WHY DO SOME SCHOOL DISTRICTS EMPLOY ARMED RESOURCE PERSONNEL IN THEIR SCHOOLS WHILE OTHERS DO NOT?

A PSYCHIC DISTURBANCE PERVADES THE THOUGHT PROCESSES OF MANY SCHOOL DISTRICTS: A SINGLE-MINDED, ABERRANT ANTIPATHY TOWARD AND FOCUS ON GUNS PREVENTS THESE DISTRICTS FROM INSTITUTING PROVEN SECURITY MEASURES THAT DO WORK AND, IF IMPLEMENTED, WOULD PROTECT CHILDREN FROM THE DANGER POSED BY VIOLENT ARMED AGGRESSORS

MULTISERIES ON THE ISSUE OF SCHOOL SAFETY

PART TWO

There are 731 School Districts in New York.But how many of these Districts have established an effective security plan?An effective plan incorporates armed resource personnel. The South Huntington School District (SHUFSD) knows this and has designed a plan for school security utilizing armed resource personnel. On Wednesday, January 25, 2023, updated on January 26, 2023, two reporters, John Asbury and Craig Schneider, writing for “Newsday,” a leading news source for Long Island and New York City, discussed this plan. They said, “Armed guards will be stationed outside all South Huntington school buildings by the end of the month, one of several Long Island districts making that choice as school shootings continue to be a terrifying national trend.” The reporters added, that, “[t]he South Huntington school board voted unanimously Wednesday to implement the new security measure.” In a follow-up “Newsday” article, published on January 28, 2023, the reporter, Craig Schneider, cited remarks of Dennis Callahan, who heads the South Huntington Teachers’ Union, writing,“The head of the teachers union for South Huntington schools said Friday that his members have strong but very different opinions on the district's decision Wednesday to use armed guards at schools.‘I have members who are thrilled about it and others who are vehemently opposed,’ said Dennis Callahan, who also teaches AP Spanish at Walt Whitman High School in the district.The South Huntington school board voted unanimously to spend $750,000 to hire an undisclosed number of armed guards, who officials said will be stationed outside the seven school buildings by the end of the month. School Superintendent Vito D'Elia pointed to the long string of shootings in school settings in this country.On Friday, Callahan said teachers supporting the move ‘say we are in an unsafe world, and we need to do everything in our power to ensure that when students come to school in the morning, they get home safe.’Those opposed, he said, worry that ‘bringing weapons into school opens the door to more violence.’”How can the utilization of armed resource officers “open the door to more violence”? The idea is more than a trifle vague. Let’s delve into this.Are teachers who oppose armed resource officers afraid the officers would themselves turn on the students and administrators and staff, developing or harboring violent proclivities and thereupon becoming violent? If so, what evidence is there of any such incident ever before occurring in a school that utilizes armed resource officers? These teachers proffer none because there is none. Nothing like that has happened. And there is no reason to suggest an incident of this sort would ever happen. The idea does not merit serious consideration. It leads one down a blind alley.What then can one make of the claim that utilizing armed resource officers would open the door to more violence? Perhaps, teachers who oppose a school security plan utilizing armed officers simply abhor the idea of guns in the school or on school grounds regardless of the benefits derived from having armed officers in the schools and thereupon conjure up an unlikely scenario. If so, there is, in the assertion, a note of hysteria, grounded on a neurotic phobic reaction to the very thought of “guns” and gun-wielding guards. We explore this idea, infra.Perhaps, as a sop to those teachers who suffer from an irrational fear of firearms, or, otherwise, in spite of that irrational fear of firearms felt by many within the District, the South Huntington Board of Education said armed personnel would be stationed outside school buildings, never inside the buildings.A school district that refuses to utilize armed resource officers cannot effectively “harden” schools against a dangerous armed threat. This should be obvious to everyone. Apparently, it isn’t since many school systems refuse to acknowledge this. A fanciful notion, devoid of demonstrative proof or logical validity, leads one down a blind alley. All the more horrific to consider that irrational feverish beliefs inform a school district’s policy decisions. And it is the children who pay the price.Consider: One of the largest school districts in the Country, the New York City School District (UFT), has opted out of using armed resource personnel.“Too many elected officials, school boards, and teachers’ union leaders propose solutions that don’t work.They aren’t interested in listening to parents who, increasingly, have little voice in the matter of their children’s education and no voice in the matter of their children’s personal safety while in school.Their solution to school shootings proposed boils down to one thing: ‘Get Rid of the Guns.’” See the Arbalest Quarrel article, satirically titled, “How to Guarantee Future School Shootings,” published, on November 17, 2022, by Stephen L. D’Andrilli, CEO and President of Arbalest Group, LLC.The failure of some people to recognize the difference between lawful uses for guns and unlawful criminal misuse points to the evident effectiveness of an elaborate propaganda campaign perpetrated on the public and vociferously and monotonously perpetuated for the last few decades.It is a campaign that involves many actors—news media, pundits, politicians, antigun activists, and powerful health organizations, like the “American Medical Association” (“AMA”) and the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” (“CDC”).These multivarious actors are all focused on and draft narratives around this thing, “Gun Violence.”Well, there are “Guns” in our society and there is “Violence” in our society, too. All that is true enough.But the words ‘Gun’ and ‘Violence’ aren’t synonymous. It is only thinking of the two as inseparably linked