By John: Making our schools safer.

An article (hat tip to my brother Clay) on azstarnet.com (here) published today mentions the two conservative AZ legislators sponsoring a bill to allow students and teachers to carry firearms on community college and state university campuses. It’s your normal ‘conservatives are for it, liberals are against it’ article. A couple of things got my ire up though. First the quote by Representative Jack Brown D-St. Johns. “…having more people armed “causes more problems than it solves.”” How can you make a statement, as if it were fact, that’s absolutely false?!? When a public official makes a statement like this there should be a way to hold them accountable. The other idiotic quote was on the sidebar, where the paper interviewed high-school officials about being armed. Terry Downey, associate superintendent of Catalina Foothills School District said this: “I couldn’t even imagine an instance where a teacher would need a gun.” She’s got a point! Why imagine when you can see it happen on the news! Can she imagine sitting quietly at her desk while her students are being murdered?!?! Having gun free zones is the same as having seatbelt free zones; the government is ordering your children to be less safe. Kudos to Sen. Karen Johnson and Rep. Russell Pearce for at least trying to make our schools safer.