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Gayle Trotter Should Reconsider Armed Guards In Schools

On Wednesday, Gayle Trotter of the Independent Women's Forum gave some bizarre testimony about how young moms just love AR-15s because they're scary and serve a great purpose when five or six gunmen burst in the house with malevolent

gave some bizarre testimony about how young moms just love AR-15s because they're scary and serve a great purpose when five or six gunmen burst in the house with malevolent intentions.

As it turns out, Trotter has made other statements since the Newtown massacre as well, mostly in support of the NRA's contention that more guards in schools will somehow magically solve the problem.

Her editorial for Fox News chides people for having any objection to armed guards in schools. "Gun-rights opponents have begun scoffing at the notion of armed guards in our children's schools," she writes, and then goes on to say that "doesn't prevent the gun-rights opponent-in-chief from relying on a government-provided security detail to protect his own children."

Yes, well. This is all very easy for Trotter to say, because she doesn't send her six children to public school. No, her children go to to Beauvoir School in Washington DC, where tuition is $31,250 per year, per child. (I hope there's a group discount.) One of the "perks" of attending Beauvoir School? Armed guards patrolling the grounds, evidently.

Ms. Trotter really chose an unfortunate cause to champion alongside her hero, Wayne LaPierre, because that particular school had a terrible experience with an armed guard who was responsible for guarding that school and others in the area. This shooting did not happen on school grounds, but it does remind us that an armed guard isn't any more mentally and emotionally stable than anyone else.

A police standoff involving an armed man and a hostage, who was a teacher at the Beauvoir School in the District and apparently his estranged girlfriend, ended with the two of them fatally shot in her Montgomery Village home this weekend, Montgomery County police said yesterday.

[...]The assailant was identified as Michael K. Wilson of Hagerstown, a private security guard employed by Washington National Cathedral in Northwest Washington. The woman, who had recently purchased the house on Vineyard Haven, was identified as Catherine Brown, a first-grade teacher at the Beauvoir School, an elementary school on the cathedral grounds. Brown was to have begun her second year at the school tomorrow.

Beauvoir was one of the facilities Wilson patrolled, according to cathedral officials, along with St. Albans School for Boys and the National Cathedral School for Girls.

"He's been a highly regarded employee of our police department for about four years," said Kathleen Cullen, spokeswoman for the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation. "This is a shock for everybody."

Tragic. And as we've seen again and again, guns (and the people who carry them) often cause more problems than they prevent.

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