Arming teachers

[HurricaneDitka]

@Leo_Krupe

… Three, plus what Chimera listed, should be enough examples to prove that point.

What the hell point do you think you’re proving? AFAICT, you’re proving my point. Here, let’s recap. Earlier, you said this:

@Leo_Krupe

That may be the reality, but the argument (from Fox and others on the right) don’t seem to take that into account. It’s all “arm the teachers!” (except in all caps) like a knee jerk reaction.

You summed up the OP as follows:

@Leo_Krupe

…TLDR: I want more details on how arming teachers would work: who pays, who coordinates the defense, etc. Until I get a rational (not emotional) answer, I’ll decline the idea.

My point is that those details are out there, it’s not just “ARM THE TEACHERS!” and that’s the end of it. There are people having fairly detailed and nuanced discussions about the issue, about how to solve some of these tricky problems, if you’d just open your eyes and look for them. From your own Federalist cite, there’s this:

Here’s how it could work. We already have teachers and staff members as well as parents who have concealed carry permits. Their states have already acknowledged their right to defend themselves and their families with force, if necessary. If they have been deemed by authorities to be responsible enough to defend themselves in a mall, at a restaurant, or a sporting event, there is no reason to deny them the ability to protect themselves and their community while they’re at work at a school.

The number and placement of licensed concealed carriers is key. Having just one more teacher who is switched on and trained could make a difference, but a better plan is to have as many licensed and trained teachers as possible who volunteer to attend specific training that addresses the best ways to respond to live shooter situations in educational environments. While a concealed carry license should be a prerequisite to legally carrying in a school, it should not be the only requirement.

Training these volunteers to not only shoot better but also giving them additional tools, tactics, practice, and communications advice directly related to a school shooting situation would drastically alter the calculus for a potential killer who wanted the most carnage with the least amount of risk. Limited tactical training to teach these licensed carriers which walls will most likely stop bullets, which angles in the room would better protect students, and which routes might provide the quickest access to a shooter would give these school employees a much better chance of stopping a killer in his tracks.

There are “details” out there like you say you want, but instead you prop up strawman arguments like “It’s all “arm the teachers!” (except in all caps) like a knee jerk reaction” and then act unconvinced by the strawman you’ve crafted

Here’s another insightful look into the issue:

https://www.nationalschoolshield.org/media/1844/summary-report-of-the-national-school-shield-task-force.pdf

If you read through that 20-ish page document and still come away with the impression that ‘the pundits don’t or can’t explain some of the details’, then I can only conclude it’s because you don’t want to see the depth of the arguments in support of that position.

[anomalous1]

@SamuelA

I have another idea. This would reduce school mass shootings to zero.

What we do is, we surround the school with a chain link fence. Then another fence, with guard dogs available. And let’s put guard towers around the school. Then what we do is build a cinder block building, with really narrow windows. That’ll keep snipers from shooting those kids. Then with the kids safely inside, they’ll have to undergo a very through search in their underwear for any weapons. Maybe even a cavity check for the suspicious ones. It’ll cost a lot of money and hassle to have the kids enter and leave, so let’s keep them inside the facility for long periods at a time. Make their test scores determine when a board decides to let em out. They’ll need a place to sleep, so let’s have them sleep in bunk rooms with just a few classmates in their so no one can go on a mass knifing spree. Oh, we’ll need to conduct regular inspections of their belongings and confiscate anything sharpened into a knife.

It might be easier on the staff if the students have to wear uniforms with a number on it. That way we won’t lose any kids. Oh, a kid might go around trying to mass knife people at night, so we should make the doors to their rooms of something reinforced. Like metal bars or something, something you can’t just break through.

Yeah this will work great. I can forsee some kids forming up into gangs, getting tatoos, and bullying their classmates, maybe even occasionally stabbing one to death with a knife that slipped through the cracks. I think that’ll be ok, though, it won’t be nearly as frequent as deaths from mass shooters.

‘Prison’ for $200 Alex.

[Kobal2]

You know, as a (future, possibly) teacher, here’s a list of things I could see doing without :

1. being expected to face an armed loony instead of hiding, petrified, in a cupboard and/or legging it along with my students as common fucking sense would dictate
2. harming or possibly killing another human being and having to live with that for the rest of my days
3. harming myself with my own weapon because I’m a klutz
4. my students harming each other with the weapon I forgot in a drawer or somesuch ; or they stole from my bag while I wasn’t looking
5. parents giving me grief and/or trying to harm me because I didn’t immediately shoot a putative armed loony square in the forehead at 100 paces, resulting in their kid getting shot
6. parents giving me grief and/or trying to harm me because I tried to shoot a putative armed loony square in the forehead at 100 paces and hit their kid instead

None of that is my fucking job, nor should it be.

