Elsewhere I provided you what I think is a reasonable estimate that several thousand Utah teachers currently have valid CFPs. After that, you said I was “assuming that everyone with a CFP will be carrying in their classroom at all times”. I don’t assume that. I suspect some of them carry every day, some never carry, some carry frequently, and some carry infrequently (perhaps only when they have a particular concern about something or someone at the school). I don’t have precise %'s for each of those groups. No one does, so far as I know, but a reasonable guess might be that there are maybe something in the range of several hundred up to perhaps a couple thousand armed teachers in Utah schools on your average school day. If you were to include other support staff at schools, that number is probably a bit higher.
Let’s be clear about this: even if you could get past all of the issues with assessing, training, and certifying teachers to be qualified to carry weapons in schools, the liability issue alone is enough to make this a show stopper. The first time a student gets ahold of a gun intended for defense and accidentally or intentionally shoots someone else, the massive amount of resulting litigation involving the teacher, school administrators, gun manufacturers, insurers, and anyone else associated is going to bankrupt a school district and produce a huge amount of negative press that isn’t going to go away as quickly as a random shooting.
And while school shootings are occuring in the United States at rates vastly higher than any other developed country in peacetime, the absolute number of shootings is still quite low (FiveThirtyEight: “These Researchers Have Been Trying To Stop School Shootings For 20 Years”) and even the most optimistic assumptions about the responsibility of teachers in storing weapons in classrooms with the ideal provisions of storage in biometric containers (who will pay for those out of what budget) would likely result in more injuries and deaths than intentional mass shootings it might hypothetically prevent, which would be literally counterproductive.
Even if you are a hardcore advocate of public concealed carry and minimial restrictions on gun ownership, this is an indefensibly stupid idea that was generated as a reflexive response to try to cut off a discussion about practicable ways of restricting access to firearms (not just “assault weapons” but any guns) to people with a history of antisocial behavior. This proposal makes zero sense in any context other than, “I don’t want a discussion about restrictions or control on firearms ownership.”
Stranger
Why don’t these same liability concerns apply to school resource officers’ guns, or driver’s ed vehicles, or wood shop tools, or playground equipment?
The usual proposals don’t typically include “storing weapons in classrooms”. In Utah, the custom is that the teacher keeps the firearm with them, not in a biometric container.
Really? Driver’s ed vehicles are required to teach people how to drive, which is commonly viewed as an essential skill to live in modern western society. Shop programs also teach people valuable, if not essential, skills which require the use of tools. There is no way to have a shop program worthy of the name without tools.
There are liability concerns around these items, but they are counterbalanced by the utility of the programs they are essential to support.
But you knew that.
Stranger on a Train’s argument seemed to be that we couldn’t do this because of liability concerns. He actually said “the liability issue alone is enough to make this a show stopper”. I contend that’s false. There are lots of things we do in schools (such as the list of examples I gave) that also have risk of injury / death, and we accept that liability (in other words, the liability issue alone is NOT “a show stopper”) because (as you noted) we judge the positives to outweigh the negatives. I probably wouldn’t take issue with someone who said “IMHO, the negative risks outweigh the potential benefits”, but that’s not what Stranger On A Train seemed to be contending. He seemed to be contending that this couldn’t possibly be done, because of the potential risks / liabilities. That seems obviously false. There are a number of schools and jurisdictions around the country that have examined the issue and decided that, in spite of the risks, they’d prefer to allow teachers to be armed. The state of Florida is the most recent one to put a program like this in place.
I can see how it works in Florida. They are requiring extensive training and regular recertification. I still think that it causes more harm than good overall, but the harm is greatly reduced with better training, and will help to reduce incidents enough that it’s not that significant. Yeah, I’m of the opinion that more kids will be harmed or killed by teachers carrying even then than will be saved by teachers stopping active shooter threats, but the number of incidents in teachers who are required to take these steps to carry should be low enough to be “acceptable.”
I would be more concerned about teachers who take an 8 hour CCW class and then are good to go, with no oversight, certification, or even record that they are carrying. I don’t think that in that case the number of incidents would be low enough to be acceptable.
The above statement made me giggle. That’s what I teach as well. Personally speaking as a teacher of students with behavioral disabilities, I would not feel comfortable carrying a weapon, because, yes, if my students got ahold of a weapon they might not even realize what they were doing and could cause quite a bit of harm unintentionally. I would not feel comfortable if my district required teachers to carry weapons. But, if teachers had extensive training and wanted to carry, that would be ok with me.
