guns

So as shalmestere points out, the organization that has been warning us for decades about the Soviet-style police state that will ensue if ordinary citizens can't have high-capacity semiautomatic assault rifles in their homes now proposes that the Federal government hire hundreds of thousands of armed security guards, at taxpayer expense, and post one or more at every grade school in the country. Because that doesn't even remotely feel like a Soviet-style police state.

guns

So an NRA spokesman said this morning "What if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last week, he had been confronted by qualified armed security?"

Good question. What would have happened?

If the security guard was the first person he encountered, the odds are good that Adam (with the benefit of surprise, and without the constraints of protecting innocent bystanders) would have killed the security guard, and then gone on to kill 26 children and teachers and himself.

If the security guard was NOT the first person he encountered, Adam would have killed a bunch of children and teachers before encountering the security guard. He would no longer have the element of surprise, but he would still be less constrained than the guard, and would still have at least a fifty-fifty chance of killing the security guard (and then going on to kill more children and teachers).

If every grade school in the country had a full-time armed security guard -- probably several for larger schools -- it would take several hundred thousand "qualified" security guards, at a cost near a hundred billion dollars per year, a substantial fraction of the Federal budget.

And it would provide several hundred thousand opportunities, every school day, for some kid or group of kids to overpower the security guard. (Remember, children think they're immortal; they might not be particularly afraid of jumping a security guard from behind.) If they succeeded, the kids could shoot other people; if not, the guard might have to shoot them in the process. In either case, people would get shot -- not despite the presence of a security guard, but because of the presence of a security guard.