While I was busy the Gävlebocken was torched. Some people just don’t like Christmas. It is hard to believe that there is a group of arsonists in a small town in Sweden.

I assume the town will try again next year.

Oh, yeah, let’s arm teachers, like they don’t have too much to do already in our screwed up system, so now some clowns want them to become part-time cops.

One of the most effective and cheapest things done after 9/11 was to require airlines to install decent doors on their aircraft. If there had been good doors, and those doors were required to be locked when the aircraft was airborne, the Twin Towers would still be standing.

In Newtown, the doors to the school were locked, but there were large glass windows that the shooter broke to gain access. Why not replace the glass with a tough transparent plastic, like Lexan, that would stall the criminal long enough for the cops to arrive. It doesn’t need to be the same thickness that is used at banks, and you don’t need to make the schools fortresses; all you need is to slow things long enough for the professionals to arrive and deal with the situation.

Some schools use the ‘security glass’ with the embedded chicken fencing which is ugly and blocks a lot of light, but isn’t actually all that difficult to get through. You need the light, but the doors have to be easy to open in the case of a fire. In most schools, you can easily open the door with the crash bar if you break the window.

Replacing the glass won’t be cheap, but it will be a lot cheaper than trying to arm teachers, especially those that teach at elementary schools, and the insurance carriers will raise liability rates through the ionosphere for any district that tries it.