It’s a step that should not be necessary in the U.S., and it reveals important evidence that many bills depicted as “defenses of rights” actually are rhetorically stylish bulwarks of anti-rights paradigms.
On April 26, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed a HB1202/SB1325, a bill allowing some - but not all - teachers working in government-run schools to exercise their inherent right to self-defense with firearms.
Not all, because the “respect for this right” comes with caveats – meaning it does not respect or defend the right in any way.
Frances Floresca reports for The Daily Caller, noting that the bill:
“…would enable trained teachers and school staff to carry handguns in the classroom and around school, the bill noted. They would be required to complete 40 hours of training ‘specific to school policing that has been approved by the peace officer standards and training,’ it said. Teachers and staff would also be required to submit their fingerprints, as well as pass a background check and psychological evaluation, the bill also said.”
Thus, superficially, this appears to be a positive move, but the devil is in the details. Rather than acknowledging the right to self-defense, the bill requires “training” that will be approved by “the peace officer.”
In other words, the so-called “peace officer” is not acting as a “peace officer,” but is, instead, acting as an enforcer of mandates, mandates that will -- should the supposedly free individual not comply -- see said “peace officer” engage in government aggression to prohibit the possession of the arm or punish the teacher who does not want to bow to the “training” mandate.
That’s an infringement, not a defense, of the right.
The requirement for fingerprints and mandate to submit to a background check also are infringements of the right, and all infringements are explicitly prohibited by the Second Amendment.
Some observers might declaim that it is counter-productive to call out these problems in the new bill. After all, the observers might say, people who try to work for public school systems already have to undergo vetting, and, by definition, they are ASKING to work in the government-run “education system,” so they have a choice.
But it is important to note that when any level of government requires people to give up a right in exchange for a government benefit (in this case, a job), this is what the Supreme Court and legal scholars call an “Unconstitutional Condition.”
And, generally, the Supreme Court and lower courts refute the claim that government has any power to require a person to give up a right in order to receive a government benefit.
If the feds, states, or local governments could demand concessions of Natural Rights by people who receive “government gifts,” these political institutions could claim that they “give” us myriad things they describe as “benefits” – thus allowing them to crush our liberties at any time.
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The fact that the so-called government “benefits” are defined FOR US by the politicians, and the fact that they are forced on us while making us pay? Those are not part of their conversation, because the charade of beneficent government must be maintained. Don’t ask for freedom or the recognition that all government activity is done without regard to your consent.
Floresca notes:
“The bill drew attention from parents, teachers and students, especially those connected to the Covenant School, which faced the state’s deadliest school shooting in March 2023, where the perpetrator reportedly killed three children and three adults, according to News Channel 5 Nashville.”
And, practically, firearms researchers and crime experts have noted that people with criminal intent often change their behavior to avoid targets that they suspect might be armed. The higher the probability of encountering an armed target, the more likely the assailant is to choose a different target.
But the positive practical outcome of peaceful people carrying firearms is not the deepest level of analysis here.
It’s about rights, and, though some might applaud this TN move to, under certain conditions, “allow” teachers to carry arms, all people have an inherent right to do so, and the new statute actually undercuts the right by creating requirements before teachers gain “permission” to carry.
Obviously, the backers of the new statute injected those “conditions” in order to assuage anti-gunners and others who might have justifiably fear the idea that their kids might be near teachers who don’t properly handle guns.
The only answer is to look at the source of the problem: government-run schools, which throw all these parents and taxpayers together and pit their fears and interests against each other -- even as the teachers, themselves, are told to conform to government infringements of their rights, breaches of the Second Amendment, and of the Fourth Amendment in order to hold their tax-funded jobs.
It is a messy problem, and the news from Tennessee shows us how unmanageable the government paradigm is, be it applied to schooling or anything else run by a political system.
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