I don't want to act like I think it was a difficult prediction on my part, but I nailed it last March. After then Florida Governor Rick "Voldemort" Scott signed the mess formerly known as SB7026 into law, I had said that there are ways around the good features of the law but not the bad ones, so nothing good would happen.
The strongest feature is the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program, which allows people who work on school property to carry concealed. As bonus, the volunteers get to take 132 hours of classroom and range training to get better at their new role as marshals. ... The bad part of this is that a late compromise took teachers out of eligibility for the program, so in effort to say, "we're not arming teachers", they took away the teachers' right to defend themselves.It seems statistically hard to come up with any organizations as unlikely to take responsibility for anything as local school boards. Want to guess how many school districts have decided to take advantage of the Guardian Program? How many added specially trained security forces? There are 67 counties in Florida; I'm not sure it's always one school district in a county, but there's at least one per county so it's a good approximation.
The way around it, though, is that the local school district and sheriff's department can decide not to allow the program. In a county as sapphire blue as Broward, what do you think the chances are the Sheriff Israel will allow it? A sheriff known for chumming around with Hillary and Obama - before he was known for assigning responding officers to "wait outside while students died". You know how it goes, there's two chances: slim and none, and slim already left town.
Two. Out of 67. Call it 3%. I'm sorry to say that my county isn't even one of them.
What the law and the school districts have done for Florida schools is to recreate the exact same solution as that of Broward Schools on that horrible day in Parkland. MSD High School had one armed person, the deputy who single-handedly changed the name of his department to the Coward County Sheriff's Department, the deputy who refused to engage while the shooter was killing students under his guard. One officer isn't adequate for a campus that big to start with; this officer just made the bad situation worse.
Gualtieri asserts that widespread use of the guardian program as authorized by the law would mitigate deputy shortages being faced by most sheriffs’ offices around the state. He also noted some Sheriff’s Departments are refusing to train school personnel as allowed, but apparently not mandated by the law. He wants the legislature to mandate that training should a school board adopt the guardian plan. That makes sense and is just one example of the flawed thinking of the legislature as they quickly reacted to have something in place by the end of the last legislative session. [BOLD added: SiG]It's hard to look at this and think that any progress has been made. It's hard not to conclude that Parkland isn't the tiniest bit safer than it was last Valentines Day. The same goes for virtually every school in the state. You know it's going to happen again because nothing has been done to keep it from happening again. Somewhere, some psychotic teen is dreaming of how they're going to rack up the highest body count anywhere and knows just where to find the unarmed, unprotected victims: right in the gun free zone where they're always found.
It's a rule of thumb that any law named after a victim ends up being a legislative crap fest. I should have expanded that to include any law named after a notorious crime is a crap fest, but never put it in those words.
It was obvious this was going to happen. The whole poop-cyclone was initiated by gun-grabbing, leftist morons and holier-than-thou's who don't give a rat's buttocks over anyone's safety.
ReplyDeleteThere should not have been any legislation passed until the final report on the shooting came out, and then target the STATE'S and COUNTY'S FAILURES, if any action is going to be taken at all.
What should have been pushed forward, OPEN CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY, was most likely killed forever due to the blueing of the state.
Dang it. This is not how responsible government is created. Feelings don't matter more than facts. This is not the government that was promised to me in Civics class.
As someone pointed out earlier this year, we protect banks and jewelry stores with armed guards, but children? Heaven forbid!
ReplyDeleteBTW, wasn't Israel tossed by the governor?
132 hrs of training! What do they want, swat officers roaming around? Unless that is paid hours, no one will sign up for it. THREE WEEKS+ of class. 4 or 5 days at Frontsight, Gunsite, etc, will be enough to deal with it. Maybe they are thinking 3 GUN. A week for each type makes some sense, but I doubt that is what they have in mind. I think it is intended to chase off those interested.
Sheriff Israel was tossed out by current Governor DeSantis as almost the first thing he did in office.
DeleteEx-Governor Scott? Piece of doo-doo. Sat on his hands, signed gun-control legislation. But he is supposedly better than ex-Senator Nelson.
The left....who are in power in most populated regions, along with their media whore accomplices DO NOT WANT school children to be safe
ReplyDeletefrom gun violence on campus. They WANT random bloody school shootings.
If possible they'd like to see one every week. Because major crimes like school shootings are massive propaganda events that the left and the media use DISHONESTLY in their quest to DISARM AMERICA. The people in power do not give a red rats ass how safe Americans are, how many of us are murdered or how many are left grieving. ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS POWER. Absolute power requires that we be ABSOLUTELY DEFENSELESS. Everything else is lies and window dressing.
The Left can't swoop in and save us from the chaos and violence if there isn't any chaos and violence.
ReplyDeleteAnd the easiest way to stop the chaos and violence is if you were the one controlling it the whole time.
The program was intended to shut down the teachers like me who were asking to be permitted arms. The law says no classroom teachers are eligible, and that the school board and sheriff must approve. If they approved, I would gladly take the class on my own time during the summer, even though it lasts for weeks.
ReplyDeleteInstead, my school gets a pair of cops who each have more than 35 years on the job and are both too old to be on the streets, so they are just sitting around the school collecting a paycheck and waiting until they can retire.
The younger of the two first became a cop in 1983. How likely is it that, god forbid there ever was a shooter at my school, that he will hide just like the deputy in Broward county did? Are you willing to bet the lives of your children on that? Too bad, the state says that you have to.
Greg Ellifritz (of Active Response Training) stated that he would expect that 95% of all the officers that he has trained for active shooters would do the same as the Parkland Deputies, and park their butts outside the school.
DeleteWhich brings up the question: Are they excluding hiring the types of people who would be willing to go after an active shooter/mass shooter? Or, has society changed the mentality of men to such an extent that most will not consider doing something like that?
I know that back in the 90's, it became common for shooters to be excluded from hiring for LEO positions. (big push to be PC)
If this is indeed the case, then gun confiscation will grind to a halt after the first few shootouts.
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