We need concealed carry in our schools

[Old TexMex]

My job is the protection of high value targets in exposed locations/ activities, but the thought of a madman is the threat that actually can cause me loss of sleep. Thugs, fools and plotters I have a reasonable handle on, but an insane kid or suicide bomber...I just don't know.
Maybe a system like Isreal has, but this that happened in CT. was such madness.

 

[silentflyer]

Horriable situation, again gun laws only work to deter honest citizens.

That being said, since the days of Plato, arrms were left at the door of places of education, it will be a hard sell to the education establishment, and teachers too change that.

 

[Fourkeeps]

It is a tragedy....one of cultural disintigration. No longer are children taught right fro wrong, ettiquette , manners, consideration for others ...or even the thought of a higher authority who may hold you actions acountable. We have here the Son of an Uber Liberal teacher who in fact owned the firearms he stole to commit the crimes.

Here is another sad fact....Homeland security has been dishing out 200 million a year to various towns thought out the usa to fortify against terrorist atacks...the problem is it has been waisted on everything BUT security. The school should have been locked down after the bell and all people entering should have gone to a single check point to enter (where they would be met by a magnatometor and two armed security aids). This certainly would have been covered under budget for Newtown Ct.

 

[Buffalohunter60]

I have heard a lot of good points that could make it harder for a criminal to commit such a horrible crime against totally innocent children. I know I am retired and would volenteer some of my time to serve as a guard. I think guards should blend like sky marshels...you never know who they are......lock down the school at a certain time and have people that can respond to a nut case and do what needs to be done. We have many well trained young men coming out of the military taht are already highly trained to react to terrorists (seals and delta) It would be a very boring job and you can never protect any place 100%...but you may be able to stop this person before they kill too many people. I am at a loss ....its hard to believe that someone can sink to that level and do that much damage to people that have done nothing to them...we will never know why.......I do know that drugs have altered the brain of many young people and I had personal experience with my own son to see how it can alter a personality and turn a normal person into a killer....it cost him his life...but thank God no one else was killed and he is in a better place because he could not beat it and never should have started down that road. We are too easy on drug pushers, we need to deal with them like Tonga does.....a trial...if guilty and execution and its not splattered all over the news. Sometimes I think our negative news does not help the situtation...we get very little poasitive news. These are tough times for many people...but our fathers and Grandfathers faces tough times and came through it ok....The big difference I see in the world today vs my world is the introduction of mind altering drugs and it has unleashed violence like I have never see when I grew up. Prayers for the people involved in this tragidy and the scars will last their life time.

 

[Sledge276]

Guess the shooter didn't read "...possessing a firearm or deadly weapon on school grounds is a class D felony, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, a $5,000 fine, or both. A person is guilty of this crime when, knowing they are not licensed or privileged to do so, a person possesses the weapon (1) in or on public or private elementary or secondary school property"

They might as well have put up a sign saying, "Attention Criminals: Legally licensed handgun carriers are forbidden to carry on these premises under penalty of law. No one here has any power to stop your criminal activity. We are easy targets, practically sitting ducks, just waiting to be your victims."

 

[7shooter]

Banning legally licensed carry permit holders from schools is a dangerous policy. The Force Sciences Institute had a recent article that reported that over 50% of the mass shootings in the U. S. were in schools and colleges. John Lott's research shows that virtually all mass shootings both in the U.S. and internationally took place in gun free zones.

I am going to a wrestling tournament today in a junior high school to watch my 14 year old grandson and will therefore not be carrying. The next day I will be going to a gymnastics competition at a private non school facility to watch my 12 year old grandaughter compete. I will be carrying there as will her father. It's obvious to me which grandchild will be safer.

We need the Israeli model for carry in our schools.

 

[nipster]

I agree, the idiotic laws preventing legally armed employees from carrying needs to end,.also we need metal detectors at all schools.

 

[Lost Lake]

I just learned of this last night and my heart and prayers go out to those poor souls in Connecticut. As a parent of three fabulous children this really hits me hard.

I agree we should allow carrying by licensed persons in schools. If people that work at the school want to legally carry we should let them.

And I think there should be a response cabinet, much like a fire extinguisher cabinet, that houses the tools necessary to combat an armed intruder. Perhaps it holds mace, tear gas, an assault rifle, a taser, whatever. When something like this happens we need to get tools in the hands of those on the scene to squelch the threat.

 

[crofoot629]

Well, I'm "armed Security" when I'm dropping and picking up my grade schoolers. I also volunteer quite a bit of time at their school. I'm always armed.

I hate to say it but part of it is my fear of an Active Shooter.

My wife and kids just left for the mall. My wife was smart enough to come up with the idea that they wouldn't go near the food court. The shooters like mass targets.

