Contributors

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Why Not Give Teachers Tasers?

Every time there's a shooting the NRA says the solution is more guns. Now they’re saying that every teacher needs to be armed. Many schools are seriously talking about doing it.

It's idiotic, of course. More guns means more deaths.

Teachers will drop their guns in the can and accidentally shoot themselves or the person in the next stall. Teachers will shoot their wives accidentally while cleaning their guns. Teachers will lose their guns and kids will get hold of them. And what happens when an armed teacher loses his cool and kills a student in class after the kid screams, “What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”

Most teachers don't like the idea of killing people, and would be hesitant to shoot someone, especially a former student. When guns are involved, any hesitation means your gun will just be added to the arsenal of the shooter.

But something the NRA never mentions is giving teachers tasers. Yeah, tasers aren’t perfect. You can still kill someone with a taser, but they're much less lethal.

And tasers could be an even greater deterrent than guns. The idea of going down in a hail of gunfire and blood spatter is attractive to gun nuts. But being shocked by a taser, collapsing like an old man, then drooling and jerking spasmodically on the floor is not romantic at all.

And it doesn't have to be just tasers. Tear gas and mace can be especially effective in enclosed areas like hallways and classrooms. If we put our minds to it, we can probably come up with a lot of non-lethal ways to deter gun violence, rather than surrender to the NRA’s guns everywhere, all-the-time mentality.

So why push for guns in schools when there's a non-lethal alternative that no one has even tried?

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