If the armed cops at the schools are too afraid to intervene in a massacre, maybe the teachers should be armed. What the fuck!?
Hey, that cop was only doing his job: making sure he would go home at night. Right? :dubious::rolleyes:
A few points and questions from a teacher:
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Even a cop with sniper training can’t shoot with a high degree of accuracy in a chaotic situation. If a teacher fires and misses, guess who gets shot next (along with kids near her) and can’t help her students?
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It’s difficult and time-consuming to shoot a lock off a classroom door. (School cop said.) A closed, locked door is a deterrent. Shooters want high kill rates and know they may have only minutes 'til cops arrive. The image of a teacher aiming a gun at a locked door while a shooter shoots off the lock is pure Hollywood.
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Scenario: an armed teacher hears shots down the hall somewhere. You want him to leave his students alone while he goes out to face a killer armed with an AR 15?
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What about substitute teachers?
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There’s already a teacher shortage in every state, according to this article. Arming teachers, with the additional training and responsibilities, won’t help recruitment–at least, not of good teachers.
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I don’t give a rip about liability if I shoot and kill a student. I care about the fact a child died by my hand. I care about his grieving family. 70% of cops involved in a shooting experience significant psychological problems afterward. And they’re not teachers, who after all, devote their lives to kids. Killing a kid would wreck me for life.
No no no, we should leave it to the professionals that are just right outside the building.
Well, that depends on which cop arrives, now doesn’t it?
I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you mean here. Would you please clarify?
Upon further reflection, your questions deserve more serious answers, so I’ll share my perspective:
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Every gunfight has some risk involved for both side. It’s the nature of the beast. I’d urge any teacher that’s thinking about carrying in school to practice, practice, practice. Even then, consistent practice can’t guarantee accuracy, it can only improve the chances. Some decisions in life are fraught with risk no matter what we choose. Being in the middle of a school shooting is one of those scenarios. Maybe running or hiding is the right choice. Maybe those options get you killed. Maybe fighting back is the right choice. Maybe that gets you killed. You do the best you can under the circumstances.
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Your school cop might want to inform himself about breaching shotguns. I don’t know though, maybe you’ve got some special doors that are bulletproof or something though.
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Not unless they felt extremely confident in their skills. My preference would be for teachers to stay in their classrooms, behind locked doors, with their sidearm, as a last line of defense between the shooter and the students in that classroom.
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What about them? In Utah substitute teachers with CCCW permits can carry in school just like a regular teacher.
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Utah doesn’t “arm them” or require additional training. They arm themselves, on their own dime (well, unless someone donates the training time, which is happening regularly) and time.
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So don’t carry a gun. Rely on the locked doors that are hard to shoot off. I’m not suggesting that we foist this on teachers. I understand a lot of them are not physically or mentally prepared for it, and I don’t want them to have guns. I prefer to let those who do feel comfortable make the decision for themselves.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Department just fired a school resource officer because he stood outside the building where students got shot last week and did not enter and engage the shooter. A lot of pro-gun people will see that as confirmation of the old saying: “when seconds count, the police are minutes away” (and waiting outside, apparently).
ETA: the report I saw (on the news an hour ago) was that he arrived at the building one minute after the first gunshot, waited outside for the remaining four minutes of gunfire, and did not attempt to enter. Not to come down too hard on the guy, but he was the person trained and equipped to save lives and he dropped the ball big time.
People can talk all the shit they want about what they would do; it’s entirely different when reality just…happens. What people end up doing - or not doing - in the heat of the moment is often quite different from what they think they will do.
A sheriff’s deputy stood outside as an active shooter killed people one by one inside the building. He might have failed to act because he was scared, but more likely, he simply didn’t know what the fuck to do. Should he go in by himself? Should he wait for back up? Did he know what to do once in the building? What if the shooter had hostages and he made a decision the decision to charge the building and ended up getting more killed in the process.
The sheriff’s office can dump the blame on this guy all they want, but it goes back to something that I’ve talked about over and over and over again on the “Controversial Encounters With Law Enforcement” thread in the Pit: What was their training? I mean, honestly, if it’s the same kind of “training” that ends up with a trigger happy cop getting innocent people killed simply for reaching for their wallets or crawling too slowly on the floor of a hotel room, well, maybe he was better off not following that training.
And so the solution is to have Joe Citizen arm himself play prison guard and potentially confront suspicious teenage kids who “might be up to no good”. Gee, fucking, wiz…what could possibly go wrong there?:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Meanwhile, the guy that finally stopped Jared Loughner, the mass shooter who killed five or six people and badly wounded Kathy Giffords…was completely and totally un - armed. Which goes to show: you can have all the guns and ammo strapped to your boots and belts. Quick wits are better than quick fire.
