As it often does, the Mississippi Legislature has the right idea but misplaced execution.

House Bill 958 is one of the latest examples.

The bill, clearly a reaction to the Connecticut school shooting, aims to allow school districts to arm school employees as a way to prevent the so-called active shooter.

We believe firmly in the Second Amendment, nearly as firmly as we believe in the First Amendment. While the first guarantees freedom of speech, the Second Amendment — as we interpret it — guarantees that citizens may be armed.

But with that right also comes the responsibility to be smart about gun use, too.

Simply arming cafeteria workers or janitors for the random likelihood that they may one day be needed to intervene just doesn’t seem smart or particularly safe.

While any armed “good guy” levels the playing field when a nut job is dishing out evil, these are our children we’re talking about.

Can we not, as a state and as a nation, dedicate the resources to place trained and armed police or sheriff’s deputies in each of our schools?

That would be a real plan that could potentially have real benefits over time.

In addition, having a trained law enforcement officer walking the hallways and playgrounds of our schools provides an added benefit of giving school children a real-world role model who is armed, employed and one of the “good guys,” not just someone packing heat because lawmakers say they can.