In neighboring  South Dakota, a law has been enacted to authorize school teachers to arm themselves, as the NRA has been promoting.  Readin’, writin’, ‘rithmatic and revolvers.

In Minnesota, Rep. Tony Cornish (R-Vernon Center) has been beating that drum as well:

You can’t afford to completely encase your schools with bulletproof windows and steel locked doors — but you can afford to share the cost of an officer with the city or county, as some districts are doing.

Sometimes schools use armed guards to protect students, rather than allowing the headmaster to wield a Bushmaster.  Last week, a New York Times reporter looked into how that whole armed guard thing is going:

… the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.

“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

There are serious safety concerns associated with mixing guns into chaotic, emotional school environments.  But beyond safety, this analysis shows that armed guards also tend to escalate punishment much faster than principals do.  Therefore, if we put more armed guards in schools, we better be prepared to put more tax dollars into state and local government budgets for more law enforcement, courts, and jails.

Damn you, Law of Unintended Consequences.