In the wake of the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., there has been much renewed attention to the notion that such calamities could be prevented if we had more weapons in schools.
Well, one state governor was given the opportunity to pave the way for a more robustly steeled educator workforce and decided against it. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has vetoed a bill that would permit "highly trained gun owners to carry concealed weapons inside public schools."
The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Mike Green (R-Mayville) would not accommodate Snyder's request for specific language in the measure. Per Chad Livengood at the Detroit News:
Green said he refused to include language in Senate Bill 59 allowing public school districts and municipalities to still ban concealed weapons for fear that it could be used to overturn the state's firearms preemption law that prohibits local firearms laws from trumping state laws and regulations.
Green said the final version of the legislation was "more restrictive than we ever wanted."
"They told us Thursday night he'd veto it if we didn't include that language," said Green, who says he refused to concede to the governor's demands. "We just said 'enough's enough' and we passed it."
It's not uncommon in the aftermath of events such as last week's school shooting for policymakers to suggest simply that more guns are needed to prevent such tragedies from occurring. Many even suggest that teachers themselves need to be better armed.
Snyder, who has just completed his campaign to limit the rights and bargaining power of teachers, is probably smart not to take the workforce that he successfully made into a more impoverished underclass and turn them now into a heavily armed, more impoverished underclass.
Of course, according to reports, Steve Cook -- president of the Michigan Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the state -- had "urged Governor Rick Snyder to veto" this bill, so it looks like the local teachers' unions are not employing the appropriate "long-game" strategy here.
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