Will Bulletproof Whiteboards Be the Answer to School Shootings?

Worried about school safety in blood-drenched America? Well, we now have the answer. 

Bulletproof whiteboards!

You might think this is a joke; but considering the recent murders of teachers Colleen Ritzer and Michael Landsberry, there is little cause for humor. Ritzer was allegedly stabbed at school by an attacker wielding a box cutter. Landsberry was gunned down on the school playground. Ironically, Landsberry, an ex-Marine, once survived a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Ritzer’s killer was said to be a 14-year-old freshman in one of her math classes.

Landsberry was struck by a bullet from a gun held in the hand of a 12-year-old middle school kid. In that incident the boy may have planned to shoot several classmates. He did wound two. Landsberry tried to stop the carnage and died in the attempt.

The boy then shot himself.

In the wake of all too many similar incidents schools are hoping to play defense. According to an article in the New York Times, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore is doing something about the threat of violence. At a cost of $59,800 the school purchased bulletproof whiteboards for professors. One will hang in every room. According to the campus chief of police the decision was easy. School leaders wanted “one more tool to help us ensure the safety of the campus community.” Even better: “the whiteboards are user-friendly and noninvasive.”

I’m sorry. Here a dose of bitter sarcasm seems the only reaction. One might posit such questions: Does the professor tell students about this possibly live-saving whiteboard? If an attacker enters the room, might not a struggle—with students—for possession of the shield ensue? For god sake, what parts of the body does one protect? The boards are only 18 x 20 inches. Hold the shield low and one’s head is exposed. Hold it high and…well. Let us say only that other delicate areas might be targeted.

Hardwire, the company that makes the shields, is seeing a business boom. In a YouTube video a company spokesmen explains that this innovative new product was “inspired by the Sandy Hook [Elementary School] tragedy.” Public school districts in Minnesota, Maryland and North Dakota have already purchased these special whiteboards. And why not! According to one expert, bulletproof whiteboards are fantastic. “It’s something that a teacher could actually walk around with, teach with it, place a book on it, it’s very lightweight.”

You can write on them too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0vjVvaEwc

Well, I guess you can’t mess with the Second Amendment. So you can’t ban any kinds of weapons or limit the size of ammo clips. You can’t have more background checks or register all guns. You can’t require gun owners to lock up weapons or be held liable for misuse. After all, a “well-armed militia” is the only question to consider in 2013.

You know what the Founding Fathers would say if they were alive today? “Buy some bulletproof whiteboards!”

Besides, you know the N.R.A. argument. Banning guns won’t stop all the killings. “If you ban guns, then criminals will use box cutters.” Hell, what about knitting needles! At this point, who knows how far the N.R.A. will go to win this argument?

I will leave the constitutional argument to others—noting only that all rights are subject to carefully drawn, sensible limits.

And really, who says we have a problem? (Okay, probably Michael Lansberry’s wife and two children.) Others would argue, I suppose, that we already live in the safest nation in the world. Because the more guns we have the safer we are. Ann Coulter said so, days after the Sandy Hook massacre. “I’m on the Hannity show right now,” she tweeted. “More guns,” she added, “less mass shootings.” So, let’s buy more guns! According to FBI figures, 2012 was a great year for gun manufacturers. At least 16.8 million FBI background checks were run during the year.

Today, we must be getting safer by the minute. There were 11.4 million background checks ordered in the first six months of this year.

Do you feel safer?

I just don’t. In America today you can be killed in all kinds of places—or if lucky—maybe just wounded. You can be gunned down by a heavily-armed assailant in a theater in Aurora, Colorado. So what do we need? Bulletproof popcorn containers? You can be killed while screening passengers at the Los Angeles airport as happened just last week. So: Kevlar luggage! You can be killed while at work in the Washington, D. C. Navy Yard. Therefore: we need bulletproof office cubicles. You can be shot by mistake by your husband in Ohio. And you have to worry about incidents of road rage, too. If you missed it, two Michigan drivers (both with concealed-carry permits) recently shot and killed each other. Both men had pulled into a parking lot to argue about one driver’s tailgating the other. Your 5-year-old can accidently kill his 2-year-old sister. Or, one of your children can kill another in an argument over a video game. Or, moms, your son can gun you down, and also his sister, after watching the movie “Halloween.”

