a good bill

Sevens said:
How about we dial this down a notch.

This teacher has every right to protect THEMSELVES from a nutjob armed attacker regardless of whether their work day is loaded with dogs/cats, babies, students, produce, floor tile, automotive parts, smartphones and watches, burgers & fries, priceless works of art or pea gravel.
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That's not the issue. No one is saying that anyone doesn't have the right to protect themselves. The issue here is protecting the people who they are in charge of. This is not a gun rights question. This is a security question. It is much better in an active shooter situation to have someone there who's only job is to engage the shooter. That's the argument for having armed police or security who can quickly engage the threat and does not have to worry about a classroom full of little kids. A big question is what does that armed teacher do with their class when the shooting starts? I'm not so sure you would want teachers leaving them behind to go looking for a shooter. Maybe, maybe not but if you look at that one question, it gives an idea of how dynamic these situations can get. If the armed teacher is part of a layered approach which includes controlled entry and dedicated response, then maybe it makes sense. But I don't think that arming teachers in and of itself is any kind of panacea. The biggest problems right now is getting the educational leaders to talk about the problem and getting them to dedicate resources to addressing it. Right now it's mostly a whistling past the graveyard approach.
 
But I don't think that arming teachers in and of itself is any kind of panacea.
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I agree. I also agree that legislation is not likely EVER going to provide a panacea for… dang near anything.

Right now most teachers anywhere/everywhere are denied their rights to their own personal protection. I agree that legislation will not convert a math teacher to an elite counter-assasin. I find it ludicrous that teachers are denied their own rights because children are present.

For parents who screech at the potential danger of their own children in the presence of an armed teacher I would suggest that home schooling is an option for them and I might also suggest that statistically speaking, their child’s ride to school (or ride to ANY destination) is statistically more dangerous than a school shooter or “danger” from an armed teacher with poor tactical training.

We’ve probably got a large mass of citizens whose reaction to horrific tragedy is “why can’t they do SOMETHING?!” This is, of course an emotional response of precious little tangible value.

How many known instances have we had where panicked armed teachers have mowed down unintended innocents in a spray & pray response to a violent attack?

How many boogiemans might we agree that legislation can eliminate?
 
There are many issues to consider as many have in this thread.
A couple things come to mind. Teachers who volunteer for the program should be afforded the proper training such as the same training LEOs receive. Also, those teachers should be compensated for their time or get release time to attend the training. There should also be recurring training. The course should not only consider how to shoot, but when to shoot. Something the police academy I attended stressed.
I often think about the school shootings and the possible result had the teachers, administrators or other staff had been armed. The shooter in Newton, CT hit the administration meeting first. Had one or all of them been armed those kindergarteners lost would be in high school now.
 
A friend was a teacher back in the 1980's when the union first broke in. As a Conservative Christian and vocal Republican, naturally she opposed it. She was also a 30 year veteran of that school system. Most of the supporters were youngins. She received many death threats.

My wife is now a teacher in the same school. The stuff she tells me would make the hair stand up on the back of your head. To call the teachers bloody liberals would be an understatement. We hope that her contemporaries never find out she is an NRA card carrying member, belongs to a gun club and has a pistol permit and she also shoots an AR at our camp.

I vote con. She would probably the only one carrying and would suffer a lot of verbal abuse. Besides, our schools are fully equipped with armed security guards. They man the entry doors with TSA-like metal detectors. The only thing they don't do is search the teachers, and that should be a procedure as well.
 
Our County Sheriff, Richard Jones, is all for training and arming willing school staff members. Several schools are on board with him.

At present 4 of my grandchildren are home schooled.
 
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glowe said:
That is a tough one. My guess is that most teachers are not shooters and many likely never shot a firearm. CCW courses, in my mind, do not qualify people how to handle an emergency such as an active shooter in a classroom. Combine that with those teachers who never held a firearm before CCW training and what do you have?
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In the eight grade 3 out of five of my teachers were WWII combat vets . One of the other two looked like one but she wasn't.
 
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So, I'm trying to wrap my mind around this. An active shooter is reported in a school. Police show up and are trying to enter the building and see a half dozen people/teachers brandishing weapons. Do you think that might be a little bit of a challenge for police to determine for sure who is the active shooter? Just asking.
 
I taught high school for 11 years after retiring from the Army. I’ve thought about this issue a great deal, and after one of the high-profile school shootings I was approached by my district’s superintendent asking if I would be willing to volunteer to carry if the board passed such a policy.

Long story short, and IMHO, having teachers carry handguns is a monumentally bad idea, for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that a handgun is the wrong tool for the job. There wasn’t a hallway in our school that was less than 50 meters long, and most were longer.

During the discussion with my superintendent I suggested that if he wished me to be armed I would use the locked storage room in my classroom to hold a locked firearm case or job box containing a *rifle*. In the end the policy was never enacted, but I did keep a spare key to our SRO’s vehicle on my keyring in order to be able to access his patrol rifle in an emergency.

I won’t even go into some of my other reasons other than to say that having on-body guns in the classroom raises any number of potential problems.
 
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Frailer said:
I taught high school for 11 years after retiring from the Army. I’ve thought about this issue a great deal, and after one of the high-profile school shootings I was approached by my district’s superintendent asking if I would be willing to volunteer to carry if the board passed such a policy.

