I have to say that the NRA plan for school safety made my husband apoplectic.  He’s been asking loud questions ever since it was released.  Questions like:  How many schools are there in the country?  How many armed officers would you need?  Who is going to pay for this?

According to the New York Times, the answer to the last question is us taxpayers.

The task force panel called on the Departments of Homeland Security, Education and Justice to coordinate school safety efforts and provide grant money for schools to assess their ability to prevent and respond to attacks. It recommended that officers or employees who are armed take a 40- to 60-hour training course to be developed by the rifle association based on a model the task force has designed.

The group also called on states to require schools to develop security plans.

But how and whether the task force recommendations will be put into effect — and the cost — was unclear.

Maybe gun owners should pay a surtax when they purchase/register weapons and ammunition.

The only way to reduce the danger that weapons pose to schoolchildren, to shoppers at malls, to bystanders, to movie goers, to law enforcement officials is to enact stricter gun safety laws.

This chart was in an article published by Atlantic Cities and is from a study done by Boston Childrens Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

 The study found that states with the strictest gun control laws had lower rates of gun-related homicides and suicides, though it notes that these findings are limited to associations and could not determine precise cause-and-effect. Gun-related deaths were measured per 100,000 people for both homicides and suicides based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, controlling for other factors thought to be associated with gun deaths including age, sex, race and ethnicity, poverty, unemployment, college education, population density, other violence-related deaths, and firearm ownership.

This is contrary to what many gun rights activists believe.

I believe that we need fewer guns around, not more.  While I was writing this word came of a lock down on the University of Rhode Island campus because someone had evidently waved a gun at a lecture and then left the room.  If the NRA gets its way, we will have guns all around us and how will we be able to tell who is a lunatic wanting to kill everyone and who is just a lunatic?

Related articles

• The NRA deploys its muscle at the National Press Club: Dana Milbank (oregonlive.com)
• Sandy Hook Dad Backs NRA School-Safety Plan (cnsnews.com)
• NRA Task Force Presents School Safety Plan (newsy.com)
• The NRA-funded ‘School Shield’ report: ‘I don’t represent the NRA,’ says study director (tv.msnbc.com)
• NRA’s Hutchinson: ‘I’m Open to Expanding Background Checks’ (nationalreview.com)