Last night, Betsy DeVos refused to say unilaterally that there should be no guns in schools saying, as an example, that a school might need to defend students against wildlife. The left immediately jumped on the ridiculousness of such a claim, in articles and on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/thatbilloakley/status/821564133287956480

What if a bear 🐻 came to school? Emergency picnic baskets would work better than a gun, Betsy DeVos. pic.twitter.com/BUInRfncr4

— Mask😷OnMimsy (@MimsyYamaguchi) January 18, 2017

https://twitter.com/amcmanus/status/821597347616530434

Grizzly bears are a menace to schools across America. No teacher—or child—should be without a gun. #nochildleftunarmed

— Betsy DeVos (@RealBetsyDeVos) January 18, 2017

(it’s a parody, guys, not DeVos’s real account)

The problem with their condescending humor is this- wildlife does get into schools.

In 2011, a bear had to be shot in New Jersey  because it was in a neighborhood near several schools. In Kearney, Nebraska, a mountain lion that was headed towards a school at the same time students were met a similar fate. Said Kearney Police Department’s Kyle Harshbarger. “We [KPD] don’t have a tranquilizer gun. They have their time and place, but with a predator of this degree, it wouldn’t have been the time or place.” The list goes on, including a deer who entered a school in Mississippi and an injured beaver in California’s bay area. The bottom line is that wildlife can threaten students. It does happen.

One never knows what is going to be happen, but it’s not crazy to think that an animal might threaten a school seeing as it’s happened numerous times before. Leaving it up to states to determine the best way to protect their own students is far from crazy; it seems like the responsible choice.