A week before Friday’s school shooting in Marysville, Washington, a mentally ill Marine Corps veteran armed with a hatchet walked in to a Virginia high school not long before students arrived. Fortunately, a cafeteria worker spotted him and called the police.

The responding officers located the bipolar 25 year-old inside the school auditorium and arrested him without an altercation. Why this deranged individual wielded a hatchet remains a mystery. But he certainly could have killed and mutilated many defenseless teenagers had he waited to show up at the beginning of school and blended in among the arriving students. Thank God that did not happen. 

The reality here is that students at schools without teachers armed and trained with firearms remain unnecessarily vulnerable to lunatics and terrorists. While no solution is foolproof, without an immediate and armed response, a madman with any weapon can murder and maim children at will.  

Still, millions of Americans just refuse to acknowledge facts because their sheer ignorance about guns makes them irrationally uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, Thursday in New York City, a hatchet-wielding Muslim attempted to butcher two police officers in a suspected terrorist attack. Because fellow policemen on the spot had guns, they were able to shoot and kill the attacker. Their immediate and armed response saved the lives of the other two officers. In this case -- like most others -- more good guys with guns proved to be the most effective protection. 

Likewise, in Oklahoma just a month ago, the second victim of a knife-wielding Muslim convert -- who cut off one woman’s head at work -- remains alive only because the company’s CEO had a gun with which he shot the killer before he could decapitate the second woman. 

The full-time CEO, with the part-time title of a reserve sheriff’s deputy, should demonstrate that responsible teachers armed and trained with guns would also offer schools more protection and save more lives in the event of a similar attack. Qualified teachers with guns would clearly provide the swiftest responses like those that saved lives in Oklahoma and New York. 

In fact, if calling armed teachers reserve sheriff’s deputies would make anti-gun liberals feel better, then what is America waiting for? Only seven states currently have laws specifically to arm teachers and other school staff. Meanwhile, many of these teachers already carrying in the classroom have gone through firearms training specific to a school environment that exceeds the training received by average law-enforcement officers. 

It simply defies logic how anti-gun parents choose to ignore the body count that “gun-free” zones have amassed across the country. It also defies reason how hard these parents strain to look away from the reality of what is required to stop armed attackers. Then again, this willful blindness seems like a rather clear-cut objective of the public education system itself. Public schools have been committed to replacing facts with liberal feelings for half a century.

Yes, indoctrinating students in bizarre beliefs and practices where liberal feelings trump facts has been the Democratic Party’s secret weapon since the 1960s. The brainwashing that occurs under the guise of education helps to explain why the Democratic Party opposes both the Second Amendment and school choice.

Allowing parents to choose where their children go to school would obviously enable some students to escape liberal indoctrination, and such freedom would jeopardize all the lessons about liberal feelings negating facts--you know, like schools teaching children that boys and girls can be whatever gender they feel like being despite chromosomal reality.

As for instilling anti-gun phobia, forcing naive children to stare at a symbol of a little black gun with a red line running through it for 12 years is an effective way to convince them (and their parents) that stickers, signs, and other foolishness keep them safe. And speaking of safety, why do schools offer children lessons on fire safety, but not firearms safety? Based on 2011 statistics from the FBI and US Fire Administration, a person is three times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime (1.2 million in 2011) than a residential fire (365 thousand the same year).

Then again, 68 percent of the National Education Association (a liberal bastion) oppose all measures to arm teachers. On the other hand, 61 percent of the Association of American Educators (the nation’s largest non-union teacher organization) support selective efforts to arm teachers for school protection. A one-size-fits-all solution is rarely effective at anything.

If only the Democratic Party supported school choice, perhaps then anti-gun parents could choose to send their children to schools that offer free-fire zones to homicidal maniacs and discipline children for brining GI Joe’s half-inch toy gun to class.

Meanwhile, normal parents could choose to send their children to schools where selfless teachers are willing to carry the responsibility of arming themselves to protect their students should a madman or terrorists interrupt the lesson plan about how thinking requires facts, not feelings.

Lee Culpepper is a former United States Marine Corps officer and reformed high school English teacher. Email Lee Culpepper at drcoolpepper@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @drcoolpepper. Read other articles by Lee Culpepper at Townhall.com and BearingArms.com.