A Modest Proposal

The gun problem is not going to solve itself and our legislators are clearly craven. The answer is right in front our noses, at least when it comes to school shootings, and kids, and domestic violence — and, well, everything.

The only answer is to arm everyone, from birth. So, along with a social security number, every baby should get the latest in gun technology. This can be paid for through a mandatory tax that is imposed when you deliver your baby; anyone who does not purchase a gun on their own from a government-approved gun manufacturer (a process that the states and Congress can delegate to an expert non-profit organization with expertise in this area, such as the NRA) will have to pay a penalty. The penalty funds will then be used to purchase a gun for your toddler.

Along with free public pre-K, toddlers should be taught and trained on how to use their guns. They should parallel play together with guns (with the safety catch on, natch!) and that will certainly give any potential kidnappers pause. They will grow up comfortable with guns, ready to use them, and aware of the risks. This will lead to a reduction in gun deaths.

Further, no enraged father is going to be likely to try to shoot his toddler when the toddler is also packing heat. Toddlers can come to the defense of their abused mothers when the fathers overpower the armed moms and take their guns from them. In other words, when there is domestic abuse, kids and their mom will be able to team up to fight back against abusive dads. The abusive dad will, literally, be outgunned by his family. It’s perfect.

You can probably already anticipate the benefits I am about to describe next. Kindergartners and elementary schools kids can upgrade their guns, and along side reading, writing, and mathematics, kids can be taught and trained in proper gun maintenance, safety, and etiquette in public school. (Responsible gun ownership of course starts at home, but must be reinforced in the community, as well.) Playground bullying will plummet because every kid will be afraid that if he is mean to another kid, that bullied kid will shoot him. Mean girls will no longer be mean, as they will live in fear that the girls they lord it over might blow their brains out. Everyone will have to be kind, because the alternative is potential death. No one will sweat the small things anymore — because whether your son Austin shares his blue crayon could literally be the death of him, so of course he’ll share with Ethan and Peyton.

Things might get a little more more complex in middle and high school, but that can be channeled through shooting competitions, peer counseling, and graduated discipline. Classes in health and sex education will help teach tweens and adolescents how to keep their anger in check and not turn their guns on themselves and their classmates, or their parents or teachers. Guidance counselors and therapists will have anger management classes and other means of making sure that when hormone kick in, the homicide rate doesn’t go up.

And of course at all times everyone will have to be trained in how to shoot and how to handle guns and that will vastly reduce the risk of any gun death. To further reduce the risk that angry students might shoot their teachers if they get bad grades, everyone will get an A. Further, teachers will be empowered to shoot first, ask questions later. While not ideal, this solution recognizes that teachers are more mature than kids and far less likely to act impulsively. They will only shoot if their lives are truly in danger and there are no other alternatives.

While there will be some inevitable casualties, due to accident or negligence (what the military calls friendly fire) or occasional bad judgment, and those will of course be tragic, the overall numbers of death are sure to decline, leading to better over-all macro results nationwide and, obviously, a decline in terrorism. No terrorist/mentally unbalanced school shooter will possibly undertake a school shooting when he knows that, the minute he opens fire, there will be hundreds of other kids there ready and waiting to take him out. When he does the careful, thoughtful, considered mental calculus that all mass murderers go through before they undertake their crimes, he will of course reconsider and not go through with this plans. Win-win. (The other thing is that kids are really, really good at identifying the losers and outsiders, the kids with mental imbalances and other deviant characteristics that make them obvious risks to the school. So all the other kids will likely have taken care of their class mate years before he ever gets the chance to try to kill them. They will get him first. And because they will have been in justifiable fear for their lives, the pre-emptive killing of their screwed-up classmate will not be an issue; it will not even go on their records.)

Because all the kids will be armed and trained, moreover, the teachers need not worry or fear that they themselves need to be properly trained to shoot, or that somehow they are taking on an added burden that they are unequipped for or didn’t sign up for. The norm will be guns everywhere so it will just be odd for teachers to be exempt. And training will be provided so they won’t need to go out of pocket to learn, and they’ll get issued a gun by their school. Further, the kids will be ready to die for themselves and for each other. Adults who went into teaching just to teach, will be able to do just that. And while teachers will of course also have to have guns, the pressure will be off because, knowing that all the kids are likewise armed will allow the teacher to relax, stop worrying about school shooters, and just concentrate on teaching.

When everyone is armed, you see, there cannot be any more fear or any more terrorism. We will all live in a state of pitched anxiety, but it will be more relaxing than the current situation, where the possibility of random death exists and is terrifying. A gun allows you to feel like you can control your environment, and that’s very important. When you walk into a restaurant or a theater or a park or a school or the grocery store or a subway or a basketball stadium, or, frankly, just down the street, knowing that every person there might kill you, but that you can kill them first if necessary, is really comforting. It is equalizing, really. It just levels the playing field between the rest of us and the criminals. We are never truly free until we all have guns, especially children.

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Obviously, this is unsubtle satire. But the proposal here is actually just a step away from what the gun extremists and Trump are now seriously suggesting. The fact that anyone is talking about arming teachers is a sign of both NRA messaging success and a sign of deep, societal sickness. No other nation lives this way. There is no need or reason to live this way. Wanting to live this way is insane. What they are proposing is dystopian, dysfunctional, disgusting, and batshit crazy.

So stop talking about it as if it is a remotely rational “solution.”

Stop explaining why it is ridiculous. Just don’t engage. Dismiss it as dangerous nonsense.

Every time we engage on the merits, treating it like a serious policy question that will be hard to administer (but where will the teachers train? which teachers? what kind of guns?), we mainstream it and normalize it. Instead of it being preposterous and off the table and a twisted joke proposed by gun idolators, now we have to treat it like it is remotely within the realm of sanity or decency, and that gives it traction and mainstreams it.

And every second we devote it to is a second we don’t devote to pushing for measures that make sense. This is how the gun nuts and the NRA move the ball. They propose sociopathological fringe notions to hijack the conversation and drown out discussion of common sense reform.

So now instead of fighting to reinstate an assault weapons ban, a ban on high capacity magazines and bump stocks, a ban on silencers, comprehensive background checks free of loopholes, mandatory insurance for gun owners and strict liability and negligence laws to hold people accountable when they do not keep their guns safely stored, repeal of the exemption of gun manufacturers and ammo makers and gun dealers from liability laws, repeal of the prohibition on federal research of the gun problem, a national database of gun owners, strict licensing and training requirements, mandatory minimum age requirements for gun ownership, and a host of other common-sense measures, we are arguing about something that has no more place in a civilized society that giving every adult her own nuclear weapon. Stop talking about arming teachers. Talk about solutions that are consistent with, not antithetical to, a mature, free, and open society that loves its people rather than its guns.