NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Lawmakers have heard the concerns of Tennessee educators after a law was passed earlier in the month that would let teachers bring more guns into classrooms. They answered with a new law passed by congress this week, that will allow public school teachers carry ballistic shields, a secondary sidearm, and custom ranked loadouts for keeping up with an ever-changing battlefield.
Many teachers, whose personal budgets are already strapped by low pay, face a decades-old complex of having to spend their own money on desperately needed school supplies. Now, that little bit of money once intended for glue sticks, crayons, and construction paper are being repurposed for lead slinging weapons of iron and wood, making Tennessee schools a place for high powered learning.
Thanks to a partnership with Rural Home Furnishings, Tennessee’s “Top Fraggers,” or highest-ranking educators in participating schools, can look forward to high quality pine wood gun-racks in the classroom where all their favorite gear is stored for easy access.
Before last week, Memphis school teacher Sined Tardislep, 40, had never shot a gun in her life. Now she spends half of every lunch break at the middle school gun range, practicing for what she calls “the next Uvalde.”
“You see their fatasses driving around in those shiny new Ford Explorers,” Tardislep says, referring to officers in the Memphis Police Department. “You know they aren’t crawling out of that air conditioning and coming in to some smelly elementary school to save my little brown kids.”
Gov. Bill Lee gave a moving speech. As he talked to a room of newly armed school teachers, he twitched and flinched, appearing to dodge, moving just in case. He switched from the AWP to the Desert Eagle, back to the AWP, back to the Desert Eagle, to the AWP again, back to the Desert Eagle, to the AWP, to the knife, and he swiped his knife against the lectern.
“Tennessee’s children are the future,” Lee said. “Which is why we are awarding this chrome-plated Desert Eagle magnum to Mary Pulaski, who has worked tirelessly for the past 15 years at the Nashville Christian Academy, using only a .22 caliber sidearm. Mary, bunny-hop on up to the stage, will you please?”
With the tools of change now in their hands, and opportunity at their feet, the inevitable uprising of battle-hardened educators draws closer.
With so many killers being turned out of school systems, the “sheep are raising the wolves,” according to DuFraine County Middle School Principal Martin Winchester. He says some children now look at him with the cold glint of murder in their eyes.
“Cops won’t kill one of their own. We are not like them, we’re not social workers. We can’t tell if we’re raising the next school shooter, or the next police officer,” Winchester said. “That’s basically the same kid.”
He said he is authorized to fire warning shots in the cafeteria to get the children’s attention, for dismissing lunch, roll call, or making announcements.
Regardless of which side of the aisle they stand on, more guns in the classroom have Tennessee children on their toes and, above all else, ready to learn.
