Turning schools into fortresses and teachers into trained soldiers isn't the answer

Photo by hosein charbaghi on Unsplash, @jeremykasperson/Twitter

Arming school personnel as a response to school shootings is a terrible idea.

Every time a school shooting happens, the idea of arming teachers and school administrators gets floated out by folks who believe the NRA mantra, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." That notion is so ingrained in parts of the American psyche that a common response to repeated mass shootings of schoolchildren in their classrooms is to add more guns to the equation.

I understand the argument being made. If someone already on the scene was armed and prepared to respond to an active shooter without having to wait for law enforcement, perhaps a maniacal killer could be stopped sooner. And if maniacal killers knew that teachers and administrators were likely to be armed, perhaps they wouldn't target schools as much. I get the seeming logic of the idea. I really do.

However, there are several fatal flaws with the argument, starting with the fact that the data simply does not back it up.

Armed guards aren't the help people think they are, so why would armed teachers be?

According to a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open in 2021, there were armed guards present at 23.5% of school shootings from 1980 to 2019. In their analysis, the study authors found that "armed guards were not associated with significant reduction in rates of injuries; in fact, controlling for the aforementioned factors of location and school characteristics, the rate of deaths was 2.83 times greater in schools with an armed guard present."

In other words, having armed guards standing at the ready doesn't actually help like people think it does. There was an armed guard who was a former police officer in the Buffalo shooting earlier this month—he was was able to get one shot off and then was killed by the gunman. According to Texas Public Radio, the Uvalde gunman was engaged by law enforcement before entering the school—that didn't stop him from killing 19 children and two teachers.

And we're talking about security guards and police officers, whose entire job is to look for and respond to danger. If their "good guy with a gun" presence doesn't help, why do we think putting guns in the hands of teachers would help?

I've been a teacher in a classroom. Teachers are already thinking about and juggling a dozen different things at any given moment. It's already insane that we expect teachers to drop what they're doing to run stressful, sometimes traumatizing active shooter drills. The idea of having to switch gears from dividing fractions or analyzing poetry to becoming a trained marksperson when you're also trying to wrangle a couple of dozen kids in a terrifying and chaotic situation is utter lunacy.

Even trained police officers only have an 18% accuracy rate in high-stress shootout situations. And they are constantly preparing for it. Are we really going to add onto the workload of school personnel by expecting them to be able to take out a gunman that law enforcement often struggles to subdue?

Come on, now. Let's be reasonable.

\u201cI am a teacher. \nI'm also a 20 year retired National Guard veteran with two overseas tours. I've fired nearly every firearm in the U.S. Army.\nI would be the ideal candidate for this "arming teachers" solution. \nAnd I'm also the 1st person to tell you it would be a massive mistake\u201d
— Jeremy Kasperson (@Jeremy Kasperson) 1653487851

Guns and classrooms full of immature humans don't mix.

The Harvard Injury Control Resource Center has found that, across the board, more guns = more gun deaths. Even just having a gun in the house increases a person's risk of dying by gun homicide, as well as dying by suicide.

Now let's imagine putting guns in schools and classrooms, strapped onto teachers and administrators. There is no way that makes kids safer. There's just no way.

I'm 5 feet 5 inches and 130 pounds. One average high schooler could overpower me in five seconds. Against two kids, I wouldn't stand a chance. How many incidents of kids taking guns from teachers would we see if teachers were carrying? How many incidents of teachers shooting their own students to prevent them from taking their gun would we see? How many more kids would be traumatized by witnessing such scenarios?

What if a teacher loses it in an altercation with a student? What if an armed adult accidentally shoots inside a school (it's happened, in California and Virginia). What if a teacher takes off their gun to go to the bathroom and forgets about it? (That's also happened in Pennsylvania and Florida—at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, of all places.)

And the idea of armed teachers being a deterrent? How many active shooters, who are often on a suicide mission anyway, would be deterred by the possibility of school personnel being armed? If 23.5% weren't deterred by armed security guards, why would they be daunted by an armed teacher?

