Baton Rouge, LA—

The latest school shooting has rekindled the enduring American debate about how the Second Amendment term “well-regulated militia” should be interpreted.

Democrats suggest minimal legislation to ban high-velocity weapons and centralize gun records, and Republicans scream bloody murder that the Libs are coming to take every gun in America away. It’s not America’s most impressive legislative push-and-pull.

However, a flash point in this trench war of gun philosophy is the particularly horrifying ailment in America in which mentally ill high schoolers continue to gain access to semi-assault weapons and gun down a lot of children in school.

Conservatives propose that routine mass shootings are just a facet of life now, and that we should dutifully carry our AR-15s anytime we want to leave our heavily defended private properties.

One Republican Congressman, Phil Habbits of Louisiana, has proposed legislation to station four armed security guards in every school to stand guard at all the schools’ major entrances. Other Republican Congress members have proposed similar legislation, but Mr. Habbits’ bill has been unique in allocation of funding: there would be none.

Instead, the Habbits bill calls for the repeal of all child labor laws going back to the 1910s so that elementary schoolers, middle schoolers, and high schoolers can work manual labor after school every weekday and on weekends in order to save up the money themselves to pay for their school’s security guards.

“It would be good for these little freeloaders to do some honest work for the first times in their spoiled, sheltered lives,” Mr. Habbits told The Halfway Post in a phone conversation about his legislation, which is currently bouncing around in the House Ways and Means Committee. “The bill is genius. We believe every student should have the right to choose what work they do in order to insert a little creativity into their new employments, so we’ll give every student the choice between working in the coal mines, working in the fields, working in the garment factories, or working in the shipping warehouses. They can learn a trade and really understand the unmistakable dignity in a hard night’s work, and the best part is that together they can save up the money to afford their armed security guards in their school hallways because we’ll pay them an introductory-level wage, kind of like a training wheels program for little entrepreneurs and capitalists. Their wage will be half the minimum wage, which currently is $7.25, so about $3.62….The employers get to keep that last extra odd penny. Win-win for everyone. And the best part is we don’t have to raise taxes even a penny. Total budget of zero. The little tykes get to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. No work on our part at all. That’s the best kind of government action. Those school security guards aren’t going to be protecting me personally, you know, so why should I have to pay any dollars in taxes to keep children safe? They’re not even my kids. They should keep themselves safe—sorry, tough love. They’ll thank me when they’re older. All my loser colleagues who are parents disagree, but that will never convince me. It just goes to show that when particular issues start affecting you personally you turn liberal. That’s why I never let any issue affect me personally. Except money. I love money and I hate taxes because it keeps money from me. I don’t give a crap if kids start getting polio again, or all the bridges in other cities crumble, or a hurricane destroys Florida. I don’t live in Florida. Taxation is theft no matter the cause tax dollars are applied to. Yeah, parents being obsessed with their kids are just liberal wusses who can’t handle the freedom of AR-15s everywhere. I bet there would never be a crime or mass shooting incident again if literally every single person had an AR-15 in their hands at all times. In fact, we should take off safeties of guns. They make me less free because there’s no higher freedom than being entirely unobstructed from defending myself from the entire world around me at a split second’s notice. Sometimes you have to be a little bit of a threat to ward off all the other threats around you, you know? Second Amendment baby. Maybe we should arm all the little kids. Yeah… hold on, I gotta go hash this out on paper, seeya—” [Representative Habbits hung up.]

House Democrats boisterously oppose the Habbits bill, and today raised a ruckus in the chamber shouting “shame” over and over.

“This is why we are not going to go down the path of militarizing our schools,” explained Democratic Representative Dean Brown of Ohio in a Capitol Building lobby interview. “We are not spending enough money in the first place to ensure our schools are quality, safe learning centers, and we’re not even spending enough money to make sure America’s schools have drinkable water and ceilings without mold or leaks. It strains my imagination to believe that the Republican Party will follow through on this idea of actually getting involved in the nation’s public schools, and adequately funding things. And then what do we do when Republicans fail to fund or execute their own stupid idea to put more guns into schools? Do we force teachers to supply their own guns, like how they often have to buy their own teaching supplies? And what about the other Republican plans, like the one to willy-nilly arm 10% or 20% of our teachers? Call me crazy, but the right solution to our problem of gun violence is not mandating that young men and women who have committed themselves to nurturing lives train and prepare to end lives in shootouts in their classrooms. If that is what American society is to become, I’d say America as a democratic experiment in freedom has failed.”

(Picture courtesy of the Children’s Bureau Centennial.)

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