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Teachers should not carry guns, despite alarming school shootings (not a total barf alert)
The Hill ^ | May 29, 2022 | Tracy Walder

Posted on 05/30/2022 6:51:30 AM PDT by DoodleBob

As a teacher, mother of an elementary school student in Texas, and someone who once carried a gun for a living and has been trained in situational awareness and firearm tactics, no one perhaps is more prepared than I to carry a gun in my classroom. But I would never want to.

...most teachers are not trained in situational awareness. It is not hard to learn to shoot a gun; teachers could learn this with a few days of training. What takes far longer, however, is learning to respond properly to an active shooter.

As a former staff operations officer at the CIA and former FBI special agent, I have undergone extensive training and am confident in my ability to run toward a violent situation, rather than away from it. But asking teachers to carry weapons and assuming they will be prepared for such a situation is risky. My training was rife with high-pressure scenarios, to work on a phenomenon known as “fear extinction.” This is where you learn to lower your fear response after multiple exposures to a stimulus. To dampen the pre-conditioned fear response to an active shooter scenario would require working with teachers on a case-by-case basis.

...

Additionally, there is confusion regarding the actions of police and a school resource officer in Uvalde. Rather than arming teachers, perhaps we need to reconsider how we train police officers....According to the program guide for the Bexar County Policy Academy in San Antonio, the largest city near Uvalde, there is not a section of training dedicated to situational awareness, mental toughness, or fear extinction.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 78minutes; banglist; fedbot; fedscum; teachers; tracywalder; uvalde
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To: DoodleBob

It is really silly to demand that anyone who responds to a mass murderer be SWAT trained.

Many teachers are leftoloons. OK. Welcome to the USA in 2022. Lots of crazy “we are the world” naive twits out there. Teachers are just one more group.

People who advocate arming teachers are NOT saying we should pass out SIG 226s like candy. However, there are many level headed, responsible persons on most faculties who would welcome the training and responsibility.

I really don’t see why this is such a controversy


21 posted on 05/30/2022 7:26:26 AM PDT by tanstaafl.72555
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To: DoodleBob
If a teacher is background checked, trained, willing and conservative, they should be able to carry, even if the rest of the school is full of "no guns" signs.
Why conservative? Because I expect a liberal teacher to shoot a student to make the point that teachers should not carry.
Plus they are often unhinged to begin with.

22 posted on 05/30/2022 7:29:25 AM PDT by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: Leaning Right
I don’t think anyone is arguing that we should have teachers carrying guns like cowboys did in those old westerns. That’s just a goofy idea.

At my kid's school sixty percent of the teachers are armed at all times.

I can not be with them at all times so I make sure the adults I entrust them to can defend them.

It is just common sense.

23 posted on 05/30/2022 7:30:02 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (It is better to light a single flame thrower then curse the darkness. A bunch of them is better yet)
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To: Sacajaweau

Ask for volunteers and then screen, train, and arm a select number to be assigned patrol duties (at extra pay, of course). Had even one or two been armed during Uvalde, perhaps they could have distracted this lunatic enough to get the brave police involved, and the kids might have survived.


24 posted on 05/30/2022 7:30:20 AM PDT by silent majority rising ( )
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To: DoodleBob
most teachers are not trained in situational awareness.

I suppose not, but the cops WERE trained and still they did nothing, or at least not enough. And a teacher would already be inside the building.

Also, a good guy with a handgun DID stop the bad guy with his AR-15 (or whatever he had).

There's a lot of those teacher clowns who I wouldn't want to have a gun, but it could be on a volunteer basis.

25 posted on 05/30/2022 7:33:40 AM PDT by libertylover (Our BIGGEST problem, by far, is that most of the media is hate & agenda driven, not truth driven.)
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To: Sacajaweau

I saw a story yesterday about a school that has not only a police officer, but a police dog too. This might make a lot of sense. The dog can be trained to detect gunpowder in lockers and attack active shooters. It’s always nice to have an animal around anyway.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this implemented on a large scale.


26 posted on 05/30/2022 7:36:29 AM PDT by cornfedcowboy ( )
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To: DoodleBob

It works in Israel. And I think if it was done in the safest way it could work. But they need to have someone keeping a check on these doors. Need to be locked. I never found out how many entrances to that school there were. Just so happen to be the 1 door that the teacher left open was the 1 he ran to. The cops really screwed the pooch. They chased him towards the school and ran when shot at. Then didn’t go in after him. When he went in was the door still open or did it lock behind him.


27 posted on 05/30/2022 7:36:31 AM PDT by glimmerman70
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To: Sacajaweau

And I haven’t seen how the killer gained access to the classroom full of children and teachers. Why wasn’t the room locked down?? When the police tried to get into the room they couldn’t break down the door and apparently had to wait for someone to find a key.


28 posted on 05/30/2022 7:38:35 AM PDT by Menehune56 ("Let them hate so long as they fear" (Oderint Dum Metuant), Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC))
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To: Magnum44

Amen


29 posted on 05/30/2022 7:38:51 AM PDT by Vaduz ( )
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

As I noted earlier, I’m a retired urban public high school teacher. Arming teachers as shown in the picture from post #5 would not work at all. Some kid would grab that gun before the lunch bell rang.

