Perhaps because living in Utah instills such hopeless despair that even violence seems futile?
Can you see any difference between a few law-abiding teachers carrying, and encouraging (or requiring) millions of additional teachers to bring guns to school? Any difference at all?
Even if some teachers, this week, think arming themselves is a good idea, do you really think it will last?
Carrying that gun to school every day will be a burden. You have to keep cleaning it, maintaining it, practicing with it. You can never let it out of your sight or let your consciousness stray to far from it. It reminds of those exercises where they make teenagers take care of an egg for a week. But this isn’t over in a week. It’s every day, day in and day out,
There is a psychological component as well. Every morning, when that teacher straps on her holster, she’ll be thinking about how she has to do this because today might be the day when some artillery wielding teen tries to kill her and her students. If I had to go through the exercise every morning of arming myself against the possibility that one of my co-workers might kill me, it probably wouldn’t be long before I decided to go into another line of work.
I can see how Mrs. Grundy might think it’s a good idea to arm herself this week. The stories and images are still fresh. But I question how she will feel about it a year from now.
I agree that redirection of funds probably would free up billions of dollars, but is that a wise thing to do? In January, Trump proposed cutting aid to Pakistan in order to punish them:
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/367705-trump-steps-up-foreign-aid-cuts-as-foreign-policy-tool
(I realize this particular link to Pakistan isn’t directly relevant to arming teachers, but it is relevant to redirecting funds.)
Then there can be a backlash to cutting foreign aid (from The Hill article):
Then is the question of block grants. Since the grants can be used for virtually any purpose, doesn’t mean that the money will be spent arming teachers, or at least improving schools.
Consider this source: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40486.pdf
In other words, I’m not convinced your post is a good idea.
Some posters have mentioned the mental health of teachers, which is a valid point. Several sources point to teaching as incredibly stressful:
Add the burden of carrying a gun, the costs of training (which this thread suggests would be borne by the teachers themselves), and the mental stress and possible PTSD of actually shooting and killing another human being, and you have truly lit the fuse.
Let’s also look at arming teachers from another point of view: from veterans themselves.
Arming teachers is a bad idea.
Maybe instead of arming teachers, an alternative solution would be to require each classroom to have a secondary exit in case of emergency. So rather than being trapped in the classroom, they can remove a window or whatever and flee the school. Not only will it help for a shooter situation, but it could be used in case of fire or something like that.
- The cost.
- The greater possibility that students would be popping those widows at a much higher rate then they would be used to run from intruders.
3.The need for fire escapes for every one of those escape windows that are above the first floor.
Will every one of you who claim to support all these school changes pledge to support all the school levies that will be needed to pay for them?
Fundamentally, arming teachers is a “solution” that treats a symptom, not a cause.
Restricting access to guns, banning guns that are only useful to kill many human beings, limiting magazine capacities, banning bump stocks – is treating the underlying cause of the carnage.
I’m sick of kowtowing to people who advance the false notion that their rights under the 2nd Amendment include access to any and all weapons, just so they can fetishize guns, indulge a hobby and target shoot on the weekends with AR-15s and the like. It’s nuts.
Self defense is one thing. Pretending to be Rambo is another.
I spent longer than I should have looking for that link, but we’ll just go with what you linked for now.
It says "only a small fraction do bring guns into their workplace. " Now, that’s from a while back, so maybe it is higher now. Almost by definition, we cannot know, as it seems that they don’t have to report to anyone that they are carrying.
What percentage do you think it is? Do you think it is anywhere near the 20% that is being called for?
Of course, in looking for stats, instead, I found that Utah is having severe issues just having teachers at all, which is why they arelowering the standards needed to be a teacher in the state.
To be fair, if we have school shootings on a regular basis, that’ll keep it fresh.
Trump wants to use former military personnel as teachers:
A potential problem with that is the military has lowered qualifications for entrance:
I’m not saying (now) that this is a problem, but it certainly should be a concern. Former military as teachers isn’t the panacea that Trump implies.
