Two More States Rush to Arm Teachers After DOJ Closes the "Gun Show Loophole"
The DOJ finalized a rule to close the "gun show loophole". This is a huge deal.
The Biden administration’s winning streak continued last week when it made good on another campaign promise to do something about the epidemic of gun violence in America.
Enacting a component to the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in history, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, President Biden signed two years ago, the Justice Department (DOJ) two weeks ago finalized a rule to close the “gun show loophole” that previously allowed gun sellers to market firearms online, at gun shows, and other informal venues without having to conduct purchasers’ background checks that would have been required in other retail circumstances.
Attorney General Merrick Garland explained:
Under this regulation, it will not matter if guns are sold on the internet, at a gun show, or at a brick-and-mortar store: if you sell guns predominantly to earn a profit, you must be licensed, and you must conduct background checks. This regulation is a historic step in the Justice Department’s fight against gun violence. It will save lives.
Vice President Kamala Harris added:
Every person in our nation has a right to live free from the horror of gun violence. I do believe that. We know how to prevent these tragedies, and it is a false choice to say you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.
There are approximately 23,000 unlicensed gun dealers in the United States, and the leading cause of death among America’s youth is gun violence. Those deaths hit a peak in 2021 with 4,752 children dying from gun-related injuries, an increase from 4,368 in 2020 and 3,390 in 2019.
Perhaps coincidental — perhaps not — the Tennessee legislature last week passed a bill to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns in schools. This comes a year after a mass shooting in a Nashville’s Covenant school left three children and three adults dead.
This follows Iowa governor Kim Reynolds signing a bill to allow teachers and other school employees to obtain professional permits to carry guns on school grounds, and provides “qualified immunity” to armed employees.
There are currently more than 30 states allowing teachers to carry guns under certain conditions. Only one — New Hampshire--applies no restrictions.
Contrary to the right-wing fantasy that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” allowing guns in schools makes students and staff less secure at a time when they are already fearful for their safety.
Upon entering a situation with a potential school shooter, law enforcement personnel is trained to shoot anyone brandishing a firearm not identified as fellow law enforcement. If that person happens to be a teacher, that teacher is going to be a target.
Moreover, insurance costs to already cash-strapped school districts will be astronomical. Just consider the personal increase in homeowners’ insurance policies when a gun is present in a home because the risk of someone accidentally being shot increases.
Are school districts prepared to shoulder the burden of firearms inadvertently being discharged and shooting students and/or other faculty or staff?
Are educators — trained to educate, not play cops — going to also have to contend with the psychological trauma of unintentionally shooting someone?
Are educators expected to relinquish their firearms to building administration, lock their weapons up before leaving for the day, or will they be expected to take on the personal responsibility for district-sanctioned weapons? This would likely involve introducing more firearms into people’s homes.
Are districts going to pay for the training and provide new policies to ensure school communities’ safety?
What is the future of trained law enforcement in schools? Are they no longer necessary in facilities with armed teachers?
Are students going to feel safe being in classrooms with armed individuals even if they are trusted educators?
This Rambo fantasy is a delusion with a two-pronged objective: Satisfy the gun lobby republican lawmakers shill for, and further denigrate public education so it no longer is a secure, stable setting for students to feel safe, cared for, included, and attended to. Lawmakers can then go back to their statehouses and argue the democratic public education model Horace Mann envisioned in the 1830s is no longer tenable.
This, of course, has been their objective since at least the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan appointed anti-public education crusader William Bennett to head the US Dept. of Education that led to a decline in teaching civics.
They’ve already done a number is certain states and municipalities going after books and LGBTQ+ students.
They’re pushing “vouchers” and charter schools (private schools paid for with public funds) like they’re the next great educational frontier.
Two years ago, the US Supreme Court decided those same public monies apply to religious schools.
To date, there have 126 mass shootings in America. 373 youths age 12–17 have fallen victim to gun violence; 71 for ages 0–11.
Mass shootings will not end in the United States unless we pass comprehensive gun control legislation that includes tightening and re-signing the Assault Weapons Ban, passing national universal background checks, and requiring prospective gun owners to undergo training and certification that includes viewing images of the damage guns do.
The DOJ has made significant step toward this, but it still isn’t enough. The almighty U.S. Supreme Court has determined through several significant decisions that “ money is free speech” and “ corporations are people,” paving the way for the unlimited political bribery that has dominated our politics for the past four decades.
Some of the most powerful industries greasing legislators’ palms all over the nation are gun manufacturers.
We need to treat owning guns like owning cars.
From manufacture to destruction, cars are required to maintain chains of ownership through titles.
That way state DMVs and law enforcement agencies know from year to year who owns the vehicles should they be involved in accidents or crimes.
While vehicles have the potential to kill people, killing is not their reason to existence.
But it is the reason guns exist.
We insure vehicles to protect ourselves and others in the event they are involved in accidents.
But we aren’t required to insure guns.
We require drivers’ licenses to prove proficiency.
But we don’t with guns.
“Free-market” libertarians and republicans should love this since “it would create a whole new marketplace for the insurance industry, which has done very, very well over the years with car insurance,” wrote progressive radio personality and author Thom Hartmann, author of The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment.
None of these proposals runs afoul of the sacrosanct Second Amendment that was written in 1791 to protect slave patrols and is the only right required to be “well-regulated.”