Emory

 

[Fourkeeps]

one more thing, i'd like to add....the more I hear the stranger this sounds...I can't picture this woman owning an ar15 and a glock...it's not your typical home defense set for women. I am wondering if there is more to this...ie...did she purchase the firearms for one of her sons did someone fraudulently purchase in her name and she found out leading to the fight with her son? many questions here...

 

[snubbyfan]

I'm thinking at least one armed guard with maybe a couple of armed volunteers. Retired military, retired Leos or anyone who can prove proficiency and situational awareness. Even certain people on disability, they can watch monitors or entries for suspicious characters and report them via walkie talkies. They're getting paid by the gov't, they can do something worthwhile. I would.

 

[66Park]

I was a middle school teacher in the NYS public school system in upstate NY. No less than 80% of the teachers I worked with were incompetent in teaching their respective academic areas, evidenced by the district's consistent annual state rating as a "school in need". No less than 80% ... that's a conservative % from my experience. I would not have trusted a single staff member in my building to be trained with a firearm ... most of my co-workers were incapable of independently crafting and presenting cohesive lesson plans that resulted in student learning as part of their job duties. Taking lousy teachers and giving them firearms training? Forget it.

I think hiring a couple armed security guards might be a better solution than depending on teachers to fight off an armed criminal.

 

[Buffalohunter60]

I think hiring a couple armed security guards might be a better solution than depending on teachers to fight off an armed criminal.

Peter, I agree 100%...one of the problems being funding...in many towns we can barely fund present services, there is no moiney for it and in these economic times, I do not see that changing anytime soon.
I know there will be a clammor by the anti gun group to use this tragidy to try and take firearms away from law abiding citizens (its already starting) As tragic as this horendous act is...this is played out thousands of times each year in much smaller numbers, we just do not hear about it.....another thing we do not hear about are the crimes stopped by armed citizens on a daily basis. I dug up some figures to get a realistic picture of what we are facing.
The numbers that the anti-gun crowd use to punctuate their call for more useless gun restrictions and the ultimate banning of all guns are a little more than 4,000 children killed by guns each year in the United States. (not to minimize the tragidy of even one death of a child.) This number includes 17- to 19-year-old children. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's national crime statistics, 75 percent of these 4,000 children were killed while involved in gang activities.
You see, if a 17-year-old rapes or murders your daughter, a million moms will demand he be tried as an adult. But when the thug gets himself killed in a gang fight, why then the little innocent must be included in their list.
When you throw out suicides and crime-related deaths, you arrive at a number of about 150 children killed in gun accidents last year. And you have to throw out crime-related deaths, because criminals will not be affected by gun laws and restrictions. After all, just consider the recent gun deaths of five Wendy's employees in New York City.
So, consider that 800 children drowned in swimming-pool accidents during this same time period and, perhaps, your perspective will change a little.
The statistics they refuse to look at are those numbers of crimes that were stopped by armed citizens in this country every year.
There have been more than 15 state and national studies conducted on the number of crimes that were stopped by armed citizens since 1976, the most detailed and comprehensive of which was performed by Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in 1988.
Here are some examples:
A 1976 study by the state of California showed 3,052,717 crimes stopped by armed citizens in that year alone. A U.S. Gallup survey showed 1,621,377 crimes halted by armed citizens in 1993. A Los Angeles Times study found that 3,609,682 crimes were stopped in the United States in 1994 by armed homeowners and ordinary citizens. A Police Foundation study found 2,730,000.

And the aforementioned Kleck/Gertz study, which received the Michael J. Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology, found that, through the years 1989 to 1993, 6,374,655 crimes were stopped by American citizens protecting their families and themselves with guns.

So, in a five-year period, more than 6 million U.S. citizens prevented rape, murder, assault, robbery and other crimes from happening to themselves and/or someone else.

It is all those people, children included, for whom Charlton Heston raised his musket and said "From my Cold Dead hands")

 

[Neumann]

Even the most closed societies have problems with mass attack violence.

There was also a horrendous knife attack in a school in China today. 22 children were slashed.

Knife-wielding man injures 22 children in China - Courant.com

Clearly, the current measures are not working and we need a more aggressive stance in defense....

China does not have armed guards in schools, nor anywhere else in a visible sense. Tiananmen Square has soldiers in a concealed barracks, ready on a moments notice, and plain clothes agent mingle with visitors practically everywhere. Uniformed police are usually unarmed. In China, crime is regarded with disgust, but rebellion of any sort is taken seriously.

 

[zoom6zoom]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Utah allow teachers with CHP's to carry at school?

 

[Rufus]

I am a retired school administrator, and, as you can well imagine, this incident hits pretty close to home for me. I spent 11 years working in high schools, 1 year in middle school, 4 years in central administration, and 17 years in elementary schools. When I first began my career, we had required fire drills that we had to document for the state fire marshall. Because we were in Texas, we also frequently had tornado drills (I really worried about tornados!). Not until Columbine did we ever worry about "code red" or "lock-down" drills.

