Every liberal voter in America should consider supporting NRA VP Wayne LePierre's call to bring armed guards to every American school. The reason is simple. If implemented this plan would end the NRA's role as a player in American politics. It would also likely cause many GOP politicians to spontaneously burst into flame.
Read below the fold to learn why. But there will be some math.
There are just under 100,000 pubic schools in this country. Sizes vary greatly of course but just to get the conversation rolling assume an average of 800 children each, with roughly a dozen entryways per campus.
Individual armed guards are of course of little value. The killer always chooses the moment to strike. So a single guard could be taken out with the fist shot and we'd be back to Square One. So let's use the round figure of 10 armed guards per school. That would not be enough to guard every door and every classroom every moment, but it'd be a big enough force to have roaming patrols.
So that calls for a new domestic paramilitary force of 1,000,000 soldiers. Well, actually we're not done yet. Such a large force would need a command structure. Add another %5 or so. The force would need to be over-sized by ~5% to account for vacations and personnel out to illness and whatnot. And of course any organization with over a million employees will need a lot of support people, secretaries, human resources, payroll, etc. Call that another 15%.
So we now have raised a force of 1,250,000. We want professionals and quality people and that is going to cost at least $100,000 per person per year. That's a payroll of $125 billion the NRA wants to add to our tax rolls. Not to mention the cost of establishing such a force, equipping it, and keeping it trained. All that another $20,000 / year / person.
Total bill thanks to the NRA's "problem solving"? $150,000,000,000.00 per year.
Except that's not the total bill. There are about 33.000 private schools. This is America so we are going to guard those kids too, right? Add one-third more to the total. Now we are up to $200 billion / year for our force.
And there's all the colleges and universities, 6,700 of them. Many of these are huge, with tens of thousands of students sprawling over acres. If it takes 10 armed guards to cover a junior high school it'll take 100 to guard a college campus. It'll take about as much to guard these as the nation's 33,000 private schools. That's another $50B/year.
So our mental exercise bill is now up to $250 billion dollars per year for the 1,750,000 armed guards, their 83,000+ officers, and their 250,000 administrative and support hires. Where do we get that money? From taxing guns and bullets.
How about anything sold that contains a firing pin has a 50% sales tax added to it with a minimum tax of $1,000? (Not a typo.)
Taxing bullets is outrageous you say? I agree, which is why I suggest taxing percussion caps. At $5 per cap it gets pretty expensive to fill up them 100-round drum magazines.
But hey! Second Amendment purists will not be bothered one whit; there's no firing pins or primer caps used in black-powder muskets.
Of course there are millions of existing guns out there. So we'll need a $100/year ownership fee per firearm. Muskets excepted, of course.
If this happens to raise a bit of extra revenue that gets applied to the general fund, well, maybe gun owners can get together with cigarette smokers to cry in their beer. Oops. Beer drinkers are already in that boat too.
So there we have it. The NRA plan, as designed by the NRA, and paid for by the people who call for it: the NRA.
Oh, did I mention that this new paramilitary force would be roughly eight times larger than the entire Pentagon warfighting force?
But Quicklund, you cannot be correct. There's over 1,400,000 Americans on active duty. This is true but the disparity come from comparing the "Tooth-and-Tail" ratios. Only 16% of the US military are "shooters". That is, only 16% have the role of going into combat. The other 84% are the 'tail'. They support the shooters by keeping the tanks running and keep the supplies flowing.
The NRA's dream force here is almost all "shooters". Our mental exercise assumes an unrealistically small support staff. Actual costs are likely to be higher than these crude estimates. And the upshot of this is, the NRA's vision calls for adding over 1,800,000 armed paramilitary troops to the 233,000 combatants now under US arms.
Remember, these are guards hired to shoot it out with mass-murderers. They are not police. they are to be trained to gunfight. Policing is not gunfighting.
Also remember this. The 2 million new government teat suckers Freedom Heroes will not prevent school shootings. Anyone bent on mass murder ending in suicide cannot be deterred by armed guards. So the maniacs will still burst in, they will still open fire, bodies will still topple ... but to be fair the reaction time will be quicker. Dial those 22 dead down to 17 please.
If you think adding a quarter-trillion dollars to annual government spending is not enough to cause GOP heads to pop, how about adding an armed domestic paramilitary so pervasive it dwarfs the US military? Nothing quite says FREEDOM! as does jackbooted shooters in every neighborhood. Lavrentiy Beria and the NKVD would be positively green with envy. Or Red, whatever.
So what do you say? Let's add a quarter-trillion to the budget. Let's pay homage to FREEDOM by hiring an oppressive and pervasive paramilitary force. But let's not add to the federal deficit. Let's take the NRA at it's word. Let's implement the NRA's plan. Let's ensure American gun owners are not inconvenienced in the slightest by effective gun laws.
And let's let them pay for it all.
Thank you, Mr Wayne LaPierre, for showing us the way for Americans to directly experience the cost your organization brings to American society. I can think of no faster way to destroy your organization than to legislate into law your insanity.