Should teachers carry concealed weapons in class?

Great Debates
61

Which can be extended into “if this country is a place where people feel the need to bring a gun…”

Schools are not some sort of magic hallowed halls - they’re a building where some percentage of children attempt to learn, a larger percentage of children attempt to stay awake, and the balance are completely worthless no-goodniks. There is no innocence in schools in this age (maybe there never was, except in a celluloid fantasy) - even in the sleepy affluent Pleasant Valley Sunday suburbs like I live in, they are filled with drugs, sex, fights, thefts, death threats against teachers, and yes guns among the students. One teacher even received death threats from the students, credible enough that the police arrested the kids, for steadfastly wearing a “George Bush 2004” pin on her shirt. I guess they must have been Dopers…the point being violence isn’t serious to kids these days (“these days” perhaps encompassing “since the 1980’s”) , and when the school sits with its hands tied and others wave their hands at pie in the sky plans to “do sumptin’”, some teachers feel they need to indeed take control and responsibility of their own lives and protect themselves.

I think the argument of “what if the teacher lets the gun lay around” is somewhat of a strawman. If you have a CCW holstered on you, there is no opportunity to let it lay around unless you consciously choose to leave it for someone else to pick up. I suppose that some kid could steal the teacher’s purse, and if she had it in there then that would be ugly. And people do make mistakes as well.

Count me as a gun-rights advocate who’s on the fence about this. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but then again I’m also not sure that it will actually cause any trouble. Personally, I’d split the difference - I would make a second level of CCW which had screening at the level of a police officer or security guard (in my State, CCW holders already are screened at that level), and require large amounts of training and proof of safe ownership. Maybe a week course of defensive use, carry practices, practical examples, etc. like offered already. If a teacher receives the same firearms training level as a police officer, and has the same screening level, then it’s much harder to argue against them having a CCW in school.

However, one thing I’ll point out is that there probably already are some teachers with concealed guns right now, just carrying them illegally, out of fear for their life from the kids they have to teach in order to make a living, even though they face being fired or imprisoned for doing so (Zoe pointed out that she knew of one case although she also did not mention what happened after she turned him in, I have to presume he was fired).

62

This one’s a small school thirty miles north of the nearest police station.

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This seems pretty reasonable to me. I still don’t think classroom teachers having guns is a good idea, but if this standard were met and if parents and teachers had the opportunity to opt out, I would be less opposed. If other folks are comfortable having their kids in a school with gun-carrying teachers, that’s their business. I just don’t think it should be forced on parents who don’t want their kids in that situation.

64

I also commented on the “securing the campus” bit, and the notions of how much this will cost in insurance is entirely relevant to another of your posts:

So, are expenses (including insurance expenses) relevant or not? Suppose it’s cheaper to have an insured, armed school official than to secure the campus with a fence and metal detectors. In a worst-case scenario (a deranged student brings a gun and starts shooting), neither defense is perfect, anyway. What’s your suggestion for a cost-effective “investment in prevention”, and it’s not sufficient to simply sniff about how unfortunate it is that expenses must be considered.

65

That may be the case, Una-but this still seems to me like a disaster waiting to happen.

66

I had a social studies teacher whom I always found it odd that whenever there was a fight he was the one who would show up on the scene. He wasn’t a particularly big guy or anything, but for some reason he was always the one there to break it up.

After I graduated and got into law enforcement I found out that he was also a special deputy with the county sheriffs department. He was carrying a revolver at school, and the school knew about it.

Keep in mind that this was way back in the late 70’s, and I went to a school with no incidences of violence other than the occasional fist fight.

The training and requirements to be a special deputy at the time were no more than what it takes to be an armed guard today.

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Test.

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This is a very good idea. They’ve obviously learned the lesson of that incident in Israel a while back where two people tried to copy the VT massacre and the teachers shot them.

Perhaps I can recast the question by highlighting an individual: Barack Obama.

Obama has two young children. Should he become President, his children will get Secret Service protection. The Secret Service agents will be armed. Do you have a problem with that? If not, how can you have a problem with teachers being armed?

