They're baaaaack...

The gun-controllers, that is.  For the typical anti-gun zealot, calling for at least the inconveniencing and, ideally, the disarming of law-abiding gun owners in the wake of a mass shooting tragedy never gets old.

So kudos to lefty anti-gun writer Eric Levitz for admitting, in an otherwise cookie-cutter liberal gun control screed, that, "There Is No 'Epidemic of Mass School Shootings.'"

But to say school shootings are rare is not to say we should not strive to make such shootings, and other mass shootings, even rarer.  Three solutions are the most commonly proffered.  First, the liberals' preferred solution, gun control – basically, adding to the tens of thousands of existing "commonsense gun control laws" additional laws that restrict the ownership of particular types of guns or make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain whatever guns are permitted, or both.

This recent surveillance video of a mother and daughter successfully defending themselves from a thug attempting to rob their liquor store shows how gun control both fails to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and endangers anyone threatened by thugs like this robber by leaving his intended victim helpless.

Note how handguns enabled the two women to defend themselves.  Note, too, the article's description of the robber's weapon, a sawed off shotgun, which has been unlawful since 1932.

Second is the creation of so-called gun free zones, which, in case after case, have not only failed to prevent mass shootings, but actually encouraged them: most mass shootings have occurred in gun-free zones, precisely as one would expect, as they obviously are the places where a shooter is least likely to encounter an armed law-abiding citizen.

And third, finally, are calls to arm the teachers – or, more accurately, allow teachers to arm themselves.

Certainly, teachers who want to carry their own guns should be permitted to do so.  "When seconds count, the police are minutes away," as the saying goes.  Obviously, the sooner a bad guy with a gun can be confronted by a good guy with a gun, the sooner the bad guy can be taken out and the more lives that can be saved.  Also, the mere knowledge that one or more teachers may be armed increases the odds of dissuading a shooter from even entering a school.

But, while being a much better solution than gun control and gun-free zones, simply arming teachers has its disadvantages, too:

• Allowing teachers to arm themselves differs dramatically from requiring teachers to arm themselves.  Just because a teacher can arm himself doesn't mean he will.
• A potential school shooter who knows that teachers may or may not be armed can probably reasonably assume that most, perhaps even all, of the teachers in a school will not be armed, encouraging a potential school shooter to gauge his chances of  successfully perpetrating a school shooting.  A potential shooter might think twice, or more times, about perpetrating a shooting in, say, Texas, or any red state, for that matter.  But a blue state?  Connecticut?  California?
• Many past school shooters have used rifles, creating the possibility of a handgun-armed teacher confronting a rifle-armed shooter.  Better than nothing, but obviously not ideal.

And to touch briefly on another proffered solution, gun crime expert John Lott is skeptical of the efficacy of posting uniformed armed guards.  Referring to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, Lott notes (emphases added):

[W]hen a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 others – the police officer on guard was the first person who was shot at.  An officer's uniform is like a neon sign saying "shoot me first." 

Could there possibly be a better way?  The writer believes there is.  Furthermore, it's a solution that should satisfy both sides of the gun possession versus gun control issue, conservatives and liberals, alike.

Not arming teachers.

Not gun control.

Not gun-free zones.

The answer, this writer believes, is gun safe zones.

This is a gun safe...

...designed especially for the safe, secure storage of firearms.

There are handgun safes, too:

As for how gun safe zones would work, think of another potential danger to any public space:  fire.  But of course one doesn't see teachers walking around their schools with little fire-extinguishers strapped to them.  Rather, fire-extinguishers are mounted at regular intervals along the walls – not on the teachers, but reasonably close by.

So imagine, next to every school fire-extinguisher, a gun safe, containing one or more rifles, and on the shelf, one or more magazines for each rifle.

Imagine, also, next to each fire alarm, a second alarm, a "shooter on premises alarm" – one that, when triggered, emits a distinctive sound, different from that of a fire alarm.

And by the way, it is important that the magazines (which take barely a second to insert) be stored with the weapons rather than in them.  Why?  For the safe conducting of drills, of course.  Just as schools conduct fire drills, they should conduct shooter-on-premises drills, so teachers and students can establish, learn, and practice what to do when a shooter enters a school, just as they practice what to do in case of fire.

The gun safe solution would seem to be not only an ideal school shooter solution.  It should also serve as a more than acceptable compromise between the more-guns and fewer-guns camps:

• For blue states and any other liberal, anti-gun jurisdiction uncomfortable with the concept of armed teachers, no teacher would be carrying a gun.  But in the (thankfully) rare case, where a shooter enters a school, many weapons – and many teachers trained to use them – would be available literally within seconds.
• For red states and other conservative, gun-friendly jurisdictions, where the locals are perfectly comfortable with teachers carrying the guns, having several more guns readily available would be a nice icing on the cake: a handgun may be fine, but in a school shooter situation, why not grab a rifle if one is handy?

And finally, just as important as creating gun-free zones is publicizing their existence, leading directly to their greatest advantage: deterrence, such that the more gun safe zones created, the smaller the chance that one would ever actually be used.

Everybody knows that every school has fire extinguishers, several on every floor.  What if everybody knew that every school also had several firearms on every floor and teachers trained to use them, with the entire school having drilled on what to do in the case of a shooter on premises?

What if every potential school shooter could be certain, absolutely certain, of facing, within seconds of firing a single shot, one, two, three, or more adults, as well armed as he?

Might such knowledge make the already rare instances of school (and other areas that establish the writer's gun safe zones) shootings even rarer?

Gene Schwimmer is a licensed real estate broker in New York and New Jersey and author of The Christian State.