David Byrd, a state legislator from Waynesboro, is a former school principal. Right after he learned a crazed school shooter had killed 17 on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla., the Tennessee lawmaker introduced a state bill that would allow some teachers to carry firearms in our schools. But Governor Bill Haslam and state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen are vigorously opposed to firearms in the schools.

Haslam added Rep. Byrd to his just-named 17-person committee after Byrd agreed to table his legislation for two weeks but already Byrd’s bill has 40 of the 99 members of the legislature as co-sponsors. Had the bill advanced to the Civil Justice Committee on Tuesday of this week as scheduled, there is little doubt the bill would had quickly moved towards a vote.

The Hamilton County Board of Education has a work session called for this afternoon but the original purpose was to discuss the state’s partnership with five of Chattanooga’s at-risk schools. The HCDE has started using a new visitor monitoring system from Raptor Technologies. They started being installed this week. These can identify registered sex offenders, criminals and such if the right information is fed into the machine. But those with mental conditions don’t give a rip about Raptors … they register as John Doe from Anytown, USA.

The only thing that scares a school shooter is another gun firing back, lot of times at that.

"A gun-free zone to a maniac, because they're all cowards,” the President said this week, “a gun-free zone is 'let's go in and let's attack because bullets aren't coming back at us ... If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly."

"I really believe that if these cowards knew the school was well guarded by professionals with great training, I don't think they'd go into the school to start off with," he continued.

Law enforcement officials overwhelmingly agree because from start-to-finish is mere seconds. Gunfire can only be answered by gunfire.

Here is John Bund, a senior political writer for the National Review, who realizes that in a nation where there are now over two privately-owned guns for every adult alive in our country, it is almost an impossibility to keep them out of the hands of criminals. He believes with it almost impossible to recognize a mental patient (if they are taking their med properly) that a rapid response is the best answer.

“We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness,” Bund writes. “There is a growing body of evidence that ‘gun-free’ zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.

“First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.”

“New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened.

“Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

Bund’s article continues. “Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff.

“Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told (the reporter, Bund) at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting.

“Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.”

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BEWARE: THIS IS GRAPHIC -- In an effort to illustrate how fast we must respond to a shooter, here is surveillance footage of a retired Rockford, Ill., policeman who was working as a security officer at a bank when Laurence Taylor – not a customer – showed up to make an unauthorized withdrawal. Taylor was linked to three other bank heists in 2017 and the fact a security guard, Brian Harrison, was on duty didn’t faze the robber in the least. "There is no doubt in my mind the actions of Brian Harrison saved the lives of those that were employees in the Alpine Bank location on that date and saved his own life," Winnebago County State's Attorney Joe Bruscato said.

And there are people who think we should have yelled, “Whoa up, Laurence! Sit and tell me about being deprived as a child, about not ever getting a break, and now walking into a bank, busting clip in the wall to prove you are a ‘businessman.’ No, hold up … easy … easy ... that was natural pun, brother! Before whatever else may occur, you’re gonna’ sit down and reveal how you really feel or I am going to throw a trash can at you and call the police.

HERE’S YOUR LESSON -- Now get your watch and look at this tape again, timing it from when Laurence backs up his Chevy in the parking lot until he became a door stop. Some loony grasping an AR-15 ain’t gonna’ play by anybody’s rules, else some genius in Congess would propose a new law that we make school shootings illegal. To see what really happened, CLICK HERE.