St. Louis County police chief questions wisdom of schools as ‘gun-free’ zones

In the aftermath of Friday’s heinous atrocity in Newtown, Connecticut, those with no compunction about exploiting the mass murder of children in furtherance of their forcible citizen disarmament agenda have made the most noise. That is not to say that there is a complete lack of more honorable, more reasoned voices. St. Louis County police chief Tim Fitch, for example, is speaking not about building an edifice of “gun control” on the bodies of the slain children, but of protecting would-be victims from the next monster.

To do this, he proposes permitting trained school staff to be armed on school grounds. Noting that the security protocols and locked door at the Sandy Hook school failed to stop, or even significantly slow, the killer Friday, he told KSDK.5 St. Louis that it is time to explore other options:

“He broke into the school, the school was locked, so how else can you protect these kids, short of arming officials in the school with proper training and having these firearms available to them,” says Chief Fitch, who knows it’s a controversial move.

He says it’s just one idea, but insists that something has to be done.

“Arming school officials is not a new conversation, we had that conversation right after Columbine, but we didn’t do anything about it because too many people were squeamish about it and said ‘Oh my gosh, guns in schools?'” says Chief Fitch.

[readon2 url=”http://www.examiner.com/article/st-louis-county-police-chief-questions-wisdom-of-schools-as-gun-free-zones”]Read the rest at the Examiner[/readon2]