Monday marked the first day of school for most of the nation's elementary and high school students. In Hillsborough County, that meant armed police officers outside all of the county's elementary schools at a cost of $2 million.
They're not the only ones. Williamson County in Tennessee is spending $2.5 million to place armed officers in all of their schools, while Marlboro, New Jersey, took pride last week in becoming the first such community to place armed officials in New Jersey schools.
The trend is spreading nationally, even though liberals and the media elite mocked the National Rifle Association for suggesting arming officers at every school in the nation a week after the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., which saw the lives of 20 young kids shot to death by a crazed gunman.
A Rasmussen poll released last week showed that 54 percent of Americans prefer to have armed officers in the schools. That number rises to 62 percent amongst those parents who have kids in schools.
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2013.