You can even pick up a gun and kill yourself, which, on average, 53 Americans do every single day of the year.

Another 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day.

And every day more than 200 are wounded.

Compared to all other advance nations, we lead by far when it comes to gun-related slaughter. So, what do we do? (Double click on chart below to expand it for easy reading.)

We know Congress isn’t doing anything.

Maybe at this point we cast logic aside. We need bulletproof whiteboards, not just in colleges. We need them in all the classrooms all the way down to the kindergarten level. Our kids could also use bulletproof notebooks.

I suppose we will never be safe, if Ann Coulter is right, until every American owns a gun and we finally put an end to the gun-related carnage. In fact, I suppose you could argue that this Christmas, pistols would be perfect stocking stuffers. You can’t have any limits on guns, right, because that would be the end of all freedom? Well, then, it is the duty of every freedom-loving citizen to buy at least one pistol, rifle or shotgun for every family member. Two or three per person, naturally, would be better. Yes, it will take time to reach this state of heavily-armed perfection. But while we wait, let’s not take chances. Clearly, we need some bold company to come out with bulletproof underwear for children. Also: bulletproof Huggies for infants.

Problem Solved? Arm All the Teachers?

I GUESS I’M FINALLY CONVINCED. Those who cherish Second Amendment rights and guard against all limitations have shown me I’m wrong. I’ve been trying to argue that we can limit gun sales and ban military-style assault rifles and high capacity of ammunition clips. Now I understand. Tyranny is just one unsold pistol or rifle or shotgun away.  

I didn’t realize until now that we needed more guns. (We also need to turn our schools into forts, it would seem.) 

Here, I thought, we were talking about children like Madeline Hsu, Charlotte Bacon and Olivia Engel, all 6, who died Friday after being hit in a spray of gunfire. Now I know. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This is an absolute truth, is it not? Or, as one no-limits-on-guns thinker sagely noted, we might as well ban forks and spoons as ban guns. People in America are fat and obesity kills. 

True. SO true. If we start banning guns, what comes next? I think that’s what he was trying to say. Are we ready to ban donuts? 

I’m not being sarcastic at all. I’m not saying this kind of thinking is for idiots. I’m saying these absolutists are right. There’s no other way to address the incredible carnage.

Except to get our hands on more guns. 

Madeliene F. Hsu,
one of twenty children cut down at Sandy Hook

You want to protect first graders in schools? You can’t do it by limiting guns. How could you think that? Now our greatest leaders are stepping forward to offer solutions. A member of Congress has already expressed sorrow to learn that Dawn Hochsprung, the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was unarmed at the time of attack. If only Hochsprung had had an assault rifle hanging on the wall in her office! (I’m not joking. That’s what he said.) Then she might have engaged the shooter and possibly won. 

I’m embarrassed to say I’m a retired teacher—and all those years I spent in a classroom I never saw the logic of this kind of position. I had a student who brought a gun to school to shoot me and at least one of his classmates back in 1985. Now I see. The gun that troubled young man picked up so easily at home, that wasn’t the problem. No, I needed my own gun for protection. He had a loaded pistol in his book bag. I should have had one holstered on my hip. It would have been hard to teach without turning my back to the class; but, hey, if it means protecting the Second Amendment, I could have adjusted. 

NO WAY CAN WE LIMIT GUNS. We don’t limit freedoms in America. No sir. The Founding Fathers knew their freedom shit. (Okay, true, maybe some did own slaves.) Ignore that. We are talking here about teachers fighting back. 

Fight fire with return fire, you might say. 

Yes, it’s the deepest kind of human tragedy that Noah Pozner, 6, had to die, hit by gunfire unleashed by a disturbed individual with a military-style assault rifle. According to his mother, Noah hoped to grow up to become a doctor or maybe own a taco factory. He loved tacos, that wonderful little boy, and that way he could have tacos whenever he wanted. 

