It’s truly astounding how you liberals never learn. The “streets full of blood” fear-mongering has been around for decades, and it has ALWAYS been proven false.
That scenario would be an active shooter on school grounds.
I know, silly to make sure that they are trained in the exact thing that you are arming them to be able to respond to.
Do any of those involve killing or putting your life in danger?
The fact that it is going to be in the classroom, with students, 8 hours a day, every day, while the teacher who is supposed to maintain control over it has many duties and distractions. That makes it a bit different than someone visiting a park or a playground for a few minutes.
Under some circumstances, yes, under others, no.
The question is, is whether this particular action will make students safer.
Didn’t need or use a gun.
Didn’t need or use a gun.
Didn’t need or use a gun.
Waited until shooter left the building, then went out to his car to get a gun and confronted him outside.
You’ve moved the goal posts. Your assertion was that there actually hasn’t been another school shooting [since Sandy Hook - but I’m ignoring the time box] that an armed teacher would have been able to disrupt.
Clearly, in those situations where a member of the school staff did disrupt, had they had a gun, they would have been able to disrupt it, since you know, they actually disrupted it. Were you trying to assert something else?
I’m curious. How many dead kids is the threshold for you? How many would need to be shot in school before you felt something should be done?
Since Sandy Hook in 2012, “there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes, 438 people were shot, 138 of whom were killed.” CITE
That is almost one school shooting per week.
If wild dogs were roaming America and once a week they mauled several kids you’d be ok with that since it is not really “blood in the streets” and statistically your chances of dying by wild dog attack are pretty small?
It’s not a matter of moving goal posts, it is a matter of determining what is safer for the students. These were disrupted by unarmed teachers, an armed teacher would not have made a difference.
In all of those cases, the shooter stopped shooting without anyone using a gun to make them stop. In only the last case would a gun had made a difference at all in how long the shooter shot.
OTOH, having guns in schools means that guns may be used in schools. If in those stories, the teachers had a gun, the perpetrator would not have shot any fewer people, but the teacher would have shot the student, including the 14 year old student who shot 3 shots down an empty hall.
I think that if a teacher has access to a gun, they may find it more convenient to use it for disciplinary reasons. Not often, but we are talking about arming hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country. “Not often” still leaves an acceptable body count. That’s not including accidents or other issues of losing control of the gun.
Unless school shootings become much more common and deadly, I don’t see how teachers being armed will decrease the overall number of students killed. If school shootings become more common and deadly, then there are other things we need to address, and militarizing our schools is just treating a symptom.
I’ve got an idea. There’s no way *this *can go wrong. Since we can’t trust teachers, and we can’t hire enough security guards. So hear me out, I have a modest proposal :
Sentry guns. Yeah. Let’s install in the ceilings of all major hallways a sentry gun. Basically a gun and cameras, in a pop out turret. During a mass shooting, the sounds of shots would cause the sentry gun to go active. It would use other cameras to localize the threat, and upon achieving a targeting solution, would deploy and use the actual gun camera for final adjustments before shooting the target dead.
I see no reason to be concerned, this will make us all safer.
Making our entire country an armed camp will not lead to fewer shootings.
‘If everyone is armed, no one will dare shoot anyone’ is utter bullshit.
Yeah, don’t hand these out at prom.
Once everyone is already shot and dead, there will be fewer shootings.
But it is moving the goal posts. The examples I gave were counterfactuals to your assertion. You are now asserting that had these staff been armed, the outcome would have been exactly the same. I don’t think that’s supportable, or a reasonable inference. Perhaps the shooter could have been neutralized earlier, perhaps later, who knows. But your original assertion that there hasn’t been a situation where armed teachers would be able to disrupt a shooter is false, because teachers have disrupted shooters.
This isn’t a cost benefit analysis - it’s a false or not false analysis.
This above is a cost benefit analysis. It’s based on basically assumptions which is wonderful and all. But really, I don’t find it persuasive enough to reply to other than the idea that I’m interested in teachers being armed if they want to not as a way to reduce or mitigate school shootings, but as an increase in individual liberty which is a goal unto itself.
