Big Bucks to be Made When Middle School Becomes an Urban Warfare Training Academy

From Liz Halloran at NPR, we get a story of the Rocori school district in Minnesota which is spending $25,000 on, wait for it, bulletproof white boards.

“The timing was right,” Rocori school board Chairwoman Nadine Schnettler tells us. “The company is making these in response to the Newtown shooting, and has been making similar products for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The $300, 18-by-20-inch whiteboards, produced by Maryland-based Hardwire LLC, “will be an additional layer of protection” for students and teachers, she says.

It’s not just the conversation about guns and school safety that’s changed since Adam Lanza gunned down 20 students and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December. It’s also the plethora of products, including training programs that in some instances advocate fighting back, that are being marketed to school districts that are typically cash-strapped but desperate to prove they’re doing something to provide better security.

It’s amazing how wonderful for business these massacres are. So much money to be made from selling guns, ammo, armor, security systems, and the like. Not that anyone’s exploiting anything, of course. Just listen to one of the school board members explain:

Schnettler, who voted in favor of using $25,000 from a capital improvement fund to purchase the whiteboards, says that in hindsight she would still do the same.

“I don’t believe it’s a waste of money,” she says. “The chief showed us how to use it offensively — to block penetration of bullets through door windows, or to knock the gun out of the intruder’s hands.”

Holy shit, what? This is now the expectation? Underpaid English teachers or 5th-graders shitting their pants in mortal terror are now supposed to disarm an automatic weapon-wielding maniac with a writing surface like they’re Captain Fucking America?

Well, if this is how we’re going to do things, let’s not pussyfoot. Let’s give the faculty exploding erasers, give the staff riot gear, and give each kid a bulletproof backpack insert. Oh wait, that last one is real. You know, for when shooters target their Hello Kitty book bags.

Of course, budgets are tighter than ever, so all of this will have to come at the expense of something else. I’m thinking, perhaps, learning.

Yes, yes, so public schools essentially become poorly-equipped military bases. It’s a tough thing to swallow. But hey, it’ll be great for the economy, and when the next shooter comes, we’ll all just buy more shit.