And we haven't even gotten into what happens when law enforcement arrives and gets confused about who the good guys with guns are and who the bad guys with guns are.

Schools shouldn't have to be turned into fortresses in a civilized nation.

If we really want to claim "greatness" as a nation and imagine that we hold any standing in the world as a beacon of freedom, we can't turn schools into armed fortresses. No other developed nation has to do that. In no other developed nation are guns the No. 1 cause of death for children and teens. No other nation, developed or developing, has more guns than people.

We can talk all day long about mental illness and poor parenting and lack of moral compass, but every other country has those issues too. What they don't have is easy, ubiquitous access to obscene numbers of guns and a culture that celebrates guns as symbols of freedom.

When guns are the leading cause of death for American children, they don't mean freedom. When our babies can't sit in a classroom without fearing for their lives, they are not free. The gun nuts can rant about tyranny all they want, but regular school shootings are not the price we have to pay for freedom.

In fact, the opposite is true. Freedom is literally the price we are paying to keep the gun lobby happy and politicians' pockets lined. It's long past time we recognized it and it's certainly time to do something meaningful about it.

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Health

4 simple hacks to help you meet your healthy eating goals

Trying to eat healthier? Try these 4 totally doable tricks.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Most of us want to eat healthier but need some help to make it happen.

True

When it comes to choosing what to eat, we live in a uniquely challenging era. Never before have humans known more about nutrition and how to eat for optimal health, and yet we’ve never been more surrounded by distractions and temptations that derail us from making healthy choices.

Some people might be able to decide “I’m going to eat healthier!” and do so without any problem, but those folks are unicorns. Most of us know what we should do, but need a little help making it happen—like some simple hacks, tips and tricks for avoiding pitfalls on the road to healthier eating.

While recognizing that what works for one person may not work for another, here are some helpful habits and approaches that might help you move closer to your healthy eating goals.

man pulling chip out of a chip bag Our mouths loves chips. Our bodies not so much.Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Goal: Snack on less junk food

Tip: Focus your willpower on the grocery store, not your home

Willpower is a limited commodity for most of us, and it is no match for a bag of potato chips sitting on top of the fridge. It’s just a fact. Channeling your willpower at the grocery store can save you from having to fight that battle at home. If you don’t bring chips into your house in the first place, you’ll find it a lot easier to reach for something healthier.

The key to successful shopping trips is to always go to the store with a specific list and a full stomach—you’ll feel much less tempted to buy the junky snack foods if you’re already satiated. Also, finding healthier alternatives that will still satisfy your cravings for salty or crunchy, or fatty foods helps. Sugar snap peas have a surprisingly satisfying crunch, apples and nut butter hit that sweet-and-salty craving, etc.

slice of cake You can eat well without giving up sweets completely.Photo by Caitlyn de Wild on Unsplash

Goal: Eat less sugar

Tip: Instead of “deprive,” think “delay” or “decrease and delight”

Sugar is a tricky one. Some people find it easier to cut out added sugars altogether, but that can create an all-or-nothing mindset that all too often results in “all.” Eating more whole foods and less processed foods can help us cut out a lot of ancillary sugar, but we still live in a world with birthday cakes and dessert courses.

One approach to dessert temptation is to delay instead of deprive. Tell yourself you can have any sweet you want…tomorrow. This mental trick flips the “I’ll just indulge today and start eating healthier tomorrow” idea on its head. It’s a lot easier to resist something you know you can have tomorrow than to say no to something you think you’ll never get to have again.

Another approach when you really want to enjoy a dessert at that moment is to decrease the amount and really truly savor it. Eat each bite slowly, delighting in the full taste and satisfaction of it. As soon as that delight starts to diminish, even a little, stop eating. You’ve gotten what you wanted out of it. You don’t have to finish it. (After all, you can always have more tomorrow!)