that would make it seem so.Conjoin two disparate words ‘Gun’ and ‘Violence’ and, voilà, the propagandist has, in that, a shorthand rhetorical device, ‘Gun Violence,’ a neologism—one in service to an insidious agenda, centered around a nefarious end, injurious to a free Constitutional Republic: the disarming of the American citizenry.The aim is the elimination of the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of self and in defense of innocent others.Americans will not readily sacrifice their Bill of Rights. They must be urged to do so.It takes ingenuity and subterfuge to coax Americans to willingly forsake rights and liberties that no other people of any other nation on Earth possess.The phrase, “Gun Violence,” is a viral meme, infecting the psyche of the public. If the pursuit of public health and safety is the goal, the reduction of “Gun Violence” is the theme played and with little variation to get the public there. Or so the public is told. And many there are who swallow the lie.The American public is presented with the classic “false dilemma” fallacy narrative:TOTAL CIVILIAN DISARMAMENT AND A PEACEFUL, SAFE, WELL-ORDERED, WELL-ENGINEERED, HARMONIOUS, SOCIETY VERSUS THE WELL-ARMED CITIZEN AND CONTINUOUS, UNINTERRUPTED, SAVAGE, RAMPANT GUN VIOLENCE.THIS ONE OR THAT ONE ONLY: THE ONE OR THE OTHER, BUT NOT BOTH, AND NOT NOT EITHERBut the tension isn’t real. The armed citizen, which, in the context of schools, is the armed resource officer, does not aggravate the threat of criminal violence by virtue of being armed. This is contrary to the view of many teachers and board members. The officer mitigates and repels that armed aggressive threat. Similarly, the armed civilian citizen neither causes nor adds to criminal violence, but rather mitigates criminal violence.Many Americans fail to perceive this. Many simply cannot perceive this. But, perversely, many others have the desire not to perceive this.And, the UFT, for one, certainly cannot see this. That says much of the cunning of those who instigate this incendiary narrative of “Gun Violence” while being careful to omit any mention of “Criminal Violence.” There is a method to this madness.The propagandists emphasize the object “The Gun” while, at once, deemphasizing the agents of violence: “the Criminal” and “the Lunatic.”This false narrative has a profound effect on the policy choices that politicians see available to them. The policy choices made, invariably endanger, rather than safeguard, their respective communities.Similarly, this false narrative has a profound effect on the choices that school districts make when designing a security plan for their schools. Some districts eschew the “hardening” of schools altogether, single-mindedly focused, as they are, on their abhorrence of “Guns.” Focusing entirely on guns, they conclude that children cannot be safe until or unless all guns are eliminated from society. That is impossible, a ridiculous demand, and one that would not prevent rampant violence anyway, as long as criminals and lunatics run amok in society. And, they would continue to run amok. The forces that crush western nations and people realize the usefulness of sociopathic and psychopathic elements to destabilize nation-states if allowed to do so, and they are given free rein to do just that in the United States.Such absolutism compels one to believe falsely in the futility of securing schools from harm. But Progressives, who ascribe to this absolutism comprise the majority of these School Boards. They make all kinds of excuses for the behavior of the worst sort of deviant types, placating them, unable to comprehend that these same lunatics and psychopaths have no regard for the hand that feeds it, and will readily bite it off if given the chance. So, these Progressives, these smug do-gooders, vent their wrath on Americans who would dare exercise their right to armed self-defense to thwart the destructive elements allowed to pillage and destroy businesses, homes, people, and institutions, with abandon.  Progressives comprise the majority of these School Boards. They make all kinds of excuses for the behavior of the worst sort of deviant influences, placating them, unable to comprehend that these same lunatics and psychopaths have no regard for the hand that feeds it, and will readily bite it off if given the chance. Instead, these Progressive do-gooders, vent their wrath on Americans who would dare exercise their right to armed self-defense to thwart the destructive elements allowed to pillage and destroy businesses, homes, people, and institutions, with abandon.  These Progressives direct their energy against the average law-abiding, rational, responsible, gun-owners, and against the mechanism of their survival, the firearm, believing firmly, and nonsensically, that disarming the gun owner and destroying guns will safeguard society, secure the public schools, and protect the children. It will do no such thing.  Consistent with that belief system, Progressive members of School Boards believe safeguarding children is impossible where guns are prevalent in society. Knowing that they will not get rid of guns nor that they will be able to defeat the exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense, these Progressive school board members, disgruntled, and enraged, but refusing to acknowledge defeat, forsake designing, and implementing any security measures, hoping and trusting or simply desirous that the life of their charges will one day, in a Golden Age, be safeguarded once guns all disappear from the face of the Earth. Till, then, they will do nothing to protect the children in their schools. It is a kind of Nihilism that sweeps through these School Districts, pervading all thought, a sickness hidden in plain sight only because the highest officials and functionaries of Government suffer from the same ailment, a psychic disturbance wrought by those poor sorts that have inculcated the psychotic dogma of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a dogma incompatible with our Nation's rational historical, political-philosophical creed, embodied in our natural law rights, emanating from the Divine Creator, that the new false secularism