It didn't make the headlines, thankfully, but a recent school shooting in California has many people there rattled. I say "thankfully" because kids weren't killed. It could have been better, obviously, but things could have gone much, much worse.

Of course, the state's extensive gun control laws didn't stop a homeless dude from shooting at kids by any stretch of the imagination, but it never is going to. Gun control simply doesn't work as advertised.

But it seems at least someone in the state figures more guns would be a good thing to possibly deal with a situation like this in the future. They want to put armed officers in every school in the state. California Assemblyman Bill Essayli introduced a bill that would require every public school in California to have at least one school resource officer on campus whenever school is in session.

“Yesterday, two innocent children were shot in cold blood,” reads a statement from Essayli. “This is not a time for empty rhetoric, it is a time for action. Accordingly, today I introduced AB 68 to mandate every school in California have an Armed School Resource Officer on campus during school hours. As elected officials we have a sacred duty to protect our most vulnerable citizens from this harm, this includes our children at school.”

The Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco affirmed this statement, noting that there could have been a faster response if the school had a school resource officer.

“We need armed officers at our schools,” Bianco said in a statement. “Yesterday is a perfect example of the tragic consequence of not having an officer immediately available to intervene when two innocent boys were shot on campus. We need to take action now before more lives and families are destroyed. As Sheriff of Riverside County, I don’t play politics with public safety. I urge the politicians in Sacramento to do the same. We need to pass AB 68, a common sense bill that will protect our school and our children.”

A similar bill went down in flame last legislative session because of a lack of support for state Democrats.

See, it's fine to say only the police should have guns and to scream about protecting our children, but Heaven forbid that you actually put police officers in the schools to protect those kids.

We see how that worked out.

Granted, the bill doesn't apply to the school where the shooting happened since it was a private school, but Essayli said there is nothing in the law to prevent private schools from having officers themselves. I have no idea exactly how that would work--would they be sworn officers or just armed guards? Would the taxpayers fund it or would the schools have to pay for it?--but it's definitely something for schools to think about.

Look, you can't escape the fact that the only thing that really does stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. If you're not going to allow regular folks to fill that role, at least put sworn police officers in place to react quicker than however long it takes for a phone call to be made, a dispatch call issued, and travel time to wherever the shooting is happening.

Our children deserve better than that.