School guards, kids, and an NRA attack ad

Well, that's just downright rude.

And also fallacious. Yes, on one level, the President's kids are more important than your kid or mine, in terms of the impact on the nation as a whole should they be killed, kidnapped, whatever. Not as human beings, but in pragmatic terms, yes.  That's also why the President gets a security detail if he goes to a movie theater and you and I don't.

A more practical consideration as well is that it's not cheap to put armed security in all schools. It is present in some schools where there are known security / crime / gang problems. But every school? In an era when schools are having to let go of teachers because of budget cuts, we're going to add in a couple of armed guards or police? (And you need a couple because, as Columbine — which had an armed guard — demonstrated, they can't stand at the door full time.)  

And private schools, of course, sometimes include armed security. And the parents pay for it. So for public schools, are we going to raise taxes in order to do this then? Really? Or are we going to rely on volunteers, and what sorts of issues does that raise? Especially when, frankly, spree shootings at schools of the sort we're talking about (and that an armed guard would be able to do something to prevent or stop, and not be the first victim of) are not that frequent a thing, just wildly newsworthy when they do happen. You'd save more lives, I suspect, hiring additional crossing guards for schools than door guards.

(That leaves out the question of spree shootings at shopping malls and movie theaters and the like. At what point does the NRA's insistence on armed security and police on every corner butt up against the NRA's concerns over a police state?)

Regardless, it's a nasty little advert which doesn't advance the discussion any, just uses a false comparison to score political points (and/or contributions).

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