69

Secret Service agents, I would imagine, have significantly more training. Not only in terms of gun safety and in ability, but also as to when to use a gun and how to react under stressful situations and under fire. A Secret Service agent’s job revolves around knowing where their gun is at all times, and I would imagine specifically precludes them from leaving it somewhere at any point at all. While an agent is much more likely to be pegged as carrying a weapon, there’s a pretty significantly lower chance that a student will try to take it off them, as well as a lower chance that they’ll be able to. A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent is to be expected, as well as the idea that they are on the side of the law, so should an event occur where they will have to draw their guns, they are very much less likely to be shot by a teacher or law enforcement, and I would imagine have credentials to prove that they are not the nutjobs in question.

In addition, the chance that a sitting President’s children will be at risk of requiring armed defence is significantly higher than that of an average child.

70

I’m on the fence on this as well. As long as the teachers are properly trained in how to handle both a weapon and a potential situation, I don’t really have a problem with it.

On the other hand, I’m not 100% sure the risk of a school shooting is worth the risk of arming teachers. While it’s true that schools are not magical hallowed halls anymore, they’re not all that risky either. I’d be surprised if insurance rates for schools involved didn’t increase due to potential increased risk. I’ve also (and this is personal opinion) never been a fan of adding more guns to a gun related problem, preferring instead for prevention and planning.

On the whole, I’m going to look at this as a piece of feel good legislation that will in all likelihood result in absolutely nothing.

71

So you’d be happy for teachers to have guns if they had appropriate training?

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Secret Service agents are law enforcement and security personnel. Teachers complain (rightly) enough about not having enough time for and not being paid sufficiently for all the training they have to do. Add police-style training requirements on top of that and then force them to be distracted from a surveillance-style job by teaching a class? Not feasible.

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Yes, that is the only problem I raised, and as such if solved I would have no problem at all.

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Why would they need SS or police-style training? They’re teachers, not SS agents. But I suggest additional gun training would be another matter. And no one is forcing people to be armed. Unlike glee, who couldn’t be armed even if he wanted to be.

Issues of training aside, if teachers want to be armed they should be allowed to be armed.

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Because you are the one who suggested that what is good enough for Obama is good enough for all children. I am waiting on tenterhooks to hear how you propose to provide Secret Service protection for millions of shool children.

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No. The question was to illustrate that if you’re okay with guns to protect the children of POTUS, you should be okay with guns to protect other children. SS training is a red herring.

77

I fail to see how the training level of the gun-carrying protector is a red herring.

For another analogy, the children of POTUS are presumably driven around by a trained chauffeur, who may even have advanced drivers training (high speed, evading attackers, etc…). But by your logic, training doesn’t matter. So we should be fine with children’s schoolbuses being driven by 16-year-olds who’ve only had their license for a week.

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Balls. Training is no more a red herring than actually carrying guns is.

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Your gun nutism is not at all convincing, The suggestion would distill down to having trained armed guards in school. Teachers can not all be trained or convinced to carry in class. Somehow people envision teachers as these placid .capable and in control people. Not true. They are a slice of population much like any other. They have emotional , drinking and anger problems. Guns in school is bad.

80

“Guns in school is bad.” Wow. That is some really hardcore, in-depth, analytical reasoning there.

Like I have already said, a school is just another building. The same kids who are at school also spend plenty of time at malls, at shops, and out in public, where there is just as much if not more risk of a shooting happening than in a school, and there are people carrying handguns out in the public and in malls and in shops and other places where kids are going to be - how is it that the kids are somehow more at risk in a school with CC-ers than in a mall with CC-ers? Answer that, why don’t you? Can anyone give a good answer to that? Can anyone even prove that there are more kids killed in school shootings than in mall shootings or fast-food-restaurant shootings?

Someone who is licensed to carry their handgun, should be able to carry it at work. If they work in a dangerous environment, they have the right to be able to protect themselves.

There are schools where kids bring guns, shivs, brass knuckles and all manner of weapons. There are a lot of really dangerous schools out there. To say that the adults who work in them should be unable to protect themselves, is fundamentally the same thing as the general idea that people should be banned from carrying legal handguns - in other words, the Washington, DC type thinking. The “criminal’s lives are more valuable than law-abiding citizen’s lives” thinking.

The anti-gun movement tries to gain every foot-hold that it possibly can. Like any movement, it has a strategy, and its strategy is to chip away, slowly, at gun rights.