My job is a) to keep your stupid kids from underfoot, b) try and decypher their inane scribblings full of spelling and syntactic mistakes that make one suspect the only thing they ever read in their lives was the cover of Teen Magazine then grade said inane scribblings without scarring their precious little egos, and c) bore them to tears with detailed trivia about life in the trenches or how volcano happens.
That’s what I will sign up for soon-ish. No more, no less. I’m not a mercenary.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

I was discussing this a couple days ago with a substitute teacher, retired federal officer, who is supposed to carry all the time but his school’s county forbids it on school grounds. He makes a convincing case that retired cops/military/rangers, etc. who teach (and there are a lot of them) should have special dispensation regardless of their state or district’s policy. For my part, I think that we’ll see the teacher/student equivalent of all those smartphone videos of cops abusing and shooting black kids for no discernible reason.

[UCBearcats]

@Kobal2

You know, as a (future, possibly) teacher, here’s a list of things I could see doing without :

1. being expected to face an armed loony instead of hiding, petrified, in a cupboard and/or legging it along with my students as common fucking sense would dictate
2. harming or possibly killing another human being and having to live with that for the rest of my days
3. harming myself with my own weapon because I’m a klutz
4. my students harming each other with the weapon I forgot in a drawer or somesuch ; or they stole from my bag while I wasn’t looking
5. parents giving me grief and/or trying to harm me because I didn’t immediately shoot a putative armed loony square in the forehead at 100 paces, resulting in their kid getting shot
6. parents giving me grief and/or trying to harm me because I tried to shoot a putative armed loony square in the forehead at 100 paces and hit their kid instead

None of that is my fucking job, nor should it be.

My job is a) to keep your stupid kids from underfoot, b) try and decypher their inane scribblings full of spelling and syntactic mistakes that make one suspect the only thing they ever read in their lives was the cover of Teen Magazine then grade said inane scribblings without scarring their precious little egos, and c) bore them to tears with detailed trivia about life in the trenches or how volcano happens.
That’s what I will sign up for soon-ish. No more, no less. I’m not a mercenary.

This is a great way of putting it. My wife teaches and feels the same way.

[Chimera]

@Horatio_Hellpop

I was discussing this a couple days ago with a substitute teacher, retired federal officer, who is supposed to carry all the time but his school’s county forbids it on school grounds. He makes a convincing case that retired cops/military/rangers, etc. who teach (and there are a lot of them) should have special dispensation regardless of their state or district’s policy. For my part, I think that we’ll see the teacher/student equivalent of all those smartphone videos of cops abusing and shooting black kids for no discernible reason.

So basically my joking ‘conspiracy theory’ where Betsy DeVos’ brother would hire 60,000 ex-military and Blackwater guys to ‘teach’ school and walk around like armed badasses.

Because of course, that would work out real well.

[HurricaneDitka]

@Kobal2

You know, as a (future, possibly) teacher, here’s a list of things I could see doing without :

1. being expected to face an armed loony instead of hiding, petrified, in a cupboard and/or legging it along with my students as common fucking sense would dictate
2. harming or possibly killing another human being and having to live with that for the rest of my days
3. harming myself with my own weapon because I’m a klutz
4. my students harming each other with the weapon I forgot in a drawer or somesuch ; or they stole from my bag while I wasn’t looking
5. parents giving me grief and/or trying to harm me because I didn’t immediately shoot a putative armed loony square in the forehead at 100 paces, resulting in their kid getting shot
6. parents giving me grief and/or trying to harm me because I tried to shoot a putative armed loony square in the forehead at 100 paces and hit their kid instead

None of that is my fucking job, nor should it be.

My job is a) to keep your stupid kids from underfoot, b) try and decypher their inane scribblings full of spelling and syntactic mistakes that make one suspect the only thing they ever read in their lives was the cover of Teen Magazine then grade said inane scribblings without scarring their precious little egos, and c) bore them to tears with detailed trivia about life in the trenches or how volcano happens.
That’s what I will sign up for soon-ish. No more, no less. I’m not a mercenary.

That’s fine, no one I know wants to force people to carry while teaching, they want to allow it (for those who aren’t klutz and feel more comfortable with that idea than hiding in the cupboard).

[Leo_Krupe]

@HurricaneDitka

What the hell point do you think you’re proving? AFAICT, you’re proving my point. Here, let’s recap. Earlier, you said this:

You asked for cites. I provided three.

