ANNOYED ADULTS WITH GUNS; WHAT COULD GO WRONG?:

3) The biggest effect of school resource officers: Students get criminally charged for "disorderly conduct"

It's easy to assume that a school that has a police officer on the grounds every day must have such big issues with crime that the officer is necessary. But that isn't always the case.

A 2009 study by Matthew Theriot of the University of Tennessee compared student arrest and court records from one group of schools that had a school resource officer stationed on school grounds with those of schools that didn't. Controlling for socioeconomic status, the researcher found that there wasn't much difference in serious crime between the schools that had SROs and the schools that didn't. Students at policed schools were much more likely to get arrested than students at unpoliced schools, but they weren't any more likely to actually be charged in court for weapons, drugs, alcohol, or assault. (In other words, students at policed schools were much more likely to get arrested in cases where there wasn't enough evidence to actually charge them with a crime.)

The exception: Students at policed schools were almost five times as likely to face criminal charges for "disorderly conduct" (which apparently didn't rise to the level of an assault). In other words, when there was a police officer roaming the halls, students were much more likely to be arrested and brought into court for behavior that was disruptive, but not violent.

This is exactly the problem that's led some juvenile judges to speak out against putting police in schools. The chief judge of the juvenile court in Clayton County, Georgia, who's become an outspoken opponent of police in schools, saw that when police were placed on school grounds in his county, 11 times as many students ended up in juvenile court. He told Congress at a 2012 hearing that "the prosecutor's attention was taken from the more difficult evidentiary and 'scary' cases -- burglary, robberies, car thefts, aggravated assaults with weapons -- to prosecuting kids that are not 'scary,' but made an adult mad."

Before the United States Marine Corps allowed me to carry a live M-16 assault rifle, I went through hundreds of hours of firearms training. Classroom sessions devoted to nomenclature, maintenance and basic operation accounted for more than two weeks of study before I even set eyes on ammunition. For weeks, I carried an M-16 without a magazine -- a dummy weapon, basically. I secured it with a padlock overnight while I slept in the barracks, and unlocked it each morning before chow.

Only at the shooting range was I allowed to check out magazines and ammo from the armory. The first day at the range I spent 12 hours disassembling, cleaning and reassembling the weapon. I had to do this blindfolded. I had to do this while a drill instructor hurried me, yelling that enemies were at the gate. I had to do this while fellow Marines wept nearby from doing hundreds of burpees as punishment for not being able to reassemble their weapons fast enough.

The military issue M-16 is the model for the AR-15 assault rifle that the accused shooter used to kill 17 people this month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The shooter bought the weapon lawfully. He received zero hours of mandated training. There is no reason that any civilian, of any age, should possess this rifle.

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