It’s not just unwise, it’s logically ridiculous.
“Let’s free up money to arm teachers by cutting foreign aid” is a wonderful example of an intellectually dishonest argument. It’s an obvious false dilemma. If the government of the United States is not getting value for its money in aid to Pakistan, then it should stop giving aid to Pakistan, or alter the terms of the agreement. It doesn’t matter if teachers have to be armed or not; the value of sending money to Pakistan is something that is correctly judged on the return on that investment.
The argument to find teacher-gun money (what a stupid idea) by stripping aid from a foreign nation isn’t logical; it is meant to cover the teacher-gun idea by appealing to racism.
Currently about 1/4 of a million Utah residents have active CFPs, out of an adult population of roughly 2 million. That’s about 1 in 8. Perhaps it’s a little bit lower among teachers (more women, somewhat less self-defense-oriented mindset) than the general population, so my WAG would be ~10%, or roughly half of what Trump mentioned.
So, you are saying that you think there are about 2800 teachers in Utah with a CFP(why cfp, and not CCW?). Like I said, impossible to know the numbers, because they don’t have to tell anyone whether they are carrying. But you are assuming that everyone with a CFP will be carrying in their classroom at all times to get to those numbers. I don’t know Utah culture, but I know teachers around here that have a CCW, that would never consider taking their gun to school, even if allowed or even encouraged.
But, assuming that that is the case, and that there are 2800 teachers in Utah schools carrying a gun every single day, we just need to increase that to about 620,000 across the US.
I think it’s a guess with a pretty wide margin of error. I think it’s reasonable to guess that there are “a few thousand” school faculty and staff with CFPs. I don’t nave any way of knowing how many carry every day. I think it’s safe to assume it’s something more than 0% and less than 100%. Beyond that, I don’t think I’d hazard a guess.
CCW is a rather generic term. CFP is the Utah-specific term for the license (a Concealed Firearm Permit). Other states will call it different things too (CHL - Concealed Handgun License, etc). Apologies for switching acronyms in the middle of our discussion, they’re basically synonymous.
I don’t think there’s anything magical about the number 620,000 (nor do I think it’s very realistic). If it were legal everywhere, I suspect you could get some high-single-digit % of school faculty and staff to voluntarily carry across the country. Perhaps more if there were actually bonuses for doing so, but I consider the likelihood of that happening to be rather remote.
Between 0 and 100%. I’ll take those odds. 
That’s cool, wasn’t really knocking you, just the hodgepodge of different laws and terms we get to see across the nation. I did have to look up CFP real quick just to make sure it meant the same thing, though.
The 620,000 is 20% of teachers, the goal that trump has set. I suppose it would be a higher number if he was meaning to include support staff and administration.
Do you think it is a remote likelihood that teachers would carry to get the bonus, or that the bonus would be offered?
I think the first is probable, and it concerns me a bit. We don’t pay teachers enough, and if the only way for them to get a raise is to start carrying a gun in school, many will, and I don’t know if that is a good reason.
I’ll agree on the second, as it seems communities really don’t like supporting the people teaching their children.
Concealed carry pretty much means pistols. Handguns. Against a madman armed with a military-grade weapon. There are words for that kind of behavior. “Courageous” is one, “stupid” is another. Long guns are “aim”, pistols are “general direction”. Most likely result: teacher fires at shooter, shooter kills teacher.
I don’t think this is a good idea. Mmmm, no.
Just to follow up on HurricaneDitka’s response to my remark, though it’s already been amply rebutted by others:
No, Utah’s allowing qualified gun-owning teachers to voluntarily concealed-carry on school grounds if they want to is not at all the same as a nationwide policy of deliberately arming a large percentage of teachers as a purported remedy for gun violence in schools.
Yes, I think we’re on exactly the same page on this point. I think it’s unlikely that bonuses are given to teachers for carrying at work. If they were, I suspect some would carry primarily for the purpose of receiving the extra pay, and I’d rather not have that.