It happened again.
Another school shooting.
Another gun massacre.
And I, for one, am fed up. I don’t know why thoughts and prayers haven’t ended this violence; maybe not enough of you are thinking and praying? But it’s time to do something else. Something MORE. Just plain SOMETHING.
Can we PLEASE finally admit, after yet another shooting spree, that we have a problem?
And that problem is doors.
Simply put, we have way too many of them. It’s way too easy to get our hands on them.
Some of my fellow serious-minded politicians have suggested limiting the number of doors at schools, but while I know their hearts are in the right place, I think this idea is too simplistic. The sad reality is that taking away some of the doors is unlikely to prevent the next massacre.
So here are some serious, pragmatic ideas that might actually stop that kid who wrote a Facebook post announcing his intentions, picked up his recently-procured death machine and headed for the nearest school.
- A drawbridge. Or is it called a portal? I’m talking about the gate/door thingies that castles used to use. What if every school had one of those? And a moat, of course. It doesn’t work without a moat. Filled with gators, perhaps? Does Texas have gators? Doesn’t matter. A drawbridge with a moat might really make a difference, with or without gators.
- Speaking of castles, you know how the windows were, like, concave? Is that the right word? They were narrow on the outside but wide on the inside, so they were hard to shoot into but easy to shoot out of. Maybe we could do something like that?
- A secret door. One that only opens if you pull the right book from the bookshelf (more about bookshelves later).
- No doors at all. And no roof. We could come up with a pulley system. Teachers on hall monitor duty could sit in parapets (is that what they’re called? Like, watchtowers but for people with guns?) and raise and/or lower the ropes.
Which brings me to my next point. There’s no one obvious solution to a kid easily procuring a gun and using it to shoot up a school. We need a multifaceted approach. We need to arm ourselves with laws and strategies, sure, but mostly we need to arm ourselves with arms.
My good-faith brethren have suggested that we give teachers their own assault rifles, but while I admire their earnest commitment to finding reasonable answers, I humbly suggest that their approach is misguided.
Arming teachers isn’t enough. We must arm the students too.
Oh! And let’s make body armor a part of their school uniform. And body cams. That way we can also catch any teachers trying to bring CRT or pictures of their same-sex partner into the classroom. Kill two birds with one stone, you know?
I mean, not kill. We don’t want to kill anyone. We certainly don’t want any more deaths. You can see that, right? If we were okay with kids dying, why would we be brainstorming right in front of you so many sensible preventative measures?
The other day I heard someone say we need more bookshelves than bullets, but hear me out:
Bulletproof bookshelves. On wheels. (Told you I was going to say more about bookshelves! The fact that I came back to them shows you how much thought I’ve put into this issue. No one can accuse me of firing away blindly.) Active shooter? No problem. Barricade the door with your bulletproof bookshelf!
Seriously, now that I think about it, solving our door epidemic is actually pretty easy – almost too easy.
All we need is the willpower to face our serious problems seriously.
Let’s take dead aim at these doors and take them out.