My mom is a former teacher. She’s been married to an avid hunter for almost 60 years and raised two boys who hunt. She has always had a weak stomach when it comes to guns - scared to death of them, even though we all handle them responsibly and are extremely safey conscious. She is against teachers having guns in school - I was pretty shocked. It boils down to her personal feelings (i.e. she is too afraid of guns to want to carry one & projecting her feelings to the entire situation) .... I explained to her that it would have to be *voluntary* - only teachers that wanted to carry and were willing to be trained would be doing it. That helped a little, but she still told my niece last night that she opposes teachers having guns in the schools.
Personally, if I had a child in public school, I would be on the phone with the school administration & county school board telling them my child would not be back in school unless there was someone there who could shoot back. The odds of it happening in a school where my kid would be? Probably very slim; however, it IS going to happen again - could I live with myself if I let my child go to a place where they are sitting ducks with no chance ... and then something DID happen when it is MY responsibility to protect my kid? No. I could easily have lost a niece during the VT shooting - she was in the building next door & on another day, she would have been in those classrooms or the shooter could have chose her building instead. We weren’t quite sure which building she was in that morning so I know the feeling of waiting to find out if someone you dearly love has been killed and it is horrific .... that’s where I’m coming from.
I am totally for having armed personnel at schools... I guess where my concern lies is “who” is armed. I overheard a conversation at my youngest child’s elementary school... a teacher said that no other teacher at that school would be comfortable enough with that responsibility. Her statement was, “I got a teaching degree to teach children. If I wanted to be a cop, I would have gone into law enforcement”. My middle school daughter told me one of her teachers said this to the class..”I wouldn’t have been able to do what the CT teacher did... I’d be out the window in two seconds”. My daughter took the statement as meaning she would protect herself first.. to heck with “you” kids. Not my job type of mentality. Now.. my oldest son is in high school and there is an armed police officer at that school. To be honest, I worry about him the least vs my other two (simply because there is at least one armed person there)
Over the years, I have dealt with teachers that are so liberal, mamby pamby that it would curl your hair. Some of the teachers admitted to dealing with their own Manic Depression of Bipolar disorders. One of my sons teachers in middle school was arrested for waving his uh.. thing at a bus of school kids. Another showed up three sheets to the wind so often that the county finally forced him into rehab (or be fired). A third would often fall asleep in class after taking some sort of prescription pills.
I am all for having someone trained/confident in his/her ability and armed in schools. I guess where my concern lies is the “who” part. For example, I know my own county has a lot of police officers on limited/light duty for issues such as a bad knee, etc.. I am fine with that person being armed at a school. Or, the police officers that are ready to retire in five or less years. I am betting a school security job (m-f, day time, no weekends etc..) would be snatched up immediately. And for the teachers who have the constitution for being armed, I’m fine with it as long as they accept the responsibility wholeheartedly.
Maybe a few more school massacres will change her mind.