Posted on 03/31/2023 10:06:41 AM PDT by george76
All of them dont have to be armed, they just need to have the choice. None of them have to actually be armed. If the public knows teachers can be armed, the shooters wont show up.
Well, it would be interesting to test your theory, if some state would go for it and arm teachers. My guess is school districts are afraid of the liability, in case some kid steals a teacher’s gun and shoots someone, or a teacher shoots a kid messing with a toy gun thinking it’s real, or whatever such scenarios the school district bureaucrats can dream up.
Most of these school shooters expect to be killed — it’s a sort of Samsonic suicide thing with them. It might not keep them from showing up. Again, it would be interesting to test it out and see what happens.
I grew up in a household of teachers. And all my best friends parents were teachers. Not a one of them would have been "horrified" to protect the children under their care.
"But that does not mean the teachers would not have to. And most teachers, especially those who teach early grades, are simply not cut out to be Annie Oakley.
Again, you miss the point. You are giving those school staff members the possibility of defending themselves if necessary. The alternative is that they die. Oh, and my teacher mom could shoot better than the males in the family, handgun or rifle.
Perhaps they would not be horrified to protect children under their care, but the ones I know really were horrified at the thought of being expected to double as armed security guards. They are fine with having professional armed guards on campus.
If teachers want to carry to protect themselves and their kids, that’s fine by me. Again, I suspect the problem is school district officials are afraid of liability in case something goes wrong.
My late mother was a sharp shooting champion in our state back when she was on her high school’s girls’ rifle team. Most teachers now teaching have probably never even fired a gun.
Yer a bit behind the times....32 states have school districts with that policy. John Lott has surveyed the data. NOT ONE OF THOSE DISTRICTS has suffered an "active shooter" situation since putting the policy into effect.
Corporate legal departments have decided the financial risk to the company from an accidental shooting, is less than the cost of replacing killed employees.
People, never forget that corporate management cares far more about their bonuses and stock options than they care about you.
Typo:...is more..
The main goal of many schools at all levels of education seems to be to protect jobs and the school's reputation.
One 911 caller said the school has one or two staff members who carry:
In the town where I raised a family, I did not send my kids to the public schools, but I did make some observations: There was never a school shooting there, but the school’s had a heavy police presence at the opening and closing of every school day, as the kids walked in and walked out. The rest of the day, the doors to the elementary school were locked (I don’t know about the other schools). You could not enter without buzzing and talking to someone at the front office. And the doors were not glass doors.
Those security measures do not guarantee the safety of every child from predators working in the schools, for example, but a heavy police presence may be a deterrent to predators (or would-be school shooters) outside the schools.
Oops.
* the schools had
That’s interesting. I had not read about Covenant staff being armed before. If true, I guess it did not make any difference in the outcome?
I wondered whether Katherine Koonce might have been carrying, as I read earlier that she ran to confront the mass murderer. But from this article it appears that she probably was unarmed when she confronted her:
It will be interesting to learn who at the school was armed and whether any of them were there that day, and if so, what they did.
I can see where the police presence at opening and closing time would be deterrent. When I looked at list of school shootings, a number of them were gang type shootings outside the school at closing time or at school sporting events, etc.
The locked doors with no glass seem to be effective if they stay locked (Uvalde door left unlocked). Of course if a kid sneaks a gun in (Ethan Crumbley, Oxford High), locked doors are no use.
The teacher would not be expected to hunt down and neutralize the threat, only to either return fire or slow the attacker.
Which shows exactly how strongly MOST teachers feel about protecting their charges. I am sure as she was confronting the shooter she was thinking "I wish I had a gun".
Armed staff's position in the "threat pyramid" is 1) ultimate final line of defense if a classroom is breached, and 2) an opportunistic encounter with the shooter outside of classrooms.
Meaning that if the teacher has a loaded gun already in hand when a shooter entered her classroom, she might stand a chance of shooting him first. The first thing the teacher is supposed to do is lock the classroom door. If the shooter enters before she is notified to lock the door — surprise! — would she be able to shoot him first? Seems doubtful. So that leaves the teacher confronting the shooter when she happens to be elsewhere in the school. Do these teachers carry a loaded gun on their persons everywhere? Maybe they do. I honestly don’t know.
Again, I am all for teachers being able to protect themselves and their kids. I am skeptical whether this would prevent all deaths caused by school shooters. It might deter some shooters and save some lives.
You would still need police to hunt down and neutralize the shooter.
I never doubted that teachers want to protect their students. Katherine Koonce was head of the school. It sure would have been great if she had had a gun and able to shoot the murderer before she shot her. See also my #55 on this thread.
prevent all deaths.
No guarantee but not having a gun doesn’t stop any.
It’s just like a home invasion. The father may very well die in a shoot out but he may have saved his wife and kids.
Just seeing that the teacher is armed could cause the criminal to hesitate or throw off his(her-its) aim. In any case the teacher is no worse off than being unarmed.
On the other hand, one of the teachers was found to be abusing students, so...
No security measure will ever be 100% effective.
Columbine had an armed guard, and he and another officer exchanged gunfire with the killers, who still managed to massacre people.
Sandy Hook had glass doors the killer shot through. So, locked metal doors might be a deterrent, but even metal doors need to open as people go in and out.
There's no perfect solution to the problem. But, these basic security measures still are necessary, as they can help.
Good post. Concur.
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