I’m not saying that kid would necessarily be a lunatic, bent on shooting up the school. No, it would be more like putting a can of beer on the hallway floor. Somebody would go for it, just because.

I can see armed teachers working in private schools. But not in schools like where I taught. The risk/reward calculation would not be favorable. That’s why I argue for giving teachers quick access to firearms instead.


30 posted on 05/30/2022 7:42:40 AM PDT by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
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To: Magnum44

I visited a family in Israel that lives a stones’ throw from the northern wall around Gaza. Two things you will find in every home is a hardened room in their basement (bomb shelter) and an automatic rifle. The residents organize neighborhood patrols. When the rockets come out of Gaza they get 5 seconds warning to take cover. I have no patience with Americans who can’t even bear seeing armed police officers or soldiers. We have become a weak, pathetic society.


31 posted on 05/30/2022 7:45:13 AM PDT by Spok (Winston, how many fingers am I holding up?)
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To: bert

Not ALL teachers are left-wingers....

Not ALL teachers should be armed....

A select few should be selected carefully, trained, armed, and kept secret about which ones they are...


32 posted on 05/30/2022 7:45:14 AM PDT by JBW1949 (I'm really PC.....Patriotically Correct)
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To: Responsibility2nd; Magnum44; Leaning Right; where's_the_Outrage?; Mlheureux; Bob434
There is nothing wrong with arming and training competent school staff

Note your qualifier. Let's play this out in practice. Remember, we are talking about the intersection of government, unions, and in loco parentis.

Who gets to define "competent"?

Will it be some school board-designated committee (because we know how they LOVE justice)?

Will it be union goons?

Maybe it'll be the librarian who just added a bunch of Antifa books to the catalog.

Or that collection of sex ed specialists pushing the latest claptrap on children.

It sure won't be the parents, who are "domestic terrorists" in the eyes of the DOJ.

I'll go a few steps further....let's say some leftist agitator-teacher who did 4 years in the Army's is deemed "competent." He sees a bunch of conservative students and monitors their online activity, decides they're a threat because they wrote "Let's Go Brandon" and FJB and posted pictures of them at gun shows on Instagram, and draws his weapon on them in class and calls the cops.

He will argue (and, I submit to you, be supported in the press and by the school board vociferously) that he stopped a possible disaster. The parents of these students will sue, the NEA will protect the teacher at all costs, the parents will spend thousands on legal fees and their kids will be doxxed and have a hard time getting in to college or trade school.

The teacher will keep his job and become a celebrity for 20% of this nation, and be loathed by 30-40% of the Deplorables. The remainder/ballast will waffle. Meanwhile, another school shooting will happen because that's part of the systematic risk in a free nation.

For a nation like Israel where the citizenry has experienced this palpably, and where the threat is probabilistically high (way higher than in America), it seems to work. I also suspect "competence" isn't as politically defined in Israel.

In contemporary America, this is a nice idea on paper. In practice it'll fail, because the local government and DOJ will make the call on "competency."

The actual solution is homeschooling.

33 posted on 05/30/2022 7:48:02 AM PDT by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s^2)
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To: DoodleBob
Rather than arming teachers, perhaps we need to reconsider how we train police officers

According to some reports, the Uvalde School District Police force went through special training just a couple of months ago.

When required to act on THAT training, they failed miserably.

After-sight and after-action reports always end in woulda-shoulda-coulda. Plans goes out the window when the first shot is fired.


34 posted on 05/30/2022 7:49:26 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: Leaning Right
Which is why I send the kids to private schools.

Firearms safety class is mandatory.

35 posted on 05/30/2022 7:49:35 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (It is better to light a single flame thrower then curse the darkness. A bunch of them is better yet)
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To: DoodleBob
Tracy Walder would have waited 78 minutes, too.

Because "orders".

So she can shut her fedbot piehole.

36 posted on 05/30/2022 7:51:30 AM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: DoodleBob

> Who gets to define “competent”? <

Probably the best person to do that would be the county sheriff. Swear in (and train) armed teachers as reserve deputy sheriffs, with police powers only on school grounds. Sort of like what is done with the railroad police now.

Yes, I know some county sheriffs are pretty much worthless. But by and large, most are solid folks.


37 posted on 05/30/2022 7:53:24 AM PDT by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
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To: Hostage
Unfortunately you are right. The school should be surrounded by security fencing with gates that are locked. What schools did after Sandyhook was a half ass attempt to keep a shooter out. Hardening the entry and exits to the school should be done right. Then they can put armed people in strategic positions.
38 posted on 05/30/2022 7:55:43 AM PDT by Rdct29 (Democrats are the new Nazi's. They think they deserve total control over the people)
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To: Leaning Right

Yep. Unfortunately the ,eft will a.ways be corrupt, and just like with the epstein death, the cameras Wil. Be conveniently broken whe it suits the ,eft’s narrative to,do,so


39 posted on 05/30/2022 7:58:09 AM PDT by Bob434 (.)
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To: Sacajaweau
Secure the damn school. The kid got in because a teacher had propped open a door.
I am not a big conspiracy guy, but I also don't believe in coincidences. One single door propped open when all are locked minutes before the shooter arrives?
40 posted on 05/30/2022 7:58:48 AM PDT by Aut Pax Aut Bellum (What did Socialists use before candles? Electricity)
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