Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee GOP Lawmakers Want More Guns In Schools; Utah 6th Grader Decides Not To Wait

 
 Good news, everyone! We are having a national dialogue on guns! Unfortunately, it seems to be just about as coherent as our national dialogue on race. In Minnesota,   Oklahoma , and Tennessee, GOP lawmakers plan to introduce legislation that would arm public school teachers in those states. Meanwhile, in Utah, a sixth-grade boy brought a handgun to school because he was worried about being a victim of a Newtown-style shooting, then pointed it in the face of other students, threatening "to kill them if they told the teacher." We at Wonkette urge the President to move forward on authorizing a Federal Department of Jesus Will You People Just Calm The Fuck Down Already, I Mean Really.

So, first, the alleged grownups: In Minnesota, State Rep. Tony Cornish (R-EmptyGesture), who has advocated more guns in educational institutions since at least 2007, plans to introduce an "Armed Defense of Classrooms" law, explaining that

"It's something that we have to face that all of the laws in the world sometimes aren't just going to work...The cop can't be everywhere so the best person to defend yourself is yourself."

Fortunately, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has already said that the idea of arming teachers "defies common sense," and virtually every other bit of give-everyone-a-gun legislation Cornish has symbolically introduced has been defeated.

In Oklahoma, State Rep. Mark McCullough (R-WishfulThinking) wants to go a step beyond merely allowing teachers to carry firearms; while his proposed bill would (for now) only apply to teachers who volunteer to be armed, he would also require these armed teachers to have equivalent training to that provided to law enforcement officers:

“These teachers would be trained at the same level as our law enforcement are currently trained,” he said. “They would be trained in target acquisition, in marksmanship. They would be trained in all of the things that our current police officers are trained in.”

This is very encouraging, as we are all aware that no law enforcement officers ever shoot anyone accidentally or without justification.

Also, too, there's Tennessee, where State Sen. Frank Niceley (R-JustPilingOnNow) would require that every school have either an armed Resource Officer or at least one armed faculty or staff member. He seems really proud of how well he's thought out possible scenarios:

“Say some madman comes in. The first person he would probably try to take out was the resource officer. But if he doesn’t know which teacher has training, then he wouldn’t know which one had [a gun],” Niceley said by phone. “These guys are obviously cowards anyway and if someone starts shooting back, they’re going to take cover, maybe go ahead and commit suicide like most of them have.”

Wonkette was unable to confirm whether Sen. Nicely actually acted out the scenario on his desk with action figures and "Pew! Pew!" noises.

 [Note: When we began drafting this piece, we only had the story about Minnesota's armed-teacher proposal. The other two were brought to our attention by Your Editrix while we were writing, a literal tripling of Derp. By the end of the day we expect similar GOP proposals for all 50 states, Puerto Rico & Samoa, and the International Space Station -- Doktor Zoom] 

Meanwhile, in Kearns, Utah, an 11-year-old boy who said he was worried about the shootings in Newtown brought a .22 handgun with him to school on Monday morning, along with ammunition that may not have matched the gun. School officials and law enforcement are still sorting out exactly what happened, because most of the information is based on the testimony of very frightened 6th-graders, but at least one source also reports that he told other kids that his parents had encouraged him to take the gun for protection. We have not seen any confirmation that the parents actually said that -- If they did, they are terrible human beings.

The boy reportedly pointed the gun, which was apprently not loaded, at several kids and told them he would kill them if they told a teacher about the gun; once someone did tell a teacher -- near the end of the school day -- the boy was taken to the principal, the gun was seized, and the boy was arrested. (Some parents are apparently angry that the school did not go into lockdown, which seems perhaps not exactly called for if the principal had the gun secured and the kid sitting in his office waiting for police.)

No word yet on whether any Utah legislators will argue that an armed teacher should have been allowed to take out the kid, had they seen him waving a gun on the playground. If he was pointing his empty gun at another student, it would have been a clean kill, after all.

More gun-related fuckery is expected to come in the coming days. In the meantime, Your Wonkette would like to present this public service message:

[ CityPages / Raw Story / TPM / ABC4 ]

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