My point is that those details are out there, it’s not just “ARM THE TEACHERS!” and that’s the end of it. There are people having fairly detailed and nuanced discussions about the issue, about how to solve some of these tricky problems, if you’d just open your eyes and look for them. From your own Federalist cite, there’s this:

There are “details” out there like you say you want, but instead you prop up strawman arguments like “It’s all “arm the teachers!” (except in all caps) like a knee jerk reaction” and then act unconvinced by the strawman you’ve crafted

Here’s another insightful look into the issue:

https://www.nationalschoolshield.org/media/1844/summary-report-of-the-national-school-shield-task-force.pdf

If you read through that 20-ish page document and still come away with the impression that ‘the pundits don’t or can’t explain some of the details’, then I can only conclude it’s because you don’t want to see the depth of the arguments in support of that position.

Had I simply wanted to do my own research, and answer my own question without taking the time and effort to post on a message board, I would’ve done that. What I wanted was to put the question out there, and have others answer it. Seems like a fair enough deal to me.

[watchwolf49]

I’m hesitant endorsing the idea of having school teachers pack heat … and most of my doubt has been addressed above … however, some other considerations:

1] School teachers are college graduates, and in some places are required to have a certain amount of post-graduate work … so we’re not talking about any yahoos here, but rather some very smart people … an extra 3 hour class in gun safety shouldn’t be intellectually challenging …

2] Concealed carry is off the board … what’s the deterrence if the shooter doesn’t know there’s guns on campus? … when the shooter walks onto the campus we want him to see armed adults looking at him …

Apparently, public schools in Israel have big fences around them and checkpoints to enter maned by an armed guard … something like the US’s airports … we seem glad to pay to protect airline profit margins, we should maybe consider paying to protect our children at school … I hate to bring up an old Simpson’s joke, but we haven’t tried anything yet and nothing seems to work …

[Chimera]

Sort of like a prison then?

Geez, we militarized the police now we’re militarizing our schools. Can we dial this back a bit?

[watchwolf49]

@Chimera

Sort of like a prison then?

Geez, we militarized the police now we’re militarizing our schools. Can we dial this back a bit?

Are fences around schools that uncommon these days …

But I agree we can dial this whole affair back, these shootings are media field days … it would be a shame if these events became so common place as to not be news-worthy … and that might be what it takes to make this a less popular thing to do … there’s a level of glorification the media invests into these shooters that anyone who wants their name in all the paper for a couple of weeks need only shoot something up …

Shooting back is one answer … certainly not the best but it is easy for college graduates (with post graduate work) to buy guns here …

[DWMarch]

@Chimera

How many innocent bystanders are acceptable collateral damage?

In America, as it stands right now? All of them.

[Clothahump]

@Czarcasm

For armed teachers to be an effective deterrent there would have to be enough of them spread out over the campus to make it difficult to avoid them.

1. Are there enough teachers that want to be armed when in school?
2. Who will pay for the proper training?
3. What is the proper training?
4. Will they be screened to make sure that they should be given such a responsibility, the way police are supposed to be screened and, if so, who will pay for this screening?

If the teachers go through concealed carry training, they will be screened. And I’m quite sure that the ones willing to do that would also be willing to go through active shooter training with local law enforcement. I know I would.

[obbn]

Allowing teachers and admin illustrators to be armed is one of the few things we can do that could actually make a difference. I’m not suggesting that we arm EVERY teacher. Let those who want to be armed do so after the necessary background checks And pepper training.

My wife is a teacher, she is also a CCW holder. Instead of allowing her to have the ability to defends herself and her students the administration wants her thoto gets her students into a closet and hope they aren’t discovered. If they’re found, they’re nothing but fish in a barrel.

I feel that people opposed to this idea grade business of teacher actively running towards a shooter and getting into a gun fight. I don’t see it implemented that way. Go ahead and hide, but if a teacher is armed and a shooter mashes their way into their room they have a fighting chance.

There is no guarantee that a with a firearm can stop a shooter, but they certainly have a better chance than trying to defend themselves with words.

The idea here is not to replace the police, but to give the teachers tone to our up a defense unhook the police arrive. Remember when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

To those who keep saying, but but there’s gingt to be students accidentally getting shot all the time, are you serious? We had Mullins if concealed carriers in the country and the streets are not filled with blood because of it.

The time has come to realize that there is so little that can be done to prevent an attack by someone willing to carry one out. The best we can do is be prepared and give our teachers the tools they need to defend themselves and their students.