repudiates out of hand.These school districts hope the children in their care will be safe but believe they really won't be, and that, since nothing can be done, to prevent, in their mind, harm to their charges, they feel it is senseless to even try. So, they won't.This bizarre position emanates directly from the thinking of the repugnant Biden Administration itself. And, unsurprisingly, but no less unfortunate, many school districts, including the UFT, take their cue from this Federal Government. See June 6, 2022, report in Breitbart.And, since the public psyche is infected with the false notion that the existence of guns invariably threatens the physical and emotional health and safety of children, many public schools around the Country have opted out of employing armed personnel in schools.So it is, that some school districts, apparently so disheartened, disillusioned, and embittered as a result of their obsessive fear over the “proliferation” of guns and this thing, “Gun Violence,” have refrained from undertaking instituting any measures whatsoever. Consider, e.g., a 2007 report from the “National Institutes of Health” (“NIH”), that must bear some responsibility for this.A long-running campaign of psychological conditioning, undertaken by a plethora of organizations over a broad landscape of institutions, often operating in concert, and on an industrial scale, has succeeded in causing psychopathy in the minds of many Americans.And this elaborate propaganda campaign negatively impacts the decisions political leaders make: Governors of States, Mayors of Cities, and Members of School Boards.So powerful is this propaganda campaign that many Americans do not distinguish, indeed cannot distinguish, between criminal use of guns on the one hand, and non-criminal proper, lawful use of guns by average, rational, responsible, law-abiding people, on the other hand.The founders of our free Constitutional Republic would be puzzled indeed to consider that such a failure of reason could gain such wide currency.The founders of our Republic, the framers of our Constitution were acutely aware of the profound importance of firearms to both the creation of and maintenance of a free RepublicThey were certainly aware of the profound importance of firearms to the creation of and maintenance of a free Republic where the common man would stand and must stand sovereign over Government lest tyranny arise, as tyranny must, where good men have neither the will nor the means to prevent it.Guns are only a tool, inanimate objects, but necessary ones. Like any tool, a gun can be utilized for good or ill, dependent upon the nature of the sentient agent who wields it. A “firearm,” being insentient, is incapable of engaging in harm initiated by itself but listening to antigun zealots, one tends to hear them argue otherwise.The founders of our free Constitutional Republic certainly were aware of the importance of firearms as the most effective means to successfully safeguard human life from predatory creatures, predatory men, and predatory Governments. Our Country would not exist without the will and courage of these men, our Founders, and the means required to repel tyranny.Knowing this, one is left to ponder that——The failure of so many Americans to recognize the utility of firearms (“Guns”) as a source of positive good must be by design.The danger to the life, safety, and well-being of innocent Americans, especially children, is palpable.Sadly, there are powerful, ruthless forces machinating against the well-being of our Nation and its people, and they exert that influence on politicians at all levels of Government, and on businesses, media, the Press, and school boards across the Nation—with devastating effect. The felt impact of this, demonstrated by the money and time spent to undermine the natural law right to armed self-defense, is too much in evidence to be reasonably denied.Inducing in the psyche of a person a deep-seated phobia toward “the Gun,” such that a person finds nothing salvageable in it, suggests a dark and sinister intent of powerful forces to disarm the citizenry. That influence manifests in poor policy choices of Government officials, across the board, leading inevitably to rampant crime in our communities, lax security in our public schools, and the collapse of our sacred rights, and liberties, and institutions.____________________________________Copyright © 2023 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE PARKLAND, FLORIDA HIGH SCHOOL TRAGEDY MAKES THE CASE FOR ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy, the mainstream Press, echoing the sentiments of antigun activists and antigun legislators, focused the public’s attention on two subjects: guns and mental illness. Antigun activists argue that guns and mental illness are both intractable. Mix the two like a cocktail and you have a recipe for disaster. That, as maintained by antigun activists, accurately explains the cause of the mass shooting incident at the Parkland, Florida High School. But does it?In an editorial, appearing in The New York Times on February 24, 2018, titled, “I Can’t Stop Mass Shooters,” by Amy Barnhorst, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, admitted the conundrum. The author writes, “Each mass shooting reignites a debate about what causes this type of violence and how it can be prevented. Those who oppose further restrictions on gun ownership often set their sights on the mental health care system. Shouldn’t psychiatrists be able to identify as dangerous someone like Nikolas Cruz. . . ? And can’t we just stop unstable young men like him from buying firearms? It’s much harder than it sounds.”The author has no answer other than the perfunctory, putting “some distance between these young men and their guns.” But, would that prevent mass violence? Clearly, it would not even if this seems plausible to some. Signs of mental illness in a person do not automatically mean a person has violent tendencies. Conversely, those individuals who not fall within one or more listed categories in the latest version of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (“DSM-5”)—the Psychiatrist’s Bible—may have violent tendencies.