And in spite of that, for some totally inexplicable reason, people that expect to face armed aggressors, like police and military, regularly choose to have a firearm of their own. I can’t figure out why that might be. Any ideas?
He was the person who was “trained.” And yet you appear to be suggesting that it would be even better to people who might have zero familiarity with firearms and hostile situations.
If schools wanted to have some sort of “air marshal” system where private “administrators” (plain clothes security consisting of current or former military or law enforcement officers) are available at the school in case of an emergency, I might be inclined to go along with something like that. But arming Jack and Jane with a 9mm Glock is paranoid fantasy that might actually make the schools even more dangerous than they already are.
Agreed, but then again, they receive extensive training on how and when to use them. They also have extensive training on how to identify dangers, how to work in teams, and how to utilize psychology in de-escalating threats. Granted, probably none of that would have mattered in Florida, but it probably would matter in myriad other potentially violent incidents that occur in schools across this country every day.
That’s not at all what I’ve said.
Many officers go their entire career without shooting their gun. Despite the training and discipline, it is still stressful for many professionals, and regrettable incidents occur. PTSD is real for police (though worse for paramedics) — making tough decisions with consequences is not easy, even for police.
Sure there are teachers who hunt or have military expertise. Most don’t. If they misfire, hurt someone else, have their gun misused, are unable to save the day — what are the legal, social and psychological ramifications?
In addition to more sensible restrictions, if schools and other public places need increased protection — then use technology instead — limit access with key cards, have doors lock if needed, consider metal detectors — but realize neither police nor anyone else can provide complete protection. Rhetoric aside, waiting periods, limiting high level arms, doing a proper background check and giving information to trace guns used illegally are not great examples of “the government trying to take your freedom away”.
And he’ll have to live with that on his conscience for the rest of his life. Still, seems to me I hear far more stories of cops exhibiting bravery in line of duty than cowardice.
Is your argument that the average civilian with a CCW is more brave and competent in the same situation than this guy?
Precisely.
The thing is, your local PD could have a good training program and its best trainees could hit the streets with quality training and preparation - and they can still make critical mistakes in the moment of truth. Even our elite military units occasionally fuck up and kill their own guy or non-combatants, or make mistakes that get themselves killed in action. There are no rehearsals for the real thing.
America’s gun culture - just by itself - is actually perpetuating the kinds of carnage we’re witnessing, and this is something that’s difficult for gun rights advocates to understand. But the handgun and the assault rifle are, to some degrees, extensions of the self. And the mere ease of access and availability of guns, just by itself, is partly a reinforcement of the idea that violence is an acceptable means of resolving a conflict or getting one’s frustrations off of his chest. I’ve lived in a gun culture and I’ve lived in cultures with strict regulations of firearms, and one thing I’ve noticed about the latter is that people might still resort to fisticuffs, but the idea of killing someone over a dispute, no matter the degree to which tempers may flare, seems distant and remote. There’s a difference between living in a society where the price of messing with the wrong guy is probably a black eye and a cut lip, and a society in which angering the wrong guy can end the lives of an entire workforce or classroom.
Sure, we need better parenting and better psychiatric care in the United States – which reminds me that the same people who are blithering about the 2nd Amendment have also, by and large, voted against efforts to expand affordable healthcare for all but that’s for a different thread. Back on topic, we will likely always share public space with those who are mentally infirm. Intelligent societies don’t foolishly pursue antiseptic notions of guaranteeing a society free of violence, but they do take steps to minimize the damage that a single harmful person can inflict.
Wrong!
Agreed, on both points.
This guy performed very poorly in a very stressful situation. I certainly hope that the average CCW citizen (and the average cop) would exhibit a bit more bravery than that, but can’t think of a way of proving it one way or another. It’s not like we can form a control group and a couple of study groups of CCW holders and cops and run them through realistic scenarios.
As for more competent, I don’t know if it’s really worth trying to get into that argument with people here either. This guy has done some research and found:
But I’ll be the first to admit it’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison when a CCW holder intervenes vs a police officer.
The takeaway should probably be that there are (thankfully) relatively few shooting sprees, so any attempt to perform statistical analysis on them is difficult, and ripe for criticism from whichever side disagrees with the conclusion.
Care to elaborate? Is the “fired” part wrong, because he technically resigned? Was he not a SRO? Did I mess up the name of the county? What? Are you going to ding me because his employment ended last week, and thus “just” wasn’t precisely accurate?
So now you support the movement to arm Black Lives Matter members since they expect to face armed aggressors, like police and military? That’s quite a change in how you’ve previously postured, I’ll give you that.