The probability of it happening with one armed teacher may be small, but when you multiply it by enough teachers packing heat, it becomes much more probable.
True that it would be more difficult to pull off, but we would also be allowing him to avoid the time and expense of buying a weapon.
Oh, I know. We used to sit in the front row in Bio and watch Miss Lee in her amazing miniskirts. But you’re talking about arming people who may not be great physical specimens and untrained in the use of firearms and not used to high pressure life or death situations. I think arming teachers is like giving steak to a newborn.
Adding more guns into the mix is going to increase the odds of a shooting incident happening.
We’re not just talking about one armed teacher though. Probably thousands of teachers have been packing at school for many years now. The problems that you’re worried about simply haven’t turned out to be very common. This is similar to the arguments made against concealed-carry permits in general: “there will be road rage shootings, shootouts over parking spots, etc”. While I suspect there may have been a few here or there, overall the concerns seem to have been largely overblown, and people recognize that today.
The difference is that your average concealed-carry gun is a small handgun, with limited ammo capacity, and relatively slow and unimpressive bullets. Sure, it’s possible it could be used to kill some people, and in the wrong hands it might be put to bad uses, but overall, if I had a choice between a school shooter that brought a few hundred rounds of reloads with him, practiced at the range with his rifle beforehand, and came in shooting, vs having him start his would-be spree by trying to wrestle a relatively small and unimpressive handgun away from an armed teacher, which if he succeeds leaves him with few / no reloads and a lack of familiarity with the firearm, I’ll take the latter.
I don’t want to “arm” teachers, or give them the firearm equivalent of steak to a newborn. I want concealed-carry permit holders, that are not “newborns” in the realm of firearms, to be allowed to carry while at work. I agree that handing out firearms during the onboarding process would not be ideal.
Right, and you acknowledge that they are here and there. Do you not acknowledge that with more gun, there will be more both here and there?
I don’t think it’s a matter of either/or. The kid isn’t thinking, “Oh, I don’t have to bring my AR-15 with me to kill all the other kids, the teacher already has a gun.” The concern is that it is a crime of convenience. A kid gets unruly or agitated, and sees that he can take his teacher’s gun. Kill the teacher, maybe a few students he doesn’t like. Yes, it would be a smaller spree than if he had premeditated and brought an assault weapon, but, it won’t actually prevent someone who wants to bring an assault weapon from doing so. Instead, it just created more opportunities for less thought out crimes of anger or passion.
Concealed carry by itself doesn’t say anything about the maturity of the permit holder. You can have a CCW with just a few hours of class time with a gun that you’ve barely shot.
We dedicate this is a good idea, we need much better training than what a CCW requires.
And, once again: Why concealed? What deterrent value does that have? Or is the constant repetition a tacit acknowledgment that open carry would be more of an enticement than a deterrent?
I think it’d be less of a distraction for people that are uncomfortable around firearms if it were concealed. Some people get hysterical when they see a gun.
Well in the case of teachers, there haven’t been any cases of them drawing down on students for being unruly (so far as I know), or even one instance of a “crime of convenience” where an angry student seizes a teacher’s gun and shoots people (again, so far as I know).
I’d suggest that after 4-16 hours of training one is no longer the firearms version of a “newborn” …
… but I wouldn’t be opposed to a district saying, "we’re going to allow this, if you also complete training X and Y or Z. (I think that’s what you were getting at here)
Just want to say that comments like this, where you are reading minds, are not helpful.
People may get nervous, they may not be comfortable, they may not have much faith or trust in the person controlling the gun, but to call people hysterical means that you are buying into the whole “gun control advocates are actually just hoplophobes.”
For instance. I have a friend that I know has guns. I go over to his house fairly often, and it doesn’t bother me, as he is responsible with them, and has them locked up in a safe or directly in his control.
I have another friend that has at least 2 guns that I know of, because they are sitting on his coffee table when I come in. I don’t visit him very often, is that because I am hysterical when I see a gun?
Kids get into physical altercations with their teachers on a regular basis. I saw at least a dozen or more fights during my tenure as a student, where the student actually physically contacted the teacher in some way. To be fair, I never saw them get knocked out or anything, but, had they been armed, they either would have/should have defended themselves with their gun, or they could have had the gun taken away from them.
Having the gun in the room raises the stakes, from a suspension/expulsion to bullets.
At that point, sure, not a newborn, but barely a toddler, either.
There are some people that it may be appropriate to allow to be armed. Military, and police who retire from the force and start teaching, and maybe teachers with extensive gun training. But, not only should it be far more than 4-16 hours, it should be something that is recertified on a regular basis as well.
No, I do not trust that someone with 4-16 hours of training can properly deal with a life and death situation. I also do not feel that they are able to evaluate when there is a life and death situation, and may end up shooting people for being unruly.
Oh, I’m with you there. He’s a wing nut, but wing nuts have taken control of the board. It’s a case in point for why people shouldn’t ignore school board elections.
I think out of a staff of about 60, there might be maybe 2 teachers who’d volunteer to carry, and this is a high school in one of the most heavily-armed states in the U.S. Most teachers own guns. They just see the issues and dangers of having one in the classroom and recognize how ineffective they’re likely to be in a real-life situation.
I don’t know who Mr. Wing Nut is thinking would do the training. If teachers have CCW permits (a requirement of the policy), they already know how to shoot a gun. Maybe he’s thinking off-duty law-enforcement, or maybe he’s thinking a bunch of chuckleheads playing SWAT team. The majority of those speaking up oppose the policy, but another wing nut says he doesn’t believe they represent the majority of the community.
I disagree. Even before gun-free school zones, teachers were not packing heat in my district (Yes, I’m that old.), and it’s in an area with one of the highest gun-per-capita rates in the country. Are you figuring throughout Utah history, a total of thousands of teachers were packing at school? Again, I’d need stats. Since Utah doesn’t ask, I doubt those stats exist.
Arming teachers is one of the dumbest ideas I can think of.
A weapon in the hand of a person who isn’t willing to pull the trigger and kill the person the weapon is aimed at is far worse than useful, it is a liability. Back in my coke dealing days, I definitely had more than one weapon pointed at me. On no less than three separate occasions, I disarmed the person wielding the weapon because although they were truly desperate for more cocaine, they were not willing to actually inflict violence on me to get it. Two of the three then found out the hard way that I had no similar scruples as I proceeded to disarm them and then use their own weapon against them. (They lived.) The third and much smarter one ran away.
I’d wager 95% + of all the teachers I had in my life didn’t have it in them to kill a human being. They mostly got into teaching because they wanted to make a positive difference in young people’s lives. They have compassion for the students they teach. I firmly believe that compassion will end up killing them if you give them all guns.
Without knowing your state and the year(s), I could only guess. Was concealed carry legal there at the time? Were permits generally available (shall-issue) back then? You can look back a couple of pages to some discussion on my estimate of the numbers for Utah. You’re right that there’s no precise count available (at least, as far as I’m aware). It’s worth mentioning here that Utah isn’t the only place this has been done (but I’m not aware of a state where teachers-packing is more widespread than in Utah).
How is a woman wearing a typical blouse, skirt and pumps going to conceal a gun? Are armed teachers going to have to wear coats and cowboy boots to have requisite hiding places?
That’s still dumb, because about at least 20% of people wrongly think they are in that 5%. Do you think those two morons I attacked with their own weapons thought they would freeze when shit got real? I know for a fact they didn’t, but they were still very wrong.