FROM AN EMPIRICAL STANDPOINT, DISPOSSESSING CIVILIANS OF THEIR GUNS WILL DO NOTHING TO CIRCUMVENT VIOLENT CRIME.

“The reality is that mass shootings are very rare and that neither mental illness nor mass shootings are a significant cause of gun violence. Individuals with a serious mental illness only account for approximately 4 percent of all violent crime in the United States, the majority of which is not committed with a firearm. Furthermore, individuals having no history of mental illness committed a number of these mass shootings. With mental illness representing such a small fraction of gun violence, gun-control efforts focused solely on the mentally ill are ‘unlikely to significantly reduce overall rates of gun violence in the United States.’” “The New York Safe Act: A Thoughtful Approach To Gun Control, Or A Politically Expedient Response To The Public's Fear Of The Mentally Ill?”, 88 S. Cal. L. Rev. 16, 43-44 (2015), by Matthew Gamsin, J.D. Candidate, 2015, University of Southern California Gould School of Law.Despite this evidence, antigun activists nonetheless vehemently call for general bans on the sale of semiautomatic “assault weapons” and are specifically targeting those individuals deemed to have mental illness, which may very well raise due process and equal protection issues for millions of Americans. Were these steps taken, violence would still ensue. Consider:“On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs detonated 12 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs.  On April 18, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two suspects, who were later identified as Kyrgyz-American brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.” “The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing killed 168 people, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one-third of the building.” “Eight people were killed and almost a dozen injured when a 29-year-old man in a rented pickup truck drove down a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center Tuesday in Manhattan, New York City. The suspect was identified by two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. He's from Uzbekistan in Central Asia but had been living in the US since 2010, sources said.” Whether these killers were mentally ill in a clinical sense or “normal,” they did not need a firearm to create havoc.Of course, antigun activists and their cheerleaders in the mainstream Press and in Congress argue that civilized Countries place restrictions on civilian access to guns and that doing so would constrain a killer’s access to one lethal instrumentality. Still, antigun activists must contend with the legal ramifications of attempting to curtail civilian access to firearms in a Country where the citizenry's rights and liberties, codified in a Bill of Rights, cannot be so easily dismissed.

