Some respond to school shootings — like Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas — by calling for more cameras, locked doors, trained security guards, and armed teachers. We already arm airline pilots, but are there good reasons to support that, but reject giving weapons to teachers?
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28 replies on “Arming Teachers: We Put Handguns in the Passenger Jet Flight Deck, Why Not in the Classroom?”
I agree we need more Bible in our families and in our schools, but I also believe that we need to arm teachers. We also need to hire better teachers that don’t want to indoctrinate our children but would rather teach them and help them grow in to productive citizens. Those are the teachers that would be willing to carry a gun. Fortunately the teachers that are indoctrinating our children right now won’t want to carry a gun. They will start leaving (or should be let go before hand) once we start making the schools WORK for us and not for the government. We need to take back our schools just like we do our local government, and school boards etc.
We don’t have to make the schools like prison. Having armed teachers is NOT like having prison guards. Kids should be free to enjoy school, coming and going happily, knowing they are safe because there are people there who WILL and CAN protect them. When I went to school, more than half the kids had rifles in the back windows of their trucks. Teachers had guns/rifles in their cars and who knows…possibly on them as well. We had no school shootings.
Teach the kids how to handle guns. Teach the kids respect. Teach the kids the bible. (they can choose after they learn about God whether they believe or not but they can’t choose if they aren’t taught).
At home we can only pray that their parents will pay attention to them, and show them the love and discipline that is required to raise a child.
I also stand by something I said in response to another article about the 4th of July shooter. Once he’s convicted:
Moreover, if you use that method of execution (especially with no sedation or anything) you probably won’t have to worry about publicity generating copycats. Sure, let the media publish video of the screaming as the car gets crushed.
It’s not painless, but I’m not aware that execution is supposed to be. On the other hand, it is quick, cheap and reliable.
I have absolutely no problem with a teacher who is trained adequately with firearms to carry a gun in school. Will it cure the problem, no, but it will help to minimize the effects.
I wouldn’t want to arm all teachers, or all of anybody else for that matter. The randomness is part of the point.
The more a potential shooter doesn’t know who is armed and who is not, from the principal to the janitor, the harder it is for him to know what to plan for.
And after all, success is not when the shooter gets taken down quickly. Success is when the shooter looks at the situation and decides not to try it in the first place.
How about some common sense? As many commenters have stated, Gun Free Zones are just free fire zones for the crazies. Most mass shooter events have occured in “Gun Free” areas. As I have stated frequently on my website: http://www.captain-al-sppeaking.com the shooting stops when somebody shoots back. Compare what happened in Uvalde, TX as opposed to at the Greenwood Mall outside Indianapolis. The mall shooter stopped firing and tried to retreat into the restroom when the 22 year old “Good Guy with a Gun” started shooting back. The mass shooters are cowards. That has been proved many times over. So, let teachers and school administrators arm themselves if they want to do so. Publicize that fact. Eliminate virtually ALL gun free zones and the mass shooter events will drop drastically. As President Trump stated “What have you got to lose?
I refer to “Gun Free Zones” as “Helpless Victims Zones”, since the shooters put the lie to ” gun free”.
Bill, I don’t know of anyone who is suggesting we arm ALL teachers, but there are teachers out there who have military or law enforcement experi or who conceal carry outside the school or who love to shoot and go to the range or participate in shooting competitions regularly. I don’t have a problem arming them or other school administrators who express a willingness to help protect students. Curing the causes is going to be difficult bec we going to need to reshape and win the culture war to do it. Things like single parent households, a diminishment of the role of religion in society, violent video games plus movies plus TV shows, various prescription drugs like antidepressants, various illegal drugs, and the list goes on and on.
I use to work at a church run activities youth building, and all the things said in the news about the most recent mass shooting at the school concerning lax security such as propped open doors and such was true here. The doors were designed to remain locked with a magnet until a device was pushed to unlock them, but often there was no one at the lobby desk to do so, so they would be propped open for events. I informed our “security” at the church of this, and they said we are not worried about that, shooters are not targeting kids…wow. On top of this, they decided not to allow concealed carry as they did at the main church building, and put no guns allowed stickers on the doors. What world do these people come from?
If no one is watching the doors, how do they keep out the scary bad people with the scary bad guns? Kinda pointless to have a metal detector without a guard.
Most mass shooters tend to be fatherless children. Since we cannot mandate a Biblical family structure to get at the root of the problem, we’re going to need preventative measures too. But it’s not really necessary to arm the teachers. We can secure them with single-entry, locked double doors with bulletproof windows. Similar to an air lock door. Anyone wanting to enter, would have to be buzzed in, wait for the outside door to close and lock, before the inner door opens. Of course there would need to be metal detectors in there. Probably should have a secured port for the police to drop in a can of tear gas.
There are teachers who normally carry and who enjoy the shooting sports. But when it comes to schools, we tell them that they are not allowed to protect themselves and their students. The ideal situation is to simply give these teachers some additional police-type training and then let them carry. Nobody, especially the students, should know that the teacher is carrying, but it brings a bit more safety for the students. If we aren’t willing to harden the schools, we should at least stop prohibiting teachers from protecting themselves and those around them.
Robocop in every school, programmed with 3 prime directives, serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law.
Oops, you’d need a failsafe. Teachers, administrators, and Democratic mayors of major cities might be eliminated under these rules. Same with 3/4 of Congress, a couple on the Supreme Court, the President
If a teacher wants to carry a gun they should be given the right if they don’t they should not! The no-gun zones invite these psychopaths shooters with hundreds of targets that will never fight back. Just the fact that someone in that building may shoot back may deter some shooters.
