Everyone knows that it’s foolish to bring a knife to a gunfight.

But what if you brought a baseball bat instead?

Well, in the wake of the recent shooting at Parkland, Millcreek School District decided to ask that very question with their new policy, which provided each of its 500 teachers with a 16-inch bat in an effort to help defend against school shootings.

I suppose that I’d rather have a small bat than nothing if I were to have to confront a shooter wielding an AR-15, if only to improve my chances of success from 0 percent to 1 percent.

That is, provided I find my key to unlock the case in which the bat is stored (yes, they will be locked up so as to not fall into the wrong hands).

Millcreek School District Superintendent William Hall, who evidently has just been rewatching the Bourne trilogy, said “I think a bat could disarm a pistol with a nice swing.”

Hall also stated that the bats are primarily meant to be “symbolic,” which makes me question why they even bothered to buy them.

Nonetheless, the symbolic souvenir bats were worth $1,800.

While baseball bats might seem like an incredibly primitive tool to defend yourself from a gunman with, Millcreek School District’s security measures are still far more technologically
advanced than a fellow Pennsylvania school district, Blue Mountain, which is supplying its classrooms with buckets of rocks.

We are now at a point where schools feel desperate enough to arm their students and faculty with sticks and stones, and though they might be able to break bones, they are still clearly no match for a firearm.

In fairness to the Millcreek School District, the schools will also install a concrete barrier between the parking lot and sidewalk, secure their buildings’ entrances, and will establish
regular police patrols. Still, it requires an astonishing amount of tone-deafness to promote baseball bats as a comforting solution for concerned students and parents.

Hopefully, should the situation arise, I will be wrong and a teacher will be able to unlock the case to their emergency souvenir bat, somehow get close enough to the shooter to land a disarming strike with the bat, and save the day.

However, I find it a bit patronizing to rely on this plan to reassure worried parents.