Presumably teachers volunteering to carry their arms in school would be vetted to not only have passed the carry requirements but also have taken a basic tactical self-defense course. At that point they’d be as well trained in actual shooting as most police. One would hope that they would know better to draw a firearm to address anything less than a lethal threat, or to leave firearms unsecured.
In Post 53 I offered a hypothetical that included:
[ul]
[li]limited number of highly trained volunteers from school staff[/li][li]standardized weapons identical to those used in training[/li][li]high security lock boxes on campus for those weapons[/li][li]multiple alarms (visual, audible, and remote) on the lock boxes[/li][li]choice rather than obligation for such staff to decide whether to intervene with weapons in any particular instance – or not[/li][/ul]
Any thoughts on how these might affect the scenario?
(I am seeing a cartoon of a teacher in a classroom, screaming siren blaring outside, red lights flashing in the hallway, cop cars racing up the driveway, turning to co-teacher and saying “Damn! Old ‘Overzealous Humphreys’ must be going to break up a scuffle in the lunchroom again.” – But I’m confident that such would be self-correcting.)
Arming people as a solution to gun violence is turning the blame onto the victims.
“Oh you guys were shot because you weren’t armed, its YOUR fault”
Schools, of course, aren’t the only places that have shootings. The goal of the NRA and gun advocates seems to be forced gun use in all aspects of life. Church gets shot up, arm the pastors, arm the choir boys. Hospital gets shot, arm the doctors and nurses. Let’s pick how many places have and can get shot up and how many types of jobs now come with mandatory gun training: shootings have happened in malls, theaters, Amish communities, restaurants, outdoor parks so the solution is to arm retailer employees, theater ushers, Amish farmers (I suspect they could only use muskets though), waiters, and park rangers. Eventually, as more places get shot up, we’d be a forced armed society. Anyone who doesn’t arm themselves, well, that’s their own fault isn’t it?
Such a desire to arm everyone whether they want it or not isn’t implausible. After every shooting, there are calls to arm the victims, and oh if only the victims were armed. That’s their solution to everything I guess. Consider me skeptical that a guy should be able to pilot a ferry or an airplane, cut down a tree, or dress up as a clown and scare children during their birthday parties without being armed.
I think the first thing we should do is recognize that there are simply weapons that are available that does nothing for your protection any more than a grenade can protect you, that they exist solely for indiscriminate and fast killing, and that we need to ban those right now. People always forget that the rest of the 2nd Amendment called for regulation. That means its perfectly fine to regulate certain classes of firearms out of circulation and out of the hands of private citizens. No assault weapons, no guns with magazines bigger than a handful of bullets, and no weapons that can spray bullets automatically or semi-automatically.
This just in: Obama daughters’ school has eleven armed guards:
(and presumably that doesn’t even count the Secret Service detail).
“Don’t do what I do, do what I say”. :rolleyes:
I’m a teacher. I was on front hall duty last week at my elementary school before break (that means I stood at the entry way near the front office and checked that adults entering the building with students were carrying a school issued ID before I allowed them into the building. We’ve done that for several years). I watched kindergarteners and first graders walk into school excited by the upcoming “pajama party” celebration they were going to have on the last day before vacation. They were wearing their jammies. Holding stuffed animals or pillows. Wearing little robes. Big fuzzy slippers. The idea that they might have to walk by me, armed to the teeth, to get to their classrooms is not to be borne.
Children CAN’T learn when they are anxious or stressed. Seeing an armed guard, or guards, in their hallways does NOT make them feel safer or more secure. It just brings home the idea that the world is such a dangerous place that we can’t even pretend there’s a safe place for them. Is this the world you want to live in? Is the 2nd amendment ‘right’ so much more important to us as individuals that we are willing to sacrifice the well being of children for it?
I’d say that’s largely true, if you include “homicidal” in the definition of “drooling idiots”. I say that because it is well established that a gun at home is FAR more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. I don’t know how many family member killings are murder as opposed to accidental, but unless someone can show me data that more home intruders are killed than family members, it’s crystal clear that most homes should not have guns in them.
By this theory, the children of parents who routinely carry will grow up traumatized and fearful. Or maybe, if children aren’t taught that they should viscerally loathe and fear the very sight of guns, they won’t.
As for the 2nd Amendment, if the attempt to rid society of guns had a snowball in Hell’s chance of working any better than Prohibition did, with a host of negative consequences, it would be worth it. But realistically that’s just not the case.
High magazine capacity, civilian shooters can live without, IMHO. It’s one aspect of a firearm’s effectiveness as a weapon that should be regulated. Even the ancient romans had some form of civilian weapons control: arrow quivers were limited to 10 (to minimize drive-by archery,) and civilians were banned from hunting or even practicing with the pillum (it’s like letting a civilian shoot a depleted uranium slug.)
Utah has allowed CFP-holding teachers to carry in schools for years now.