I cannot realy bring myself to debate this because on this side of the atlantic it honestly looks like paradoy. And by the way, I am probably in the top couple of per cent of pro gun rights Britons*, in tune with my general lassiez faire nature.
So this is a genuine GQ thread - I just want an honest summary of how the NRA’s reaction here is generally being received in America. Is it a play to just their more hardcore members, or are 75% of folk going “well, that guy has a point there. Let’s have armed guards in schools for kids aged in single digits”?
*That was phrased very poorly. What I mean is that 98 or 99% of British people will be more anti-gun rights than me. And btw 20 or 30% of us have shotgun licenses (and are permitted to let others borrow our guns in certain circumstances), so we’re not all that gun free you know…
I’m an NRA member. It is without question the stupidest shit they have ever come up with.
I’ve been trying to figure out when the gun-rights lobby lost their fucking minds, but I really don’t know any more. I don’t have any figures on precisely what percentage of gun-rights supporters actually think this is a good or even viable idea, but I’d be interested to see that data as well.
My impression has been that most people here found the speech/idea ludicrous. But I think there is also, which there may not be any of across the pond, a real sense of disappointment that the NRA couldn’t come up with anything better. I think people here desperately want a solution to this sort of violence–but one that everyone can get behind. There was hope that the NRA et al might have brought something more constructive to the table, and maybe actually moved things in the direction of bipartisan agreement.
I’m a little surprised that people are so concerned about this, as if it’s a major change.
Most American high schools have had armed, uniformed police for the past 30 yrs.
From a simple , factual point of view (hey, this thread is still in GQ )-- it should be no major issue to post policemen in schools. They are already on duty at half the schools in the country.
Right now, everybody is still in shock from the tragedy, and arguing from emotion, not logic.A lot of the controversy is because the policy was proposed by the NRA , an organization which hits deep at the American psyche–both gun lovers and haters.
People wouldn’t be so upset about the suggestion to post cops in schools to protect kids, if it had come as a result of, say, sexual predators.
The NRA is no longer a gun rights lobby. It’s a gun manufacturers’ lobby. Which is why there is this huge disconnect between the membership and the executives. Their goal is no longer to reasonably defend the 2nd Amendment. Their goal is now to sell as many guns as possible. Which is why their standard reaction to any gun incidents lately has been pure FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). Panic as many gun owners as possible so they BUY MORE GUNS! And, unfortunately, it works, as the rise in gun and ammo sales in the week after Newtown proves.
In an airport/shopping mall, you have two guards in each entrance, one inside stationary withing a “node” and a roving guard for every 50 meters of linear distance.
In a walled school, assuming you have just one entrance to the grounds, you need just two. If it’s an open set-up, have a guard in each small building or a 1:100 guard:student ratio in a large complex of buildings. It shouldn’t be too hard to split the monthly salary of a guard among 100 paying students.
CCTV’s and other efficient detection/communication system will cut the number of guards needed by more than half.
A lot of schools in larger cities already have security staff. Adding security to suburb and rural schools could be done, but it will be expensive. Costs could be kept down by using security cameras. You’d mostly just need a few guys to watch the monitors in shifts and respond to any problems. There’s no need to actually patrol the hallways with a bunch of guards.
I attended a typical large,suburban high school in a typical large midwestern city in the 1970’s.
It was 90% white, 75% went on to college
No gangs, no serious problems. Some drugs were available, mostly mild ,pot and hash.
We had one or two cops who walked around the building and drove around the large parking lots and stadium
Today,the school is more diverse, but it also offers the prestigious International Baccalauriate program.
In 1995, I took my new wife there to show her my old school, and we were stopped by the cop in the parking lot . He hesitated, but finally believed my story, and said we could drive thru, but would not be given permission to enter the building.
This is not a new idea. The role of a school resource officer was defined in legislation in 1968. The US Justice Department has a process for proving grants to fund school resource officers.
The NRA has suggested expanding school resource officers, and in this emotional time there have been very strong reactions to that suggestion.
The high school I taught at had an assigned police officer who was there pretty much every day. This was normal for all the high schools in our area, I believe, and I taught in a pretty decent suburb school district of Houston.
But this is high school and the officer mostly dealt with the students, not intruders on the property. I would be surprised to find an armed officer in any elementary or middle school.
What we have now is not what the NRA is talking about. A school resource officer is not an armed guard dealing with day-to-day security. He does a great deal more than that: investigates potential crimes, educates kids and teachers, takes kids to jail, consuls with administration on potential problems. He’s not on campus 100% of the time, and he’s not patrolling but maybe 50% of the time that he is on campus. If you want armed security actively monitoring for the entire school day, you’re going to have to hire at least a second part time guy and redefine the job of the guy you’ve got. If you want them there as long as kids are on campus–which, in a high school, is at least 90 minutes before school starts and at least a couple hours after school ends–it’s going to take even more.
And that’s high schools. The problem is that the NRA is talking about putting armed guards in elementary schools. For many, this is very impractical. Elementary schools are often tiny–a couple hundred kids–and totally open-plan, with doors all opening onto breezeways and a free standing library, cafeteria, and gym. (and probably portables). An armed guard is going to be a huge addition to a tiny budget in those circumstances, and the marginal increase in safety provided seems trivial.
Where are you getting that percentage from? It sounds very high to me, and Googling suggests that the number of shotgun licence holders is more like 1% of the UK population - around 600,000 .
If there are only 17,000 officers assigned to schools, they aren’t in nearly half of the schools all the time. There were 98,000 public schools in 2009-2010.
Now I wonder if the cop who teaches DARE in the four schools here is considered “assigned” to each one (it’s a very part time thing, maybe an hour or two per building per week).
Teachers who are licensed should be allowed to carry guns in schools. And before the usual chorus of “but what if a student steals the teacher’s gun” starts - Utah and Kansas already allow teachers to come armed to schools, and one school district in Texas does as well. No incidents yet.
I don’t personally know anyone who thinks it’s a good idea. This article does explain that we do have police in about 1/3rd of schools right now, and the cost of some Federal program that gave block grants to localities to put police in the other 2/3rds would not be all that expensive in the scheme of the Federal budget (less than $4bn/year.)
That being said, as was mentioned upthread, “School Resource Officers” as police assigned to schools are typically called cover a wide range of duties including educating kids on drugs and gangs and various other non-law enforcement tasks. So right now the 1/3rd are not full time guards and you’d have to change the nature of their assignments to make them full time guards.
The district I work for has its own police department with more than 40 cops on staff. They are full police officers that have the jurisdiction to act outside the schools as well, but the dept is fully funded by the district. Each of the 11 high schools has its own full time officer, the middle and elementary schools have rotations.
Having an armed officer at schools is just a normal part of school life in the US, no one blinks twice seeing one. I’d be uncomfortable if it were a generic security guard though, rather than a sworn police officer who meets the standards of professional training by the state.
As a teacher I shudder at the idea of teachers packing heat, I wouldn’t trust half my coworkers with a butter knife.
A lot of people have pointed out that there was an armed policeman at Columbine on the day of the shootings, but it didn’t prevent the killings. The NRA held their event on the Friday before Xmas, a day when lots of people aren’t paying attention, they were able to feed their base the talking points they like without being serious about the proposal. I doubt you’ll hear much more about it from them.
Ultimately, this is another red/blue America divides. I don’t know a single person in my private life who isn’t for gun control, but they are clearly out there.