbine High School. These massacres had two common threads — they took place in public schools, and many of these schools had been declared “gun-free” zones.
It is sheer lunacy to make schools gun-free zones. A gun-free zone literally invites monsters like Adam Lanza to attack unarmed and defenseless children and school staff. Those who argue for gun-free zones in public schools are utterly naive to think gun-control laws can stop bad guys from getting guns. Gun-free zones are also inhuman because they forbid school staff from carrying concealed weapons that could stop or cut short a massacre that kills innocent children.
As important, why did most of these massacres occur in public schools, and not private schools? Is there something about these schools that makes them magnets for these killers? The answer is yes.
First, in spite of past massacres, compulsory-attendance laws force parents to send their children to public schools or face legal prosecution for child neglect. Parents who cannot afford expensive private schools are literally compelled to send their children to dangerous government-run schools. So local and state-government laws unintentionally gather the victims together as easy targets for deranged killers like Adam Lanza.
Also, because public schools are government-run monopolies, their safety policies are determined by left-leaning, politically-correct bureaucrats who think stringent gun-control laws are the answer to massacres. These radical-liberal bureaucrats pass gun-free-zone laws that then apply to all the public schools in their county, and therefore endanger millions of school children in one fell swoop.
Contrast this policy with the flexibility private or charter schools have in insuring the safety of their students. Each private or charter school is owned or controlled by a separate company or parent group. Each school only controls the safety of the few hundred children enrolled in that school, not all the children in the county. Each school can make an independent decision about having a ‘gun-free’ zone, allowing teachers and staff to be armed, or hiring armed guards. No one private or charter school can control the safety policy of any other school. So one school’s bad decisions cannot affect the security procedures or children’s safety in any other school.
Also, you can be sure that if a private or charter school ever had a massacre, most parents would immediately demand armed guards or teachers in the school, or threaten to withdraw their children from that school. If the private-school owner or charter school refused, the school would quickly be out of business when parents enrolled their kids in another school that did have armed guards or teachers. Since no private-school owner or charter school would risk bankruptcy, they would quickly hire the armed guards or arm the teachers. End of problem.
Moreover, every other private or charter school would now have to compete with the school who had armed guards or teachers. Fierce competition would then literally force most other private or charter schools to also offer armed guards or teachers.
This scenario does not happen with government-run schools. Because compulsory-attendance laws force parents to give their children to these schools, the schools do not have to care about parents’ fears. The schools (education prisons) literally have a captive audience and can therefore thumb their noses at parents and their safety concerns. Moreover, even if a public-school principal wanted to hire guards, he would have to go through a bureaucratic regulatory nightmare of requesting funds and approval from his state or county education department. That could take years. So typical government bureaucracy and radical-left gun-control laws strangle the principal’s attempt to provide armed guards for the school.