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" Welcome back to our weekly survey of what&amp;#039;s goin&amp;#039; down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin&amp;#039; really gets done, and where they&amp;#039;re selling postcards of the hanging and painting the passports brown. We must begin with the scramble in several places to put in place legislation to arm teachers. This has been the most instructive example of the difference between the two political tribes in our country and how they work their wills through the process. One side is asking for the beginning of a &amp;quot;serious national conversation&amp;quot; about gun violence. The other side is setting about passing laws that will entrench the status quo that everybody else says is already insupportable and that will create that new reality-TV series, Fort Apache: The Band Room. Let&amp;#039;s begin in Tennessee, where they jumped on this Ford Pinto of a bandwagon almost instantly. A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don&amp;#039;t know who has a gun and who doesn&amp;#039;t. State Sen. Frank Niceley (R) told TPM on Tuesday he believes it&amp;#039;s time for that to change. He plans to introduce legislation in the next session, which begins Jan. 8, that will require all schools to have an armed staff member of some kind. The current language of the bill - which is in its early form - would allow for either a so-called &amp;quot;resource officer&amp;quot; (essentially an armed police officer, the kind which most Tennessee high schools have already) or an armed member of the faculty or staff in every school in the state. The choice would allow schools that can&amp;#039;t afford a resource officer to fulfill the requirement without having to pay for anything beyond the cost of the training and, presumably, the weapon. But Niceley said schools should use the wiggle room to train and keep on hand armed staff not in uniform. That&amp;#039;s the best way to protect students, he said. &amp;quot;Say some madman comes in. The first person he would probably try to take out was the resource officer. But if he doesn&amp;#039;t know which teacher has training, then he wouldn&amp;#039;t know which one had [a gun],&amp;quot; Niceley said by phone.&amp;quot;These guys are obviously cowards anyway and if someone starts shooting back, they&amp;#039;re going to take cover, maybe go ahead and commit suicide like most of them have.&amp;quot; Senator Niceley \u2014 and, damn, it is the season for Dickens, isn&amp;#039;t it? \u2014 fails to mention the fact that people shot back at Columbine, and at Oak Creek in Wisconsin. And, of course, certain conservative orthodoxies have a tendency to collide with other conservative orthodoxies. Asked if the guns for the trained teachers would also be part of the taxpayer expense, Niceley laughed. &amp;quot;Well, that&amp;#039;s a minor detail in Tennessee,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;We hoped the teachers would have them already.&amp;quot; There is the summation of modern conservative thought \u2014 we won&amp;#039;t even pay for the implementation of our own terrible ideas. Moving along to Virginia, where similar thoughts seem to have occurred to its governor, noted transvaginalist Bob McDonnell. But Virginia&amp;#039;s doesn&amp;#039;t have the patience to produce a moderate terrible idea, the way Tennessee apparently does. Virginia wants its terrible ideas put into practice now, before it&amp;#039;s too late. Marshall would not only allow staff with concealed handgun permits to carry them in schools, but require school districts to designate some staff members to do so. Those employees would have to be certified in gun safety and competence, Marshall said. (The brainiac behind this measure, Bob Marshall, has a long history of applying his big brain to different social problems. Somebody keeps voting for this guy.) As has already been pointed out, the same people who don&amp;#039;t trust public school teachers to set their own curricula are now insisting they be trusted with deadly weapons. Luckily, McDonnell is taking a reasoned approach to this conundrum. &amp;quot;I know there&amp;#039;s been a knee-jerk reaction against that,&amp;quot; McDonnell said. &amp;quot;I think there should at least be a discussion of that. If people were armed, not just a police officer but other school officials who were trained and chose to have a weapon, certainly there would have been an opportunity to stop aggressors coming into the schools...&amp;quot; You see, if we&amp;#039;re discussing arming teachers, then we&amp;#039;re not discussing, you know, guns, which is pretty much the whole point. And they&amp;#039;re discussing it in Oklahoma, too. The reality of this situation is this man performed a great evil thing and that could have possibly been prevented had we been prepared to meet force with force,&amp;quot; said Rep. McCullough. Right now it&amp;#039;s a felony to carry guns onto school property. But Representative McCullough wants teachers and administrators to have the right to be armed. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to air on the side of trusting my teachers if it comes down to it,&amp;quot; said Rep. McCullough. &amp;quot;I am not going to trust a madman.&amp;quot; Well, a man&amp;#039;s got to have his standards. You really do have to admire the way they coordinated the national pivot on this issue. I hear all the time about the dark conspiracies of the Left that the president is planning to engage in his second term. But this is really an impressive example of the behavior of a hive mind. With sophisticated weaponry. Resistance is futile. Mockery is required. Of course, one hopes that the advanced weapons training that Republicans say our teachers should have \u2014 and which the Republicans have no intention of funding, of course \u2014 would keep, say, Mr. Smeagol, the Math Teacher, from screwing things up this badly. On Wednesday evening, Gary Quackenbush, 61, turned up at the theater seeking his missing gun, &amp;quot;like it would be in the lost and found with lost eyeglasses and other things,&amp;quot; said Long. &amp;quot;He has a concealed handgun license,&amp;quot; Long said. &amp;quot;That will be revoked tonight. The law says if you are a danger to yourself or the public, it can be revoked.&amp;quot; A man answering a phone number listed for Quackenbush laughed and told a reporter, &amp;quot;Get a life.&amp;quot; No, thanks, I&amp;#039;d rather keep the one I have. This is your democracy, America. Cherish it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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