I can get you a good deal on some ED 509s.
A close variant is feasible; picture a squadron of drones patrolling over a city, with directional microphones able to detect, identify and triangulate gunshots. When a “sighting” passes a particular level of confidence, a police pilot is alerted and can take direct control of one of the drones and decide if it’s gyro-stabilized sniper-accurate weapons need be used.
Of course, it helps if the mass shooter is polite enough to stay outdoors.
Day 1: Arm every teacher in America
Day 2-5: Headline: Teacher shoots and kills three children in class
I would never arm teachers and fully support “gun free zones” in schools.
I am a public school teacher, by the way. Middle School.
Kid takes gun from 60 year old teacher, kills her and several classmates.
Expected NRA Response; She shouldn’t have been a teacher if she couldn’t handle herself. Let’s hire only skilled veterans as teachers.
The school board in my old district is seriously considering a policy to arm teachers, and a majority of board members are for it.
The initial proposal was arming all teachers. However, that wasn’t going to work since so many teachers said they’d refuse to carry a gun, and for just the reasons stated in posts here. The proposal now is to arm teachers who volunteer. One of the board members owns a gun shop and, of course, he’s been the strongest proponent. (There have been questions about conflict of interest but no response as of yet.)
Under the proposal, teachers would
- be required to have a concealed carry permit.
- undergo a psych evaluation, though it would only be used to “show suitability in stressful situations.”
- undergo 16 hours of live–fire handgun training and 8 hours of scenario training.
- provide their own, board-approved guns.
Supposedly, students won’t know who’s carrying. (Few experienced teachers believe that. Kids are VERY observant.)
Currently, there is one police officer in the high school, but he/she also gets called to other schools in the district. The police force is too small there to be able to respond effectively to a shooter, they’ve said, and the nearest SWAT team is 2 hours away.
The majority of those who showed up to an open forum last month opposed the policy, but pro-arming board members say they don’t believe that’s representative of the community, and one said she didn’t care what the public wanted, as “majority [of the board] rules.” Still, they’re surveying the community. Whether or not that sways board members remains to be seen.
Off-hand I can think of four separate times teachers flipped out and physically attacked students because of something that was said(and no, the something that was said wasn’t anything like “I’m going to get a gun and shoot your ass, Mrs. Grimsby!”) and, personally knowing these teachers, I would guess that at least three of them would have pull their guns if they had been armed at the time.
As long as the board is elected, you bet their asses they’ll care what the public wants.
Honestly, I’d expect a wave of teachers resigning in the face of this sort of thing.
The idea that arming teachers would stop these shootings is such a crock of shit. It takes years of tactical training to get to the point where anyone would have a chance in hell of getting a shot on an active shooter amid the chaos and noise of a mass shooting incident, and even then, there’s no way of knowing how you’d react under the effects of adrenaline. The only people who do know are people who have actually fired a weapon in anger, whether police or military, and even in that context, the competence in responding to a school shooting would vary wildly.
A concealed handgun can be useful for self-defense against robbery or battery. SELF-defense. Anyone thinking (hoping?) about some kind of hero scenario where they’d be able to save a crowd of people from a spree shooter firing rapidly with an AR-15 is just indulging in a fantasy.
A whole 8 hours of scenario training (I presume that means facing attackers in simulations)? Holy shit, that’s ridiculous. In googling military simulations, I found this: It's Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert - The Atlantic
So what you’re saying is that teachers would spend one full workday simulating what is in essence a battle. I’ve spent more time in Excel training classes than that. And Excel training isn’t life or death.
Something tells me the people in charge don’t know what the hell they’re doing. It’s all a fantasy to them.
At least we have an example of an apparently serious proposal with some training spelled out. Thanks for posting that, nelliebly. Would the district pay for the training and weapons, and do you have a sense of cost?
That’s true, which is what I requested in the OP. I’ve already logged my objection with the example however.
Still, I presume that teachers would carry handguns. How would they fare against assault rifles?