From down Watsonville way come comments by Police Chief Manny Solano:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_22336964/watsonville-police-chief-warns-random-shootings-are-risk
So apparently, in the Chief's view, the NRA's School Shield program is a bad idea and armed citizens are just disasters waiting to happen—their guns will be stolen or they'll shoot innocent bystanders. Hmm. A quick look at the stats from David Kopel's paper "Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws" indicates that 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person, whereas 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person.
Now I'm not bashing the police here—they have a hard job, coming into a chaotic scene and trying to quickly make sense of it. People being people, sometimes they get it wrong. But it's pretty clear when you're an individual citizen being assaulted by an aggressor who the bad guy is, and the statistics would seem to bear that out.
The Chief's idea that "The solution is to have an officer [at the school] as much as possible" is certainly a great one if the community is flush with cash and can afford to expand the police force. If not, maybe it'd make sense to train some volunteers instead of abandoning the students and staff to the ballistic protections emanating from the "No Guns Allowed" signs.
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