It is in the news. It is on our minds. We talk about it at work and we talk about it at home. And we are all so glad it did not happen to us. I am, of course, talking about random, unexplained violence, the most recent being the massacre of innocent children in Connecticut. There has been a lot of discussion on what can be done to stop this type of violence. Politicians have used the opportunity to get their names and faces into the media with their typical worthless opinions, mostly implying by controlling and reducing guns we can control violence. I do, as you probably suspected, disagree.
Laws that are designed to legislate guns are just that, laws. Who obeys laws? Law abiding citizens are the ones who will obey laws. If the worse case happened and all guns were taken away from the citizenry (second amendment be damned) then we would take all guns away from law-abiding citizens, but not criminals. Sure, you have heard this before and just assume this is propaganda spewed forth by gun lovers, NRA, and people who believe in the Constitution But there is more to it than that. Simply put, gun ownership reduces violence. It has been statistically proven that locations where concealed carry is authorized, violent crime goes down.
We need to make our schools safer. We need a way to ensure access to the schools is strictly controlled. And we need to ensure that when someone does penetrate they are quickly met and decisively dealt with, up to and including deadly force. Knowing they may be immediately met with deadly force may help keep this slimy little bedbugs of humanity out, for what they want is not the killing, or the fight. They want the recognition. The thought of being remembered as the mass murderer who performed such a heinous act is what motivates them. Not much infamy in walking into a school and Bang! your dead. All that is left is to call waste collection and dispose of the carcass.
The question is, who is going to meet the dirt-bag at the door and stop the assault. I have a few suggestions. First, I think every capable adult employee of the school system should be trained and armed. How about a volunteer force? Off duty police officers, retired police officers, ex-military just to name a few. I would have no problem at all volunteering some of my time to do what I can to ensure my grandchildren come home at the end of the day. I could be wrong, but I think there would be some many trained and qualified individuals who would volunteer that some would have to be turned away. I do not think we would have to squash too many of these bugs before it turned the tide of random violence.
The founding fathers made a point of ensuring that the citizens be armed. I don’t suppose in their wildest imagination they ever considered we would need to be armed for this purpose. But the fact is, we do. Disarming citizens is not the answer. Training and arming responsible citizens is.
Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
15 thoughts on “Teachers With Guns!”
Well, Tom, it looks like this time around, between Eileen and I, you’ve got 78 years of teaching experience that disagree with much of what you say. (But who ever listens to teachers about education anyway?)
Years of teaching experience does not qualify one to speak with any degree of expertise regarding security or law enforcement. And the reasons I have seen given by your and Eileen merely serve to illustrate this point. A teacher throwing his or her body in front of a student is much less effective than a teacher who draws a weapon, fires two round to center mass and one to the head.
It could be handled a lot easier if the intruder didn’t have an AR 15 in the first place.
Anyway, we could go on and on. A good way to baptize the new look of your blog site.
Tough question. I am in favor of limiting the types of guns and mags available not necessarily all guns. As far as arming teachers or having officers on site, I do not think it would be a great deterrent to those who perpetrate these types of terrible crimes. They usually take themselves out anyway.
As a teacher of 30 years and an administrator of 7 years I fall solidly with Mark on this issue. There is no safe way to keep a loaded gun in a classroom. A female teacher has enough trouble finding a place to lock up a purse. Make no mistake, anything not locked up is fair game. If it is locked up at a strategically located site you would be expecting a teacher to abandon 25 children in a crisis situation to fend for themselves. Would never happen! Volunteers is an interesting idea but opens the door to all types of problems. Where can cuts be made to hire a qualified police officer? Should we put guards at every movie theater? Every place of business? Maybe just put the National Guard on every street corner? Where does it end?
Personally, I think these arguments of “difficulties” of arming teachers pale in comparison to the image of a room full of dead children. Weapons can be made secure from children. Children can be taught to respect weapons. I am not going to touch the concept of the difficulties of carrying a purse would be far compounded if I had a gun too.
Ahhh. The old “slippery slope” argument. Many things we consume have regulations and limits. Common sense should be our guide, not gun manufacturers’ propaganda.
We are already on that slippery slope. Over the past ten years we have seen serious erosion of the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments. Government doesn’t decide what rights we retain and what rights they chose to allow us to have. We tell Government what to do. It cannot be any other way. We must take back control of our Government.
It just doesn’t make any logical sense not to limit military style weapons and magazines. Will it completely solve the problem? No. But it would help.
Once we start chipping away at the 2nd amendment it will not stop. Today it doesn’t make sense to limit military style weapons. Tomorrow high powered rifles, the day after semi-automatic pistols. We must limit Government, we must not allow Government to limit us.
The teachers DO NOT have to have weapons ON them. Weapons can be placed strategically all around the school in SAFES built into the concrete for safety. Not all teachers need to be trained, but their placement troughout the school is important as some will be just be in the wrong place. Training should done FREE by the US MILITARY, NOT THE LOCAL POLICE. The armarment should be 9 millimeter, glock, semi-automatics with a large magazine and a spare magazine, also loaded. Idea is, if something like that occurs again, there will be rapid deployment of trained individuals to neutralize the perp before he has time to empty his weapon and then calmly reload again. Probably not every life would be saved as response would take a couple of minutes, BUT, the number of killings would be significantly reduced. A head shot at 15 feet is a VERY EASY SHOT — IF, the person has had plenty of range practice. The head shot is important, as, like in this case, the perp may have a bullet proof vest on.
I agree. I would stand guard as well. Taking away all weapons in America is impossible. So I say arm the right people and protect our children.
Yea, OK, Armed guards may help in some cases. Obviously, it hasn’t helped in others. Arming teachers is the worst idea yet. Besides the obvious safety hazard in itself, kids learn when they feel like they are in a safe, welcoming environment. A teacher with a loaded gun in a shoulder holster doesn’t show that. If you think that would make them feel safer, you haven’t been around kids much.
Then there’s the money thing. We have schools with no art, no music, no teacher raises, etc. Now we are thinking about spending money on armed guards. Could you get enough volunteers? Who would screen them? Could that be more of a hazard if you got the wrong people? All of these concerns would take time and money away from education.
But let’s consider it. ALONG WITH COMMON SENSE GUN AND AMMO CONTROL.
I would rather the children expereince the discomfort of seeing a teacher with a gun, something they will adjust to, and be alive than to not discomfort them, and allow them to die.