Watching one's own country through the lens of foreign media is always interesting. Today I see the US portrayed as a vigilante nation. We shot the native people of the continent we landed on, shot the people from the population from whence we came, cowboys shot whoever got in their way, it's no wonder that today we shoot children. We just like to carry guns and shoot people with them.
Hey! What a great idea. Let's arm the nation's principals. Think back on it -- they're scary people. When I was a kid, the worst thing that could happen to you was a trip to the principal's office. They are the last in line when it comes to discipline of unruly students, peevish parents, and stubborn teachers and staff. Of course they have it in them to calmly take down a terrorist (let's face it -- these school-room shooters are terrorists).
I recently wound up with a bootleg copy of Die Hard2. Like (apparently) much of our nation, I can see our principals as an army of Bruce Willises. As the Bushmaster-armed terrorist fires away, the principal will roll across the floor, each and every bullet missing him or her by a few inches. Even as the elite SWAT team members are picked off one-by-one, our nation's principals will survive! They will save the sweetly innocent air traffic controllers/janitors/school children and calmly blow away the bad guy.
Oh yeah. Bruce mentions he's been on the police force for over a decade. Guess we'll need a little training for all these principals. Right now they spend their professional lives learning things like pedagogy, curriculum and management skills (soft skills -- who needs to know this stuff anyway?). We're going to need to add some paramilitary skills to their resumes. I think a required one-year intensive boot camp before anyone's allowed to run a school. It's gonna be expensive and our schools are already struggling financially, but hey! would you rather Jane had a math book or came home alive? Think about it.
Of course, we might have an issue when the principal realizes that the shooter is Johnny. The same Johnny who brought every teacher an apple in first grade, now he's blowing away the kids he had lunch with on Tuesday. Can the principal look a former student in the eye and shoot him dead? We're also going to need some psychological training for the principals. Take away some more of the school budget for that. They need to be able to shoot now, think later.
You know, come to think of it, an armed principal might not be enough. We could also get some explosives training for them, each morning they could rig a secret area with C4 and if today is the day that a shooter comes calling they can lure him into the proper spot and set the trigger. Now that would be school protection.