Should teachers be armed?

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Daaa!!!

Of course they should!
We entrust our children to the school system for 8 hours 5 days a week. Given how easy it is for anyone to walk in and start blasting the innocent away, hell yea! Train the teachers who voulenter and let them have guns!

The world is brutal, and disarming only helps the evil ones, we all know that.

Another idea would be to assign one or two police officers per school, I'm sure a lot of people would feel more comfortable with that. Might be a boring job for a cop, so maybe they could rotate in their school patrol duties. But puting an honest, kind hearted person with a gun to protect our most innocent is certainly a way forward.

Armed
 
I would be pleased to see responsible teachers who are trained CCW holders in my school. If they aren't armed themselves, they at least need to have readily access to weapons for defensive purposes. If teachers were armed (but exactly who would, of course, remain anonymous) and the students knew about it, I'm sure they'd think twice before exacting their lashing out at society.
 
-not during pay season :neener:


Also, many of the teachers I had in highschool couldnt be trusted with chalk... I dont know about guns.

Maybe selected qualified teachers- not the super hippy ones that throw chalk at you when you're sleeping in the middle of his "why america sucks" tyrade.
 
It's interesting how the poll results can be skewed by how the question is asked. The poll that disfavors teachers carrying asks if it's a good idea for teachers to be armed. The poll that favors teachers carrying includes the caveat about training.
 
El Tejon

El Tejon,
I don't know about COlumbine, were there cops present inside the school right before it took place?

what i meant was, for every school, a local PD designated 1+ cop(s) to proactively patrol the school everyday. so that an armed person is present at all times when kids are present.
 
Interesting contrast...

in today's posts. In two other threads we have a whole bunch of posters basically stating everyone connected with the public school system is an idiot and can't be trusted to determine if a student broke the rules and should be suspended.

Then here and in two other threads we are encourging folks to hit the poll in favor of giving these same public school employees permision to be armed.

Gotta love diversity of thought process.

migoi
 
I don't know about this.
I'm student teaching right now and will be teaching next year. Part of me can't imagine everyone knowing such and such teacher is packing, or kids coming up and asking hey Mr. so-and-so, why are you carrying a gun? It could be pretty distracting to say the least. However, how would you feel if some crazy is shooting up the school and your students? What would you give to save their lives as everyone is hiding under thier desks? It is one of those worst case scenarios.
Some points to think about:

What kind of liability will you have with weapons around the students, you know there will be some guy/gal who will inevitably leave a weapon unattended.

What happens if there's a fight? Suppose there are knives or other weapons involved. Do teachers have the right to use or threaten use of thier firearm?

I think most districts would fight against arming teachers. People tend to be more liberal in the education departments.

As of now I would have to learn towards not arming teachers. I'm not against people carrying in general, there just seems to be too many variables. Like others have said, put more police in the schools. I think we are more aware of school shootings and threats these days, the number of Columbine shootings seem to be down however, I don't have any stats. Of course this is how I feel until it happens at my school and then I'll be thinking only if...Now if we see school shootings start to rise again I would definately think about it.
Just my .02 I'm not hard core either way at the moment.
 
I was thinking about this just today.

The default logic, us being gunnies, is, of course, "Hell yes! Strap .44 Mags onto all of 'em!"

However... teachers, like any other segment of the CCW population, practice at verying degrees of intensity. I don't doubt that many are serious about going heeled, but then again, there are always a few of the Sockdrawer Special crowd in the population.

Who would you trust with a firearm around your children, without being able to verify their level of training and familiarity with their equipment?
 
I concur. I'd phrase it like this: while I don't believe it should be illegal for a CCP-holder to carry on school grounds, I also don't think it should be encouraged by either the state or by private groups. Let's say there's only one school shooting per year (sounds about right), and let's say that there's 100,000 schools in the country. If each one only had one CCW being carried on the grounds regularly, that means trading the possibility that a CCW holder might be able to stop that single shooter, in exchange for the inevitable list of thefts, accidents, and random bad luck that will befall a handful of those hundred thousand schools.

Or put another way: I strongly suspect that the potential benefit of arming a significant number of teachers would be vastly outweighted by the harm caused. The state shouldn't prevent them from being armed, but it's definitely not a net beneficial trade-off in my opinion to make it widespread.
 
Most of us are armed...

and legged, and headed, and ... :D

Sounds nice at first, but I don't know that I want that responsibility. If I did, I think I'd want pretty clear procedures and training. Definitely isn't something for everyone. Heck, we're shooters here on the forum (for the most part, I'd imagine), and I don't think that every single person here CCWs who legally can, let alone becoming responsible for using that weapon in defense of large groups of others in tactical situations.

Heard a state legislator suggested this in WI. Just more sound bites for the media and politicians.
 
Why is this even a question?

The American people are SUPPOSED to be armed.

We've always had bullies. We will always have bullies. We will always have predators. We will always have opportunists. They don't care what the law is, and they never have.

If the victims are always disarmed before the fact, we're guaranteed that things will end badly for them, and the police will show up in time to sweep up the glass and mop up the blood.

