There’s no reason to let this group steer the debate and silence alternative voices

According to the New York Times, the NRA has a plan for preventing gun violence. “The N.R.A.’s main answer to school violence was a model program it unveiled called National School Shield, which would train and arm security guards at schools in those local districts that want to use it.” That’s the answer. Simply have armed guards patrol our schools. Never mind that many schools today are having a hard enough time getting up to date textbooks or a sufficient number of computers, or even adequate supplies of pencils and paper. According the NRA, we should reinforce the fortress society we are constructing by adding armed guards to the staff.

The NRA just doesn’t get it. The very fact that we live in a society in which we feel that we need armed guards in our schools to protect our children is not a solution. Indeed, it is the very manifestation of the problem. Our society is devolving into collective of insular fortresses that need to be protected from the psychopaths that pervade our streets. If the NRA had its way, each of these mini-citadels would be defended by well-armed denizens. It doesn’t occur to them that this very mindset is, in and of itself, pathological.

I shudder for a society paranoid of itself.

Considering that the United States has almost as many guns as it does people…