[k9bfriender]

@HurricaneDitka

It’s a dig at that gun control group that was pushing that phoney statistic about how many school shootings there have been this year. One of the incidents they counted was when a third-grader pulled the trigger on a police gun while the officer was sitting on a bench.

Given that there is an incident where a third grader managed to accidentally discharge the weapon of a police officer, who’s job does not require him to be constantly surrounded by children while being distracted by others, why are we thinking that teachers would be better at securing their guns on them 40 hours a week?

That incident does demonstrate that having more guns in schools makes the students and faculty less safe, not more.

And it does behoove you to go with that number of incidents. 18 a month does get you to where, if there is just one gun per school, the average gun only has 450 years to sit around and trying to stay out of trouble. Less incidents means longer. If we are talking 1 incident a month, then it’s about 9,000 years.

That is the amount of time that a gun will be sitting around, accessible to students who either distract or overpower their teachers. Within reach of smaller children who don’t know better. In the hand of teachers who are not necessarily the best people to have armed.

the teacher said, “There are times I want to bring a gun to school and shoot some people also.”

And that is for just one teacher with one gun per school. In order to be able to rely on using a gun to stop a shooting, you need to have far more teachers armed then that.

Bone took the wrong half of my post with which to quibble, as I was giving you guys the goal posts of 18 preventable school shootings a month to help you to justify militarizing our schools. I was just pointing out that if one wanted to contest that number, it actually makes less sense to justify arming teachers, as I was actually expecting the pro-gun people to try to downplay the incidents. He instead brought up that school shootings were actually more common, but in doing so, also completely disproved the notion that the “only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun”, as his incidents show people stopping a bad guy with a gun without using a gun themselves.

Lets say we go with your plan of arming teachers. If that works out, and there are never any incidents of the teacher losing control of the gun, or losing control of their temper, great, I’ll even admit that it turned out well. If it doesn’t work out, and there are incidents of students of faculty being injured or killed due to the increased presence of guns in schools, how many incidents would you say is too much and we should discontinue this notion?

There are a number of types of incidents to consider. The most obvious is a student getting ahold of a teachers gun, and going on a shooting spree with the gun provided to him. The second is accidental discharges, whether due to a curious young student, mishandling by the teacher, or just shit luck. And the third is teacher use/misuse, anything from a teacher losing their temper and shooting a student (and I’ve seen teachers angry enough that if they’d been armed, the consequences may have been more than a visit to the office. I also have the concern of having a gun means that it is a tool that is convnet to use, where a teacher may shoot a student for disciplinary reasons, breaking up a fight, or for otherwise causing a significant disruption.

It’s an addiction problem. The answer to alcoholism is only more alcohol to an alcoholic. The answer to a drug problem is only more drugs to an addict. When the answer to the gun problem is more guns, it sounds like we need an intervention.

[Czarcasm]

@Horatio_Hellpop

I was discussing this a couple days ago with a substitute teacher, retired federal officer, who is supposed to carry all the time but his school’s county forbids it on school grounds. He makes a convincing case that retired cops/military/rangers, etc. who teach (and there are a lot of them) should have special dispensation regardless of their state or district’s policy. For my part, I think that we’ll see the teacher/student equivalent of all those smartphone videos of cops abusing and shooting black kids for no discernible reason.

There are a lot of them?
How do you know?

[Czarcasm]

@Clothahump

If the teachers go through concealed carry training, they will be screened. And I’m quite sure that the ones willing to do that would also be willing to go through active shooter training with local law enforcement. I know I would.

1. What exactly are they screened for? Are they screened to make sure they are mentally and emotionally healthy enough to wield a weapon in a crisis situation?
2. The fact that you would want to go through active shooter training is good, but to then say that others would want to do the same thing is wishful thinking at best.

[Ann_Hedonia]

@jasg

Many school districts can’t even afford basic school supplies - where in the hell will they get the money to buy a Glock for every teacher?

And how effective will a Glock be against a submachine gun?

[Chimera]

@Ann_Hedonia

And how effective will a Glock be against a submachine gun?

Nobody has a submachine gun. Machine guns are fully automatic, meaning you hold down the trigger and it keeps firing. Semi-automatic rifles, which are legal, fire one round each time you pull the trigger. But so does a revolver.

And the answer is; Only as good as the person holding the gun.

[JXJohns]

@Ann_Hedonia

And how effective will a Glock be against a submachine gun?

The odds of being confronted by a submachine gun NOT being employed by a cop is somewhere between zero and dick.