One of the biggest problems I have with progressives of any race is that they perpetually exploit Black people to advance their authoritarian agenda. In any debate, it seems their go-to strategy is to immediately figure out how they can use Black folks to persuade us to abandon our natural God-given rights.

Tennessee’s new law allowing teachers to carry concealed firearms in schools is no exception. While some expressed understandable concerns about the measure, an author at The Grio couldn’t help but insert Black folks into the equation, even though this issue has nothing to do with race.

Author Janel George, an Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown University--which explains a lot--penned an op-ed reacting to the passage of the law, arguing that it will somehow “put Black children in harm’s way.”

In the piece, George argues that “giving teachers guns will not make schools safer,” and that “Black children are endangered by Tennessee’s law”:

Black children are already disproportionately subjected to overly punitive discipline. Tennessee’s law will allow educators to carry concealed weapons, without notice to parents or students about which educators are armed. Most alarming, this action is contrary to research that shows that punitive interventions, like heightened police presence in schools, have little positive impact on school violence. If guns in schools are the problem, then why are lawmakers passing bills to put more guns in schools?

We already know how George is going to answer that last question, don’t we? 

You guessed it – she claims that “lawmakers are unwilling to enact evidence-based school safety interventions, like gun-control measures and restorative practices because they are committed to a narrative of ‘school safety’ that is racialized, limited, and detached from research.”

I’ll come back to this silliness later.

George goes on to argue in her piece that interventions in schools “are racialized,” in that they “rely upon stereotypes about the criminality of Black youth”:

These stereotypes cast Black students as lazy, criminally minded, intellectually limited, and defiant. These stereotypes persist despite research showing that Black students do not misbehave more than their white peers. As a result, Black children are disproportionately subjected to overly punitive discipline interventions, including suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, that facilitate their exclusion from schools.

The author points out that predominantly Black and Brown schools “are more likely to have police on site,” and that the presence of these officers “increases the likelihood of Black students’ arrest and early involvement with the criminal legal system – often for minor offenses like dress code violations.”

This contributes to the problem of the “school-to-prison pipeline,” she writes.

George highlights the problem of “funding inequities” that “disproportionately impact low-income students in segregated schools who are deprived of resources such as experienced educators, college-prepatory courses, and quality facilities.”

She ends her piece by making the dubious claim that “[a]rming teachers will only escalate the harm that current discipline interventions inflict on Black students – likely with deadly consequences.”

What George seems to be implying is that Tennessee’s new law will somehow prompt racist teachers to run around shooting Black students, a notion that is blatantly absurd.

But let’s get back to her suggestion that gun control legislation and “restorative” practices will somehow protect children from mass shootings and other types of violence. For starters, she never indicates what type of legislation would stop folks like the individual who carried out a shooting at a high school in Nashville.

There’s a reason for that. It’s because they can’t come up with any legislative ideas that would help. It’s why I always recommend asking anti-gunners what laws would have prevented whichever mass shooting they are exploiting at the moment – they never have an answer.

Moreover, applying restorative practices in many instances could yield positive results. I’m all for trying different approaches to discipline, and this method has yielded some productive outcomes in some situations. However, if a mass shooter is trying to murder students, it is not the time to try to address the needs and responsibilities of those involved to heal whatever harm is taking place. At that moment, there has to be someone who is able to defend the children. I think most would agree that at that moment, it is too late to discuss feelings.

George’s points about racial disparities when it comes to schools disciplining students are worth discussing. Taking a hard look at the data and diving deeper into the issue could be warranted. There could even be room to rethink school resource officers’ role in the educational setting.

But these issues have absolutely nothing to do with determining whether teachers and other members of school staff should be armed. The bottom line is that protecting schoolchildren requires the hardening of educational facilities. Indeed, this is already the case in many predominantly Black and Brown schools, which do not experience mass shootings at nearly the same rate as what happens at predominantly White schools.

Instead of distracting from the actual issue by racializing mass shootings, it would serve our children better to make sure they are being protected. Passing legislation targeting lawful gun owners does not work, and it never will. Pretending that arming teachers is somehow racist won’t work either. Instead of trying to use mass shootings to infringe on the Second Amendment, it would be nice to see these folks look at actual solutions.