Item 1 Marking the National Rifle Association’s 2015 Freedom Festival in Nashville

To direct school staff on how to respond to a visitor who is carrying a visible firearm, a school district in Michigan has distributed the following flow chart:

I would like to be able to say that one cannot help but feel certain that the school staff now feel very adequately prepared to meet all eventualities, that those parents whose children are enrolled at the school are now very confident that all the measures that might be taken to insure the safety of their children have been taken, and that, if the flow chart has been posted for easy reference around the school, the school children themselves must feel very secure simply by having the opportunity to gaze upon it.

I would like to be able to say all or even any of that, but the idea that instituting this sort of plan is preferable to simply keeping it illegal for anyone but a police officer to carry a gun onto school property makes my brain ache. Which is, by the way, one of the ways by which I am able to reassure myself that I still have a functioning brain.