Stories from the BYU newsletter and the Salt Lake City Tribune about the law that has been passed allowing teachers from pre-school on up to carry concealed guns in school.
Frankly, on the face of it, this law seems kind of nutty and potentially dangerous if a kid lifts a gun out of a teacher’s purse or a desk drawer. Are Salt Lake City schools really this dangerous that it makes good public policy sense to have guns in school?
Concealed gun bill passes Senate committee
It would be wise to require teachers and staff who wish to carry to take extra training with an emphasis on firearm retention, and to require them to carry only on their person in a retention holster, front pocket, or deep carry (Smartcarry, Thunderwear, etc.).
Given that, it’s a good idea.
I certainly would be looking for a private school to send my kid to where the teachers didn’t carry guns.
Well, that’s what freaking metal detectors are for. What next, McDonald’s employees with guns? Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is an idiot.
On the one hand, a properly trained teacher would be able to prevent any Columbine-type incidents from happening again.
On the other, that is in violation of so many common sense rules it leaves me speechless. Gun in a school zone? Nope, unless you’re a cop. Deadly weapon in school? Only if you’re a cop.
Overall, even though I am vehemently pro-gun, I think this is a bad idea. It’s not like pilots where you have a door protecting you first, you’re right in the open, and a determined attack would take the gun right off you.
It would make more sense to have legitimate police officers on campus at all times, but I’m sure that’s not in the budget.
coming from a pretty well-regarded school where a member of the faculty “stands accused” of shooting a police officer last year, during a domestic dispute, i am rather wary of teachers carrying guns. i don’t think i’d like to attend a school where it was permitted.
that said, i think it ought to be up to the organization governing the school that decides whether it’s allowed.
as far as how good an idea it is, it sorta seems like in some cases it would be like looking around the powder keg by the light of a match. especially in schools where violence is already a part of life. if a teacher was skilled enough in a handgun’s use to prevent its use against him or his students, i’d say sure, let him protect himself. i have my doubts, however, that many people are, and i sort of feel that it’s a bad idea to add a weapon to what could be a volatile environment. especially if the kids know about it.
Hmm. It seems to me that the best way to dissuade nuts with guns is to have non-nuts with guns. IMHO.
I’m sure school shootings in Utah will decline sharply. 
I can’t find a cite at the moment. But this strikes me as highly unnecessary. How many instances of school violence are there in a given year, really? So many that teachers need guns to defend themselves? I doubt it. High school is fucked up enough for students who DON’T have to worry that their teacher is packing a piece.
On a side note here, I just need to ask:
Do you people really worry about who’s “packing a piece”? I carry mine all the time, and nobody has a clue. I don’t see people walking around being nervous, so I don’t understand that statement at all, since it doesn’t seem to be borne out in fact.
Can someone explain it to me?
Well, there’s a real big difference between rrunning into some random stranger carrying an unnoticed firearm, and going to a school knowing that every teacher carries one.
I’m not really a huge fan of this idea either but I do have one question to ask. What makes police officers so magical that having them carry firearms in school is acceptable?
Marc
They’re police officers. They’ve been trained, they’re law-enforcement officers, and if they can’t carry their piece in schools, then we got some real trust problems to talk about.
Well, for one thing, they’re extensively trained to use them, as well as to handle the situations under which their use might be required… Last I checked, firearms training was not part of a teacher’s usual education.
When I was at High School, it was quickly going from the open, creativity-promoting place that it was in Freshman year, to the rather uptight place in late Senior year where expressing creativity was one of the better ways to find yourself in counseling. When I started, a tragic war story got me one of the top grades in the class, and a horror story landed in the school paragon. If I hadn’t had the good fortune of being seen in a fairly positive light by the end of senior year, having someone read the story I was working on in my binder could have landed me in counseling. Someone catching a glimpse of the firearm sketches for the previously-mentioned war story could have gotten me expelled. The place was starting to feel more and more oppressive and prison-like, and my brother told me it just got worse the next couple years.
In my late senior year, ideas like this were tossed around. The only one seriously proposed was to have a mandatory number of teachers armed. As someone still in school, I thought “no fucking way.” The atmosphere was already getting uncomfortable there, and having a large number of teachers being required to carry handguns would make things MUCH worse. On the other hand, for the last bit of senior year there was an armed police officer stationed in the school durring all school hours, and that was fine. In fact, it seemed to get most people there to be more friendly with police, because they had a good example of one being a ‘normal person’ instead of just a ticket-dealer, in addition to making them feel safer.
However, allowing a teacher that can qualify for a CCP, that might work. I’d be a little iffy, but it shows some qualification. If slightly more stringent guidelines are laid down, like how the gun may be carried (I would say; strapped in holster, hammer down, ‘safe’, and no round chambered), more extensive background checks, and maybe even more extensive handgun training by local law enforcement… Then I think that could work. However, I know that any armed non-police/security people on campus can easily make the students less comfortable. It might be slightly irrational to make a distinction between police and non-police, but people are accustomed to seeing police carrying firearms, and it’s almost instinctual in most people to consider the police to be “the good guys,” and the perception of the students is an important factor.
Best scenario I can think of? Teachers that pass qualifications (And probably, maintain that qualification regularly) to handle handguns get a lockbox in their room, or in the office, where they keep their gun, and do not take it out durring school hours unless needed. Something that’s secure and doesn’t give the students the sight of an armed teacher at the front of the class, but still let’s the teacher have it if necessary. And for added safety, require them to be either taken home when the teachers leave, or locked in the school safe.