INDISCRIMINATELY DISPOSSESSING THE CIVILIAN POPULATION OF THEIR GUNS WOULD NOT HOLD UP TO LEGAL SCRUTINY.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, IN THE LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT HELLER CASE, HELD THAT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT, IS AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT, NOT CONNECTED TO SERVICE IN A MILITIA. FURTHER, THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT EMBODIES  ARMED SELF-DEFENSE. AND FROM A PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE, CIVILIAN DEFENSE OF ARMS IS PRESSING BECAUSE, CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, THE POLICE ARE NOT LEGALLY REQUIRED TO SAFEGUARD THE LIVES OF INDIVIDUALS. THAT RESPONSIBILITY RESTS ON EACH PERSON.

Antigun activists retort that nothing in the Second Amendment guarantees the right of an American citizen to own and possess an “assault weapon.” But, is that true?First, the concept of ‘assault weapon’ is a legal fiction that encompasses a wide range of weaponry. On examination it becomes clear that antigun proponents and activists are not merely targeting some semiautomatic weapons; they are targeting all semiautomatic weapons. The legal issue is whether semiautomatic weapons in common use—which include firearms defined as 'assault weapons'—fall within the core of Second Amendment protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has not weighed in on this. But, that does not mean Government, State or Federal, may presume semiautomatic weapons, especially those firearms referred to as “assault weapons,” do not fall within the core of the Second Amendment.Second, a corollary to the basic, unfettered, natural right codified in the Second Amendment is that American citizens have a right to possess a firearm for self-defense. Antigun activists argue that armed self-defense is unnecessary because it is the duty of the police to safeguard the lives and well-being of the citizenry. But do police departments, as government entities, really have that duty? They do not!“No inquiry is more central to constitutional jurisprudence than the effort to delineate the duties of government. The courts' approach to this complex subject has been dominated by reliance on a simple distinction between affirmative and negative responsibilities. Government is held solely to what courts characterize as a negative obligation: to refrain from acts that deprive citizens of protected rights. Obligations that courts conceive to be affirmative—duties to act, to provide, or to protect—are not enforceable constitutional rights. “The Negative Constitution, A Critique,” 88 Mich. L. Rev. 2271 (August 1990) by Susan Bandes, Professor of Law, DePaul University College of law.The safeguarding of one's life is then a personal responsibility, not a police responsibility. Broward County residents, especially those high school students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, should have learned that lesson well. Many, obviously, have not as they--at the behest of their silent benefactors and choreographers of their political strategies, the antigun groups--act against their own best interests. They lash out at NRA, the very organization that serves them by protecting their sacred right of armed self-defense; and they call for civilian disarmament leaving them worse off. The duty of the Police is merely to safeguard, in some nebulous sense, the well-being of a community as a whole, not the lives of the individuals who live in it. But, then, since Government has no affirmative duty to provide armed protection for each citizen, Government cannot, in good faith, deny the citizen the natural right of armed defense owed to one's self. If the public is to take away anything from the recent Parkland, Florida tragedy, it is this:The Broward County Sheriff’s Department and the first responders from the Coral Springs Police Department did an abysmal job. By the time the Coral Springs Police SWAT team arrived, it was too late. Lives had been lost. An investigation unfolds, but it means nothing; for, whatever the outcome, police departments do not have and never did have an affirmative duty to protect individuals within a community. They are immune from suit. This is not supposition. It is law.“Thus . . . a claim that police officers failed to protect a particular individual from injury by nongovernmental actors is generally not cognizable; a successful claim would require sufficient prior contacts between police and the individual to indicate a specific undertaking or promise by the police to provide protection and detrimental reliance by the individual. Absent such facts, there is generally no liability for failure to enforce laws and regulations intended to benefit the community as a whole, failure to provide police or fire protection, or failure to inspect." Affirmative Duties, Systemic Harms, and the Due Process Clause, 94 Mich. L. Rev. 982, 999-1000 (February, 1996), by Barbara E. Armacost, Professor of Law, University of Virginia.The first and last line of adequate defense both inside the home and outside it is, as it always was, as the framers of our Constitution knew full well and as they provided for: armed self-defense.

ALERT: CONTACT YOUR REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES NOW.

Call your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives.  Tell them this: “if you want my support, then vote for national handgun carry reciprocity now.”PHONE U.S. SENATE: (202) 224-3121;PHONE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: (202) 225-3121______________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.