Friday Morning, the National Rifle Association broke its weeklong silence following the shooting of 26 people at a school in Newtown, CT, and called for a surge of gun-carrying "good guys" around American schools.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for a new kind of American domestic security revolving around armed civilians, arguing that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
"We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents," LaPierre said Friday. "Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol Police officers. Yet, when it comes to our most beloved, innocent, and vulnerable members of the American family, our children, we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless, and the monsters and the predators of the world know it, and exploit it."
Currently New York City public schools are guarded by unarmed "peace officers" who are part of the NYPD. They carry handcuffs and have the power to arrest and also are in direct radio contact with the police department. However, they do not wear bulletproof vests or guns.
Some schools also have armed police officers, and 88 have metal detectors. All precincts have a school unit that patrols all the schools in its area.
What to you think? Should there be armed police officers at every New York City public school?