However, speaking as a person with several flavors of mental illness… WHY CAN’T WE FRICKING HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE MENTALLY ILL? I have been denied treatment for one of my issues because I’m not sick enough. This catapulted my other issue and put me on the edge of self harm. I DESERVE TO FEEL BETTER. And so do the many others out there who can’t access care or are just plain ashamed due to stigma. How about we fix this HUGE problem and maybe violence, both inward and outward will decrease.
The attempt to equate school resource officers—career law enforcement personnel whose training and equipment comply with the pertinent law enforcement agency they work for—with teachers is a non-sequitur unless you are asserting that said teachers should be trained and qualified to the same standard as law enforcement. Given how overworked and low paid teachers actually are, and that they are often hard pressed just to keep certified in with current education standards, I don’t think this is a practical expectation.
Many schools are, in fact, removing driver’s education from their curricula specifically because of the liability insurance and damage costs, and this is a function that is actually important to the vast majority of students. As for woodshop tools or playground equipment, you’ll have to remind me of the last time someone went on a murderous rampage with a bandsaw or a jungle gym.
Having teachers carry weapons on body rather than stored in a biometrically controlled safe is even worse, because as the teacher in the link of the o.p. demonstrated, and anyone who has ever carried a concealed firearm knows, actually keeping control of the weapon at all times becomes an onerous responsibility. It is just too temping to pull that pistol that has been digging into your back all day and put it in a briefcase or drawer, and then forget about it. And again, the first time some student gets ahold of a firearm that was intended to stop some hypothetical school shooter and uses it to attack students and faculty, the resulting circle-jerk of blame and litigation, as well as public outcry at what an entirely avoidable tragedy this was, is going to bankrupt a school district.
This is a piss-poor idea even for gun owners to advocate for unless you are under some illusion that teachers are some extraordinarily responsible class of people with impeccable judgment. The number of teachers caught having sex with students would tend to indicate that premise is not valid. Nor does it actually do anything to stop potential school shooters from obtaining firearms and attacking, unless you assume that such attacks will only within a school and that a teacher will respond promptly and tactically to a situation that even trained law enforcement officers are often challenged to handle.
And the fact that there is absolutely no assessment of the advantage of perhaps limiting the handful of school shootings a year to the hazard of introducing firearms into schools across the country aptly dmeonstrates that the entire point of this “proposal” was to divert discussion from whether and how to modify legal access to firearms to people who may pose a danger of engaging in a mass shooting, which is evident in the context of other attempts to silence or shame the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting survivors from speaking, or Rick Santorum’s absurd advice that students should learn CPR rather than speak about their opinions on measures to prevent mass shootings by restricting access to firearms.
Even if you are a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of firearms ownership, this is a stupid idea that if enacted would result in blowback that would spur on even greater public outcry for gun control. It is just short of the characture of the NRA arming children that gun control advocates like to present. At some point, as a responsible firearm owner, you have to acknowledge that not everyone is responsible and there need to be some rational restrictions, or you jump on the clown bus that the NRA has become since it abandoned all moderation and acts as a mouthpiece for the gun industry and conservative policy institutes.
Stranger
Because helping people with mental illness is hard, requiring as it does individual attention and empathy, and berating instead them for the moral failing of having a personality disorder or psychiatric condition is easy because you can just label them all as “crazy” and deny responsibility.
Stranger
Why don’t you think that? Is that belief based on any sort of statistical analysis or just a hunch / guess?
We’re well beyond “if enacted”. It already has been enacted in a number of jurisdictions around the country. Perhaps at some point your prediction will prove prophetic and it will result in “blowback”, but it hasn’t really been a significant hindrance to the cause yet.
I’m old enough to recall gun control advocates making similar claims about CCW programs generally. “There’ll be blood in the streets, shootouts over parking spots, etc”. Your concern that it will be so bad that the country will rise up en masse and enact greater gun control is noted. It didn’t happen then, and it’s probably not going to happen now.
Overall, I’m comfortable with policies like Utah’s and Florida’s and wouldn’t mind seeing similar policies adopted in additional states / school districts.
Because I have friends that have completed tactical training classes, and friends who have had to receive training to carry a gun for their job. I trust them with guns.
I also have friends who have taken the 8 hour CCW class. I don’t trust them nearly as much with guns.
Limited sample size, to be sure, but it does seem to hold true that training makes people better with what they are trained on.
The policies of Utah and Florida are dramatically different. Which one do you think should be the model for other states to adopt?
Well, I think Florida’s diversity training requirement is a tad unneccessary. I’d leave it up to the individual states though. I imagine some will adopt programs similar to Utah, some will include some additional training requirements, and some will include a LOT of additional training like Florida. I’m ok with that. FWIW, Utah has a long track record with a very low # of incidents, so I would not be concerned if more states adopted a program similar to that.