A naturally colorful meal is a healthy meal.Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Goal: Eat healthier meals

Tip: Focus on fresh foods and plan meals ahead of time

Meal planning is easier than ever before. The internet is filled with countless tools—everything from recipes to shopping lists to meal planning apps—and it’s as awesome as it is overwhelming.

Planning ahead takes the guesswork and decision fatigue out of cooking, preventing the inevitable “Let’s just order a pizza.” You can have a repeating 3-week or 4-week menu of your favorite meals so you never have to think about what you’re going to eat, or you can meal plan once a week to try new recipes and keep things fresh.

It might help to designate one day a week to “shop and chop”—getting and prepping the ingredients for the week’s meals so they’re ready to go in your fridge or freezer.

Organic foods are better for the Earth and for us.Photo by andrew welch on Unsplash

Goal: Eat more organic/humanely raised food

Tip: Utilize the “dirty dozen” and “clean 15” lists to prioritize

Many people choose organic because they want to avoid pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals. Organic food is also better for the planet, and according to the Mayo Clinic, studies have shown that organic produce is higher in certain nutrients.

Most people don’t buy everything organic, but there are some foods that should take priority over others. Each year, researchers from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyze thousands of samples of dozens of fruits and vegetables. From this data, they create a list of the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” fruits and vegetables, indicating what produce has the most and least pesticide residue. These lists give people a good place to start focusing their transition to more organic foods.

To make organic eating even simpler, you can shop O Organics® at your local Albertsons or Safeway stores. The O Organics brand offers a wide range of affordable USDA-certified organic products in every aisle. If you’re focusing on fresh foods, O Organics produce is always grown without synthetic pesticides, is farmed to conserve biodiversity, and is always non-GMO. All animal-based O Organics products are certified humane as well. Even switching part of your grocery list to organic can make a positive impact on the planet and the people you feed.

Healthy eating habits don’t have to be all or nothing, and they don’t have to be complicated. A few simple mindset changes at home and habit changes at the grocery store can make a big difference.

health

Education

3,700-year-old Babylonian stone tablet gets translated, changes history

They were doing trigonometry 1500 years before the Greeks.

via UNSW

Dr. Daniel Mansfield and his team at the University of New South Wales in Australia have just made an incredible discovery. While studying a 3,700-year-old tablet from the ancient civilization of Babylon, they found evidence that the Babylonians were doing something astounding: trigonometry!

Most historians have credited the Greeks with creating the study of triangles' sides and angles, but this tablet presents indisputable evidence that the Babylonians were using the technique 1,500 years before the Greeks ever were.

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education

Turning schools into fortresses and teachers into trained soldiers isn't the answer

Armed guards aren't the help people think they are, so why would armed teachers be?

Guns and classrooms full of immature humans don't mix.

Schools shouldn't have to be turned into fortresses in a civilized nation.

Trying to eat healthier? Try these 4 totally doable tricks.

Goal: Snack on less junk food

Tip: Focus your willpower on the grocery store, not your home

Goal: Eat less sugar

Tip: Instead of “deprive,” think “delay” or “decrease and delight”

Goal: Eat healthier meals

Tip: Focus on fresh foods and plan meals ahead of time

Goal: Eat more organic/humanely raised food

Tip: Utilize the “dirty dozen” and “clean 15” lists to prioritize

Humanity at its best.

Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone's bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone's bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

1. Pee-regnant.

2. How (not) to sleep.

3. Cry baby.

4. The new things that scare you...

5. ...and the new things that give you the creeps.

6. Being a new mom can get a little ... disgusting.

7. And every mom has experienced these postpartum horror stories.

8. There are many, many memorable firsts.

9. Getting to know your post-baby body is an adventure.

10. Pumping ain't for wimps.

11. You become very comfortable with spit-up. Very comfortable.

12. Your body, mind, and most importantly, heart, will expand in ways you didn't know possible.

They were doing trigonometry 1500 years before the Greeks.

Making them sit in the discomfort of their own filth is an excellent way to shut that garbage down.

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