Democracy Dies in Darkness

Schools spend billions on metal detectors. Pick up the tab, gun folks.

Alcohol companies chip in for drunk driving programs and education. Time for weaponmakers to pay for what they’ve created.

5 min
Senior Aisha Jackson, left, consoles her friend and classmate Brooklyn Townsend near a makeshift memorial at Apalachee High School on Sept. 5 in Winder, Ga. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
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The rat-a-tat-tat soundtrack of our nation’s school violence atrocity is followed by another familiar, American sound: ka-ching.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re even having to do this,” Prince William County School Board chairman Babur B. Lateef said in a meeting last year, before taking a hard swallow and supporting a $10.7 million measure for four years of metal detectors for his Virginia county’s schools.

“We are creating a solution for a problem that society continues to fail at,” Lateef (At Large) said. “The prevalence of weapons and guns in the community is really out of control and it’s something that we have to do now just to keep them out of the building.”

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