He’d be alive today, according to gun-rights absolutists, if only his teacher, Lauren Rousseau, 30, had been armed. 

Why didn’t we see this before it was too late? You can’t arm just one teacher in every building. What if that teacher is out sick? What if the shooter enters from a different direction? If we want children to be safe we have to arm every educator in the land. We do it for the kids, or the gun companies, at least. Until recently, Ms. Rousseau had been a substitute teacher and before Friday she had to feel fortunate to land a regular job. What if the school had provided her gun training? Sure. We train every teacher in America in the handling of heavy weapons. Because, let’s face it, we all have Second Amendment rights and they cannot be infringed. Read your Second Amendment. Don’t make me quote it, now that I’ve seen the light: 

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”


We can’t infringe on freedom. Not a spec. If we do we’re open to invasion by Iranians or North Koreans or maybe Redcoats. I know some no-limits Americans worry about invasion by U. N. inspectors coming to take their weapons away; or agents in black helicopters sent by Mr. Obama. What if they’re right! We can’t limit guns. In one fell swoop, U. N. inspectors could grab them all, all 300 million currently in private hands. We can’t do psychological profiling, either, before we put assault rifles in private hands. 

That would be crazy, right? 

It may seem incomprehensible to most of us to think that Allison Wyatt, age 6, died with most of her friends in a room blown to bits like a set in a Rambo movie. But guns don’t kill people. Don't you see? Lack of guns kills people. Her teacher, Ms. Rousseau, would be alive today if she’d been armed and ready. In fact, I apologize to NRA leaders who love America and freedom ten times more than I do. I see now that they don’t have foul blood dripping from their hands. A first grade classroom in an elementary school in a peaceful town in Connecticut was turned into a slaughterhouse.  

Well, it was my fault.  

It was yours, if you think there’s a way to limit guns.  

One of the first responders on the scene was a veteran of two combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq; and he told friends what he saw in that room, with the torn bodies of twenty little children strewn about, was worse than anything he could have imagined in wartime. And look, we have to have guns to stop guns.

ROUSSEAU SHOULD HAVE HAD AN ASSAULT RIFLE lying atop her desk, loaded and ready. She’d never hit any pupils. She’d be trained, don’t you see? Now that you think about it, she should have been wearing body armor. It’s perfectly clear. In the future all teachers shall be issued body armor. This is America and we believe in freedom without limits. I am not being sarcastic. We can only expect safety in theaters and malls and on college campuses if every citizen has weapons within immediate reach. 

We’re Americans. We don’t joke about freedom. If we ban clips that hold twenty or thirty or a hundred bullets, only criminals will have clips that hold enough bullets to take out an entire first grade classroom; and then our teachers will have no chance to fend off attacks by maniacal intruders (or Redcoats). 

The logic is clear. Cannon don’t kill people, people kill people. If there had been a cannon in the hallway, trained on the front door of Sandy Hook Elementary School, the principal could have stopped that killer cold. James Mattioli, age 6, and Chase Kowalski, age 7, would still be alive today and excited about the presents wrapped and already under the family trees. Victoria Soto, 27, who dived in front of students to shield them, allowing some to escape, might be looking forward to the holidays to rest up and recharge—since working with first graders requires limitless energy. Too bad she didn’t have a rifle. 

Or a cannon. 

I’m not angry, except with myself. Those poor children, each hit at least three times, some as many as eleven, they’d be alive if we all had more guns. 

What can we do, then, to insure that these kinds of tragedies don't happen again? Let’s follow the lead of the strident no-limits NRA types. There are six shopping days left until Christmas. Go out and get your child’s favorite teacher an assault rifle. After all, you’re either part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem. 

SAY A PRAYER FOR THE INNOCENT VICTIMS.


(I just had to write a similar column about the slaughter in Las Vegas; only the pools of blood seem to change.)



P. S. If anyone thinks that I’m being serious read this post again. Arming teachers is a ludicrous idea; I thought that was crystal clear.

Cut off guns before they reach the schools.