In the aftermath of Parkland, we were all looking for ideas. While school shootings aren’t particularly common, they happen enough that many of us want to do something to deal with them. One of the more controversial ideas is arming teachers.

Almost immediately, leftist educators started screaming bloody murder, prattling on about how they didn’t want to have to carry a gun.

No matter how many times we clarified, they keep with this particular strawman argument.

And to complicate matters, the anti-gun media seems quite content to let them go on making it.

“I have a bookshelf in my room. I used to think, ‘I’m going to populate this with books in case a kid needs something to read.’ Now, every year, when I go back to restock that bookshelf, there’s a part of me that’s also thinking, ‘This is something a kid could pick up and throw if someone made their way into my classroom.’ It’s mind-blowing to me that that’s something I even have to think about.

“The day that I have to carry a gun as a requirement for me to teach, I’m done. I’ll find some other way to make use of my education and my background and experience. I didn’t get into this because I want ‘to teach, protect, and serve’ to be my job description.”

There’s no mention of how no one is talking about requiring teachers to carry firearms. No one.

All we’ve done is talk about allowing teachers who wish to carry a firearm to do so. We’re talking about taking the concealed carry laws that already exist and extending them to schools. Yes, some states think teachers should have to take special training to carry, but the principle remains the same. Those who wish to carry a gun to protect themselves–and, by extension, protect their students–will have a chance to do so.

But the anti-gun media has this idea that we somehow want teachers to be wearing gun belts like police officers.

I guess when you want to ban everything you disapprove of, but make that which you approve of mandatory, you tend to think everyone else works the same way.

Through it all, there’s absolutely no critical commentary from the media. They don’t bother to look even a smidge deeper and see that the arguments aren’t about making teachers armed but allowing them to be armed. It’s a huge difference.

Make no mistake, though. This mischaracterization isn’t accidental. It’s not someone failing to understand what we’re saying, the media knows it.

Instead, I believe they’re willfully mischaracterizing things so they can garner public support. After all, no one in their right mind would want to make a teacher carry a gun. So, they pretend that’s what we’re talking about so people will respond to questions about arming teachers negatively.

You’d think a group of people who talk so much about “choice” in one policy discussion would at least be familiar with the concept, after all, so I can’t believe they don’t understand the word now all of a sudden.

It’s intellectual dishonesty, plain and simple.