Among the many quirky and uncomfortable shows that I have enjoyed watching is the show Bait Car. Whether or not this show’s premise is to be considered to be entrapment is perhaps a bit above my paygrade, but the basic premise of the show is simple enough, and that is a car is left unlocked and seemingly vulnerable for the taking in a dangerous crime-ridden neighborhood, and people are busted for grand theft auto when they try to steal what is seemingly vulnerable and easy to steal but ends up being rigged with equipment to make it stop working on the whim of the cops who are watching the every move of the would-be thieves. We live in a society where there are a great many people who are drawn to what is vulnerable in the attempt to take advantage of a situation, and it seldom enters their imagination that such a situation could be a deliberate trap.

There are few populations more vulnerable than our youth. Indeed, to be young is a profound source of vulnerability because of the lack of experience that one has with life, experience that tends to make one wise and wary. Ever more consistently and broadly over the past few years, we have seen the vulnerability of young people attract fairly consistent sorts of predators. For example, over and over again we are witnessing teachers who have no business being allowed within hundreds of feet of minors talking about the way that they are deliberately seeking to subvert parental authority and actively corrupt and groom children into deviant lifestyles, some of which have rather permanent consequences. The appeal of being a teacher for many of these abominations appears to be precisely the fact that they are dealing with a vulnerable target population.

We see a similar phenomenon when it comes to violence. People tend to attack soft targets, and there are fewer targets more soft than the contemporary school, where one is dealing with the widespread absence of the capacity for the students to defend themselves and the widespread disinterest on the part of authorities to protect children from harm given their own frequent active predation. It is rather telling that the end of active shooter problems usually involves the intervention of someone who is willing to combat evil force with force directed against evildoers. In late 2012 in the Clackamas Town Center, across the street where I lived, that happened to be someone with a concealed carry permit who openly presented his weapon, thus showing the shooter that he was not the only armed person around, thus leading the cowardly shooter to end his own miserable existence. Today, in Texas, it was an armed border patrol agent who rushed to the sound of danger as a well-armed young adult was massacring children and ended the shooter’s miserable existence.

The logic is rather straightforward, and that is that strength that is arrayed against the vulnerable needs to be counterbalanced by strength on behalf of such people. It is abundantly clear that laws that seek to prevent guns from being present in such places only benefit those who act without respect of the law, and that frequently there are simply not enough armed defenders in schools to deter would-be mass shooters. The children, of course, are not permitted (as they were in times past) to arm themselves in self-defense, so if they are forbidden to do so on pain of expulsion and prosecution then someone else must be willing to stand up on their behalf. Who will do it, though? Who will turn the apparent vulnerability of youth into bait to draw out the violent and mentally deranged to draw them to their doom?