This probably isn’t a typical liberal thing to say 
- but what use is an unloaded gun? I know it sounds like a good middle ground, but if the teacher has to scramble to find bullets and things in an emergency, he/she won’t be much help.
Same for this idea, I think. If an armed student turns up in the classroom, the teacher wouldn’t be able to go into a lockbox for a gun. If the students know about this, it’d just be a place to get extra weapons and ammo.
It may seem totally unrelated, and I’m not aware of it ever happening, but I wonder: if teachers are able to get guns, might we someday hear about a TEACHER shooting up a school?
Yep. You make every single situation that you walk into potentially deadly. The lives of everyone around you is hostage to your stability and mental state. Now your mental state is probably fine. But why should the people around be forced to trust in that all of the time?
What gives you the right to bring deadly force into the lives of others without their permission? without even their knowledge?
Of all of the people you know, how many would you trust to handle a gun in your presense? Half of them? less? How do I know that you are one of the trustworthy? Should I just assume that if you find yourself trustworthy enough to play with deadly force in my presense that I should to?
If you really need to have the gun for your safety, then wear it openly, so that everyone else can know that you are not to be messed with. Be honest about your willingness to make every situation that you experience a potentially deadly one.
Color me confused. The issue as outlined in the editorial linked seems to be a different issue than the one being discussed in this thread. It seems to me that the editorial was addressing the law: those who have concealed carry permits not to be denied carrying their weapon wherever they happen to be. The issue that’s being discussed in this thread seems to be something entirely different: gun control in general and violence (or lack thereof) in Utah’s schools.
I said “no round chambered” not “unloaded.” You can have a magazine loaded without chambering a round. It simply means that you have to cycle the action to load a round and prepare the weapon to fire. Might seem like a small deal, but if someone lunges for a handgun in a holster, it can make a difference in stopping them from shooting the owner with it…
There are some quick-access lockboxes designed for handguns that only take a second or two to get into, if you know the combination. As it is, though, very few major school shootings occur in classrooms. The prefered targets are more public areas. Halls, cafeterias, libraries, etc. And if there are multiple teachers with these boxes, that rather eliminates that threat.
As for getting extra weapons and ammo, perhapse you missed the “lock” part of lockbox? 
Most are combo locks, I think, since that’s usually the more secure method. I think there are some that are two-step, even. A key-lock that the teacher can lock when they have to leave the room, and a quick-combo lock that has to also be done to open it. It’s a pretty secure method.
Teachers can get guns already. In fact, they can get them more easily than students can. They’re just not allowed to bring them onto school grounds, usually… But if you’re determined to shoot up the place, I kind of doubt that you’d be paying much mind to whether what you’re doing is legal or not.
I suppose I should clarify now that the options I listed, including the “best” idea, were not what I think should be done, merely what I figured would be the best scenario if teachers were allowed to bring guns onto campus. Personally, I think it wouldn’t help much, and would only make things feel worse to the students. A police officer would be more appropriate, likely better skilled, and less disrupting.
But while I think of it, if getting a CCP allows one to carry a handgun onto school grounds (As I think it does for some states, and as it seems Utah just decided to allow), then it seems like teachers would be able to bring one along, if they have a permit. I also think that if a teacher even hints about the idea of their handgun as, say, a suggestion for the students to stay behaved, then that teacher should be out of there. But if they’ve qualified for a CCP, then they get the same protection allowed in law as everyone else.
As it is, having teachers carry would have minimal impact on security. Major school shootings are very rare, and many have been in circumstances where having armed teachers wouldn’t have helped any. In Columbine, an armed guard (Sheriff, I think?) didn’t even manage to stop things (Though he was rather significantly out-gunned). But who knows, an armed teacher -might- have stopped things, once they were inside.
It’s kind of a twisted matter, really. Since it’s not a matter of the school deciding to arm the teachers, but simply letting the teachers take advantage of the same law that everyone else does, then I’m okay with that. I don’t think it will make much of a difference either way, though.
I think it’s a good idea. I will continue to do so until and unless someone explains to me exactly what the downside of this is. Nobody seems to making making any serious attempt to do that, just dismissing it with a sneer, “That’s Crazy. You’re an idiot.”
Actually, the OP did make an attempt with this:
It’s concealed carry. I presume that leaving it in a desk drawer or unattended purse would still be verboten.
I think it is a really bad idea.
As a student, I would be pretty upset knowing that my teacher didn’t trust me to the point that she is acknowledges that she may well shoot me at some time in the future. It just adds to an environment of fear and mistrust. Plus, I would be bothered by the fact that carrying a gun would be the most increadably forbidden thing possible for me as a student, and yet my teachers can do it all they want. When one group of people carries deadly force and another doesn’t, it leads to bad feelings and worse. Finally, when students are treated like children/animals/inmates, they will do their best to live up to that reputation because they feel powerless and trapped.
I also just plain don’t trust these people’s judgment. A teacher with a gun is different than man on the street with a gun because they are in a supervisory position. Anyway, if I show up with my brother’s realist toy gun from Japan accidently slipped in my backpack, it’s one thing if I am expelled. It’s another if my teacher up and shoots me.