There is a state Senate Committee hearing (General Laws) today for SB 613 (Second Amendment Protection Act or "SAPA") 2014 Regular Session. The Lawrence County Sheriff's Auxiliary submitted written testimony for the bill, primarily concerning the provisions creating the role of a School Protection Officer and its potential interaction with armed volunteers under law enforcement.
[Update 21 February 2014: This bill has passed the Missouri Senate 23-10.]
The National Rifle Association, Naitonal School Shield Task Force has released a report comprised of recommendations for enchancing school security (Scribd document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/133630146/NRA-s-National-School-Shield-Report ). The report has been heavily criticized for focusing almost exclusively on the use of School Resource Officer (SROs), basically Law Enforcement Officers attached to schools, but I will refrain from commenting on this until I have finished reading the report myself.
As I was preparing to write this article on an event twenty years ago today, I noticed the headline that a shooting has just occurred in a Connecticut elementary school with 28 dead, 20 of them children.
I was laid up in bed with my still swollen ankle propped up on a pillow, a zip-lock bag of now melted snow pressed against it. A much-abused copy of Billy Joel's Kohept played on the stereo across the room. The room was sweltering, the window next to me open wide and the snow long-since melted from the overhang, but I wasn't going to limp down the stairs to adjust the thermostat back down again. A knobbed stick lay propped against my milk-crate nightstand surmounted by an ugly lamp, which was now off, the room lit dimly by the lamp-posts of the small cluster of upper class modular apartments, Mods, nestled in the snowy woods. A stack of untouched textbooks lay between me and the window, a Weis and Hickman novel closed and marked on the sill itself.