Sheriff Joe's B Movie Solution to Real Life Problem

Apparently inspired by the Magnificent Seven, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona thinks the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. So he's started training armed posses. But it turns out that Sheriff Joe doesn't verify that his posse members are actually good guys.

From a story from KPHO in Phoenix:

Arpaio wants his army of 3,000 volunteer posse members to look like sworn deputies and sometimes perform the same duties. But an in-depth project by CBS 5 Investigates uncovered a number of posse members with arrests for assault, drug possession, domestic violence, sex crimes against children, disorderly conduct, impersonating an officer - and the list goes on.

Putting guns in the hands of people and deputizing them is serious business. If these people are incompetent or criminal you've only made the problem worse.

It's just a matter of time before one of these loose cannons shoots some cocky teenager who mouths off, drops his gun when he drops his pants and shoots himself or the kid in the next stall, or molests the very children he's supposed to protect.

If we're really serious about putting people with guns in schools to protect children, we can't do it on the cheap. These people have to be trained, vetted and meet the same qualifications as the police. They have to be professionals and not some goof who likes plinking away at tin cans.

To ensure his posse has a solid basis in law enforcement Arpaio hired washed-up B movie action star  Steven Seagal to train them. Seagal, who's 60 years old, claims to have put "hundreds of thousands if not millions of hours" into weapons training. A million hours is 114 years.

Apparently Arpaio's standards do not require his trainers to have a basic grasp of arithmetic. Or his trainees to have a clean criminal record.

The sad thing is that when this blows up in Arpaio's face there won't be any stuntmen, squibs and blanks like there are in Seagal's flicks. It'll be real live kids.

And by the way, Sheriff Joe, if you didn't see the Magnificent Seven to the end — spoiler alert — all the good guys with guns get killed.