As it became more apparent that schools needed to add drills that involved the potential to have to lock down, the planning became more complex. For every plan that we would develop, I could find ways to breach the plan. It became very apparent that no matter how complex our plan, there was always a way to punch a hole in it. That did not keep us from planning just the same, but in my heart, I knew that if a "nut" really wanted to cause trouble, he/she could probably find a way.

By all account, the school in Newtown did everything right. The fact is that the gunman broke through the front glass, he was not admitted by school staff and he did not just stroll in. In spite of all the planning, he got in and he did his damage. That's the fact.

It is very easy to come up with very simple, easy to understand solutions to very complex and difficult problems. The trouble with these easy, simple to understand solutions is that they are usually wrong.

As I stated earlier, this incident strikes very close to home for me. During my tenure as an elementary school principal, I had to lock down at least four times. I have pondered whether having someone armed inside the school would have made some kind of difference. Although it most certainly would not have prevented the gunman's entrance into the school building, it is within the realm of possibility that he could have been stopped earlier by someone who has GOOD training in firearms, and someone who also has the personal conviction to use the firearm on another individual. I'm not sure what any of us would do in that situation, even if we were trained. I would like to think that if I had been in that school, and if I had had a firearm, and that I was not one of the first individuals that the gunman took out, that I would try my best to take the gunman out. Remember, he was suited up in body armor, so the shot would have to be a good head shot (most probably).

People complain about teachers in our country, but most have no idea what they face each and every day. They have to play a key parenting role with many children, many of them provide food and school supplies for their students, they are asked to put themselves between danger and their students, and oh yea, they have to teach the curriculum also. It is easy to complain about student achievement, but we pretty much get what we are paying for. The per-student expenditure in the US is far below what many other countries spend per student (the same countries that have higher student achievement than US students).

Why am I being so long-winded? I hope that those who read this understand that this is a very complex problem that can't be solved by a simple solution. Will allowing some school staff members to carry have made a difference in Newtown or Virginia Tech? Probably so. Would souls still have been lost? Probably so.

 

[TexasArmed]

Times have changed a lot and if I still had a child in school I believe I would refuse to allow the child to attend without either armed security guards, or an adult or two trained and a gun permit. But the laws won't get changed, maybe more security might get added and more gun control attempted.
Now they want to go after the assault rifles and the semi automatic weapons. But if they do that, next they will want my revolvers.

 

[Buffalohunter60]

We protect our president and politicions with armed guards...why...because there are crazy people out there. The school system and towns can not afford that kind of protection in our schools but concealed carry by a few competent adults could make a difference....it may not prevent all the deaths that could occur...but they could sure put some pressure on the offender and change his concentration from killing children and probably end his rampage if they are willing to attack and do what needs to be done. I think under the circumstances that you would react and not think much about it until after it was over, if someone is trying to kill you, its natural to defend yourself by what ever means necessary. I know I would have no problem shooting someone that is trying to kill me or my family. Its not what any sane person wants to do...but the alternative is not very good. I agree with Rufus, you probably will not prevent all of the deaths but you would make a difference and I would rather die fighting back than be a sheep and led to the slaughter. I commend the principal for lunging at her attacker, its all she could do but she gave it all she had.

 

[WargameHub]

My vote is for armed community volunteers. Four or more volunteers a day, each group.getting one day a week. Only cost to the school might be a background check to approve them.

Sent from my SPH-P100 using Tapatalk 2

 

[miles71]

I have been a teacher for 16 years and understand how slow change happens in education. However change is needed in this case. I don't think volunteers, while being good people, would be the answer since they wouldn't have an understanding of education and how things work. Instead teachers willing to be trained should have the option of carrying and protecting the school students. I think you would be surprised how many teachers shoot for sport, etc.

Once you have taught for a few years you start to realize you don't teach a subject, you teach people. The safety of the students you grow to care for becomes very important. We teachers listen to all that is or fault constantly, grades are our fault, behavior is our fault, etc. We deal with all this because our students are why we teach, and also why you saw such actions from teachers in the Newtown tragedy of selfless courage.

In Maryland we have a "special police" statute that could be used to certify teachers as police on county property. I am sure several teachers would be wiling to go through the training to help protection the students. Unfortunatly I don't think any county will have the balls to even try. Training could be done over the summer, cost could be a stipend to the teachers. I am sure it could be done if someone was willing to listen.

If you are a parent you need to contact your school system, you are the one thing that can make change happen fast. Teachers are not usually listened to, but parents are. I can assure you some of us would do anything to protect our students.

TD