Teachers, well many of them, consider their students as their children. The choice to kill one of your own children to save the others is just a amazingly weighty issue. Children knowing that their teacher may have to kill them one day is also another such weighty issue. It would change the dynamics of the student teacher relationship and shatter and destroy lives at times in perhaps different ways then the school shootings do as things are now. Perhaps worse, perhaps better. Most likely better for some, worse for others.
Is there a gun problem that can’t be solved with more guns?
The “full gun cabinet” problem, I guess.
As someone who works in a school district, I can tell you now that the overwhelming majority of teachers simply would not take part in something like that. They are not emotionally equipped for it, nor do they want to do it under any circumstances.
Also, a gun in a classroom, even if it is strapped to a teacher’s waist, is a risk factor. If I’m wannabe school shooter, I don’t even have to smuggle a gun into school. I can just pick my moment and strike a sudden, severe blow to the head of an unsuspecting teacher and, voila, I have a gun and can start shooting right there inside the room. It just makes no sense on several levels.
More guns don’t make us safer. Research Dodge City, Laramie, Abilene, etc, in the 1800’s and you’ll have plenty of historical proof that lots of people die when there are lots of guns around. So, we could all walk around with a gun strapped to our waists like they did in the old West, but you’d just end up with a whole lot more dead people.
My only response to the idea of arming teachers is no. No, no, no, no, no. Just no.
I teach, though in a university rather than a school. The solution to the problem of mass shootings will never be more guns, bigger guns, more powerful guns, or more people with guns.
Too little ammo? 
How many shootings could this prevent or mitigate? How many teachers are actually willing and able to confidently use a weapon? And how many shootings could it make easier or worse, by either a disgruntled teacher/employee or student knowing there is a gun in the school? Bored kids will find out where the secret stuff is pretty easily, at least in my experience. The janitors will almost certainly know. This is barely a solution, ISTM – at best, this might mitigate a very small percentage of school shootings. At worst, it leads to more death and destruction than it prevents.
Has already happened, and I believe more than once:
NY Times: An Armed Principal Detained a Campus Gunman. But He’s Against Arming School Staff.
Not much point in concealing the weapons if everybody knows that all teachers are [del]carrying them[/del] packing.
No, no, no. They’ll just crawl through the air ducts, pick off the shooters one-by-one, before confronting the mastermind and delivering a devastating one-liner.
Merged duplicate thread starting at post #212 - #229.
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Jasmine has an excellent point. I do volunteer work in the Ohio prison system, and the corrections officers do not carry guns for the same reason. The officers carry batons and pepper spray, but no guns.
I also carry a concealed pistol every day, and I practice at a range once a week. While I feel competent with my pistols, I have no illusions about being capable of dealing with a rifle-wielding active shooter with a pistol. One of the things that has become apparent to me as more and more mass shootings occur is how many scenarios that actually happen are beyond the capability of a “good guy with a concealed pistol” to rectify. I may be capable of using a pistol for self defense in my home or in a mugging situation, but I think most school shootings are beyond what a pistol shooter help with.
In addition to usually being armed with high-powered and accurate rifles and carbines, school shooters (and mass shooters in general), by definition, have worked themselves into the mindset necessary to quickly and easily take human lives. In my understanding, this is a very difficult thing for most non-sociopaths to do, and I think many folks are vastly underestimating how difficult it is.
There is a word in German which perfectly describes this proposal: “Verschlimmbesserung”. It means “To make something worse while trying to make it better”.
No doubt, on occasion an armed teacher would, in fact, shoot an armed student intent on massacre.
However, it is easy to foresee that the numbers of victims prevented by such heroics are going to be far outweighed by the numbers killed in accidents by badly trained teachers, suicides by depressed teachers, murders by psycho teachers, accidents, suicides and murders by students who get their hands on the guns, etc.
Not to mention - the US already has a problem with the police shooting people in situations where such a response wasn’t justified. The police are, presumably, highly trained to deal with such situations, as that is part of their jobs. Teachers are not, and it is unlikely that any amount of PD days devoted to such training will bring your average school teacher to the level of a police officer - so presumably, they will be even worse than the cops at judging when to, and when not to, use deadly force.
The answer to your concerns are obvious, arm the pupils to take down rogue teachers. The solution to gun violence should always involve more guns.
In the interest of disclosure, and as discussed in this thread: while I can say with confidence that, by 2014, 18 states provided for allowing teachers/staff members of carry firearms at school, I don’t know how many teachers actually do so. I think that matters less in response to your point (which had to do with an environment in which firearms were permitted) than it did in response to k9bfriender’s point, which had to do with the dangers posed by armed teachers. But it’s a weakness in my point that is worth noting.
Is the bold true? I understand that defining “school shooter” is somewhat controversial, but I would have told that school shootings (as with most firearm violence) are usually committed with handguns.
A similar tactic worked for this woman I know who swallowed a fly.
When Trump had his little fireside chat the other day with some of the survivors, his response to their pleas for help was to announce that he will be seeking to restrict “bump stocks”.
How many mass school shootings have involved the use of “bump stocks”?
How many mass shootings total have involved the use of “bump stocks”?
Maybe we get parents involved by arming the PTA.
… and sooo many students.
I believe the answer is zero.
The only one I’m aware of is Las Vegas.
I agree that banning bump stocks is unlikely to put any significant dent in gun violence.