Idaho School Staff Packing Heat, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

A plucky rural Idaho school is ready to protect its students from All The Bad Guys, yay! The Garden Valley School district, about 50 miles northeast of Boise, bought itself four rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammunition, to prepare for whatever horrific mayhem might descend on the town's single K-12 school, which has a total of 239 students. KBOI TV reports that the school is also "considering spending up to $2,000 to purchase extra magazine rounds and body armor vests, according to school board documents. Each rifle was purchased for $680." They're going to want that body armor, just in case the zombies or militant Idaho jihadis start attacking.

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Superintendent Marc Gee told KBOI, "We just have to protect our kids and we didn't want to do it in a haphazard way," so the school got the guns and ammo and sent staff for training with the Boise County Sheriff's Office. They're not saying who, or where the guns are kept on campus, to keep the tactical element of surprise. Signs will be posted at school entrances warning visitors "Our school is armed." It has not yet been deemed necessary to hire a brooding loner named Max to patrol the parking lot and the post-apocalyptic wasteland beyond to drive away murderous bands of renegades, but second grader Mickey Weston has announced his intention to buy a stainless steel boomerang and leather falconer's glove, "just in case." At least the school has not (yet) announced plans to encourage students to pelt potential intruders with canned vegetables. 

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Superintendent Gee told the Idaho Statesman  the small arsenal is necessary to keep the students safe:

“When I first arrived, the situation the district was in was very apparent — in the event of a violent intruder in the building, the response of local law enforcement could conceivably be over 30 minutes and ... the potential loss of life could be catastrophic,” Gee said.

“This has not been a knee-jerk reaction, but a careful, deliberate process, as it should be.”

The firearms will be kept in safes, to which about five trained staff members will have the only access, at least until some clever senior figures out how to break into them for one hell of a prank, not that such a thing is even remotely possible.

Given the state of Idaho school funding, it's not yet clear what educational materials may have been cut to cover the cost of the weaponry, if any. In a completely unrelated development, Yr Wonkette hears that students in high school biology classes will now be shown Wikipedia photos of microscopes and asked to imagine what they might see if they looked through one. (Ha ha, we are just kidding. The guns will be paid for through a methamphetamine bake sale.)

The NRA has not yet called for students at the school to be at least as well-armed as their teachers, because you never know when the previously trustworthy administration might turn tyrannical.

[ KBOI via TPM / Idaho Statesman ]