You know, we ALREADY disarm the school staffs. Well, THAT'S working really well. So let's disarm them harder. That'll fix it.

Or you could let them fight back effectively. Hell, it could hardly work out worse than what we've been doing so far.

If I were a thug looking for a soft target, I think I'd stay away from a school where an unknown number of teachers and staff were armed.

There's another benefit.

You start arming teachers -- yeah, I know, ALLOWING teachers to be armed -- and the norms will change. The chronically frightened will either adjust and grow a spine, or they will leave teaching, allowing a more robust breed of teacher to take the front lines.

Our kids will learn from stable, honest, self-reliant adults who can stand as viable examples of what it means to be grown up.

Of course, the curriculum would have to change. Courses in "Practical Marxism" and "Alternatives To American Culture" will have to be replaced with something with a little more substance. Firearms safety, perhaps. Maybe elementary rifle and marksmanship.

And the sports programs would need a rifle team.
 
"Should teachers be armed?"

Those who WANT to be armed, yes.

Like airline pilots.

Not those who are anti-gun, etc...they'd be useless with a gun anyway and a danger to self and others.

-- John D.
 
So what happens when there's an accidental discharge? You know it will happen. If you say it won't then why are there accidental discharges in the military and police stations throughout the world. It happened at my base by the "expert" Security Forces. I'm not harping on these people, it just happens sometimes and it takes just one careless person/moment. So what happens if something wrong happens, discharge, theft, carelessness? You are surrounded by children in very close proximity. Like Wes said, there are what, 100,000 schools in the country with one school shooting? As of now I don't see a rash of school shootings or terrorist attacks taking place. Now if you really want to carry and feel strongly about it okay go for it. However, because of all the children and close proximity to one another I would require training. I don't know about other states, but all I'd have to do was show a military ID card to get a CCW. That could mean the extent of my training was shooting 80-90 rounds at a range every two or three years. Please don't get me wrong, I'm hardly anti. I just want to avoid any knee-jerk reactions on both sides, "no way should teachers ever have one of those evil things," or "hell yes give them weapons, that'll teach all the socialist america haters."
 
I'd personally be a little worried about inner-city public school teachers. Hell, most public school teachers, for that matter. Having been to a pretty rough, inner-city school, I know for a fact that a lot of those teachers were scared to death coming to work everyday - and had no idea how to handle some of the small problems (read: individual arguments) that surfaced in class... Let alone the big problems, like when gang members from other schools would come to our school and fight the gang kids, or gang fights would start in the hallways or lunchroom.

Not to mention, most teachers ain't the smartest folks on earth... Looking back, I realize exactly how much of an understatement that really is. I could see public school teachers making all CCW folks look really bad, doing something stupider than I can even imagine - like sending warning shots into the cieling to stop a fight, etc. God only knows that eventually, one of them would shoot a kid for something totally uncalled for. Then what happens to the rest of us?

After all, if TEACHERS can't be trusted with firearms, who can?

I dunno... maybe I just had some really dense teachers and administrators in school, but this is something that I can't honestly say I'm 100% in favor of. I guess I have too much of an image of the dim-witted anti-social public school teacher stuck in my head. A fairly large number of the public school teachers I've met have been some of the most dim-witted, unreasonable, narcissistic, anti-social, authoritarian (and not to mention, just flat out WIERD) people I've ever met in life. Very few of them are the "do it because I love teaching and I love kids," type... Most are there to collect a paycheck, because they can't do anything else with their BS in English or [insert other useless major here]. The ones I know personally also enjoy (yes, I said it) having authority over kids. Growing up has unfortunately confirmed some of the worst things I thought about teachers when I was in school.

And, most of them are so rabidly anti-gun anyways, that no matter what we'd like to make them do, they simply WON'T have anything to do with firearms. Rest assured, any teacher who did decide to exercise his right to go armed would be harassed to the breaking point, or simply fired for any other convenient reason they could think of to get rid of him/her.

Think I'm exaggerating? How many of you with children in school actually get along well with their teachers? Tell them about your gun collections, hobbies, etc. - then come back and tell me if you're still best buddies with your kids' teacher. I don't have anything against teachers, but I have quite a few family friends, as well as family members in education, and I've gone to both public and private schools, inner city and suburban schools.

The public school teacher is a breed all it's own, to say the least. And that's a problem that giving them guns just ain't gonna fix.

Now at the college level?! Strap 'em up, I says! :D
 
Very few teachers would carry firearms if allowed.

The best proposal is the one to strike all the provisions forbidding carry so that the few teachers willing to train and equip themselves could do it with as little publicity as possible.
 
The part I like best about these threads is how we have members who can step forward and confidently make statements about "most teachers." Said statements, of course, never being of a favorable nature. I've been a teacher since 1985 and I wouldn't feel too confident making any sweeping generalizations about my many thousands of fellow educators. But then again, as we've already been informed in this thread, teachers aren't very smart. It's the nation's loss that the people who apparently are savvy enough to know how "most teachers" really are didn't choose to become educators.
 
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