Long story short, and IMHO, having teachers carry handguns is a monumentally bad idea, for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that a handgun is the wrong tool for the job. There wasn’t a hallway in our school that was less than 50 meters long, and most were longer.

During the discussion with my superintendent I suggested that if he wished me to be armed I would use the locked storage room in my classroom to hold a locked firearm case or job box containing a *rifle*. In the end the policy was never enacted, but I did keep a spare key to our SRO’s vehicle on my keyring in order to be able to access his patrol rifle in an emergency.

I won’t even go into some of my other reasons other than to say that having on-body guns in the classroom raises any number of potential problems.
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So the city allowed you, a school teacher, to have a key to a city owned Police Vehicle, to access what I will assume is an City Owned Police M4, as a civilian school teacher, to then enter the school with a M4 ( "His Patrol Rifle") belonging to the City, to address an active shooter inside the school, (dressed) as a civilian school teacher?

Not being snarky- just trying to see this clear, cause it sounds crazier than a teacher with a pistol
 
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luvsmiths said:
So the city allowed you, a school teacher, to have a key to a city owned Police Vehicle, to access what I will assume is an City Owned Police M4, as a civilian school teacher, to then enter the school with a M4 ( "His Patrol Rifle") belonging to the City, to address an active shooter inside the school, (dressed) as a civilian school teacher?

Not being snarky- just trying to see this clear, cause it sounds crazier than a teacher with a pistol
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I, an employee of the county, was entrusted to access county property in the event of a legitimate emergency.

It is a small, rural community. I knew all the city and county cops, and they all knew me. Furthermore, I had a radio with which I could communicate with anyone responding.

Edited to add: to be clear, *me* acting as a first responder was not the primary plan. If an incident occurred my immediate responsibility would have been to the young people under my care at the moment. I would have been a contingency in the event everything went to hell in a handbasket.

IMHO, too many people in authority are attempting to find a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. Such solutions do not exist.
 
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I realize there are many pros/cons to the issue proposed in this bill. Might I suggest a different approach. Please excuse the thread drift.


There hasn't been a mass school shooting for a bit. Most likely, there will be another one. There is always a call to do something to keep this from "ever happening again" and a lot of empty talk by politicians and authorities to make sure it doesn't. Other than useless posturing and enacting ineffective gun laws no real solutions are put in place. I don't see or hear of any real efforts to make our schools less of a soft target. Granted, this would cost money and might make life for students and parents a little less convenient.



It's interesting in this country, that we can put in place measures at our county courthouses and other city, state, and federal buildings that protect those that work in these places. Why can't we take a similar approach to our schools. Many of these shooters most likely would not have attacked a school that had a measures in place to fend off an armed intruder. However, we don't see a nationwide effort to harden schools and put in place measures that protect one of our most valuable and defenseless populations. Why is that?


Do those that say they want to stop the killing of innocent children really mean that? I'm sure some do, or is it just too convenient to make it about the guns?


Food for thought..
 
If you want schools safe from armed intruders, you need Entry Control Points with armed, trained personnel, two minimum per ECP with 4 better (and unavoidable metal detectors), whose only job is screening people and bags coming into school buildings.

This isn't rocket science. Half-measures, like arming teachers, will work fine if nothing happens.
 
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biku324 said:
If you want schools safe from armed intruders, you need Entry Control Points with armed, trained personnel, two minimum per ECP with 4 better (and unavoidable metal detectors), whose only job is screening people and bags coming into school buildings.

This isn't rocket science. Half-measures, like arming teachers, will work fine if nothing happens.
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Another observation that I made is that teachers have no concept of what it means to lock doors and no one running the system has any inclination to hold them accountable. It was like we were speaking Klingon when we tried to emphasize how important it is to limit the number of access points. I came away from my experiences amazed that there are not more incidents than there are.
 
I think something missing from the conversation is the deterrent effect of the mere potential for armed teachers in schools.

We know that known “gun free” zones are attractive targets to nutbags and criminals. We all know the opposite, the probability of armed non-LEO citizens drops violent crime precipitously.

We also know that SRO’s are a mixed bag, with very high expense and a record that is unenviable.

Some doubt about the armed/not armed status of a teacher isn’t a bad thing, imo.
 
I’ve always been skeptical of the average person being armed in the schools, unless they have training comparable to the Gunsite first level course.
 
In November, 1999 one of my SRT officers was 60 or 70 feet from a fatal school shooting in the crowded lobby of Deming Middle School. He grabbed his AR15-A3 with which he was expert; he had been on the SRT a couple of years. He made entry into the school, immediately identified the still-armed shooter and had a clear shot from cover. He waited; eventually the shooter was talked down with no further shots fired, although the old 22 revolver was later found to have firing pin marks on 3 more cartridges.

Why didn't he fire? Because he was a human being first, and the shooter was a 12 year-old boy. Ross said during the debrief, emotionally, "...he was a little kid."

Now tell me how an armed teacher would do in the same circumstance.

The most common age of a shooter is 17, followed by 16, 18, and 15. - K-12 School Shooting Statistics: 52 Years of Data - Campus Safety
 
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