The only solution I can think of for school security, is…..get ready for it…SECURITY! Locked doors that are monitored, armed security guards (and kids and their parents will need to get used to those evil guns so close to their offspring). And who will need to pay for this? The taxes that pay for it should come from the people who enroll in those schools; although, where I live, nearly 70% of my tax bill goes to the schools in my area and they beg for more and more increases. I don’t mind part of my taxes going for education, but there should be a limit for someone who has no kids in the system.
A few times people have talked about hardening schools as turning them into prisons. I’ve thought this is entirely backwards. It is supposed to be hard to get OUT of a prison, less so getting in. Instead I’ve thought we need to make them more like castles with multiple, though secured, ways out but really one one or a a few hard ways in. These ways in could be opened wide during times of influx, like the start of a school day, but the idea, especially in the kids’ minds is, when I am inside, I am safe (at least from those outside… bullies and other troublemakers will still be present and need to be dealt with by other policies.)
I think Bill nailed it. For the most part teachers have become leftist pushers, dealing out their socialist drug to our children. Putting guns in their hands and teaching them how to use them can only end badly. I agree with Zo as well, force teachers to carry a Bible and instruct them in how to use that and you would reduce a lot more than just mass shooting.
I want to recount my interaction with the AP when we were trying to get concealed carry passed in Kansas.
At that time, there was no concealed carry allowed in Kansas, and getting caught carrying would net you a felony. I went to the AP office in the capitol building in Topeka to provide some background material about the law we were proposing and correct some misinformation they had already printed. In the two weeks prior to my visit, there were at least three incidents of self-defense with a firearm in the state. The only coverage was local and AP did not put it in their feed. In the same time frame, criminal shootings in Kansas City and a “kid gets Dad’s gun” incident were covered extensively. (BTW, the dad was a cop). I asked the reporter why they would not cover justifiable self-defense events. He said they did not want to encourage “vigilante-ism” and reporting those incidents would cause people to take the law into their own hands. I then asked if the AP believes that reporting influences behavior then why do they cover gun crimes, mass shootings, gang violence, and suicide/homicides. He said it was because that was “news.”
There you have it in a nutshell. It’s nuts and that’s their shell.
Wisdom and virtue abounds in The Virtue Signal
😊thanks, Bill 😊 thanks, Zo.
Armed teachers? Well, as Bill points out, the personality types that would be willing to be armed probably aren’t well-represented in teacher-types. Certainly, there are exceptions. But, perhaps more importantly, kids today might be more apt to disarm a teacher and use the gun for the very purpose it was meant to prevent. Maybe if schools had trained professionals, with conceal carry permits, and anonymous to the students, but the students knew that an armed anonymous patrol was among them – not how many, or who, this might prevent or at least curtail/stop a random school shooter event.
I know a teacher and he is a MARINE, arm the teachers because it is better too have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. We already KNOW that cops are useless in immediate school shootings.
Of my four mottos, the first one I came up with is “I’d rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.”
Another being “It’s better to be judged by twelve of your peers than carried by six.”
I respectfully disagree on many points. Have you not seen these green and purple haired alphabet pervert teachers with rings in their noses and lips bragging about transing their classes? You want to put guns in their hands too? Are you serious? REALLY?
Because if you set a standard like “armed teacher” then you can’t discriminate against any teacher who manages to meet minimum qualifications. Even prior military service is no guarantee of locking out perverts, weirdos, sickos, deviants, subversives and the rest of the mob currently able to get a teaching job and sit at the big desk in the front of a classroom.
I don’t know how old you are but the teachers of today are nothing like the teachers I had when I was in public school. If they were I might consider arming them but probably not even then.
Also, I’m a Marine myself so I can say this. There are Marines and there are Marines. Like any other military branch not all Marines are beer cooled, c-rat fed green amphibious monsters that thrive on warfare. WE of the combat arms, that most people typically think of as “Marines”, are actually a minority of the Corps. Generally speaking in any military branch the ratio of combat actuals to support and logistics personnel is 3:1 favoring the REMFs. The Marine Corps does somewhat better than average out of sheer necessity but still has one heck of a lot of REMFs.
That said, all Marines have earned the right to the name “Marine” by virtue of surviving and completing Boot Camp (a Marine who has completed Boot Camp has had roughly the same training as an Army Ranger but without the parachutist element) but that’s where things begin to diverge too. A bomb loader in the Air Wing of the Marines is not the same kind of Marine as a combat rifleman and nowhere near a Recon Ranger or Raider.
Not. Even. Close.
Of course I want that bomb loader or radar tech or comms weenie or intel wonk or supply sergeant or quartermaster’s shelf-stocker to do a good job and being as they’re Marines I can usually count on them to do that. Generally speaking to really, badly screw up something in the Marine Corps takes someone wearing brass on their collar.
But just being a Marine does not confer on those sorts of people anything like combat prowess. There’s also the fact that all of those people, being as they ARE Marines, generally won’t bother to actively disillusion you of the idea that they’re steely eyed grunts with a thousand meter stare and ice in their veins either. They’re proud of our Corps and rightly so. They’re generally more than willing to let you drape them in the mantle of the Marine Mythos even if you know they were a bomb loader or a comms weenie.
They still deserve respect because they’re Marines and my Brothers but they’re not the kind of people I would necessarily want armed on a daily basis in a classroom either.
I don’t know your friend who is a teacher and a Marine and I’m not speaking about him specifically. I know some really great Marines who are now teaching in public schools. That goes for one of my best friends who recently retired from an intel shop in the Corps and went on to teach high school in a neighboring state but — None of them were combat troopers.
Stereotypes are always iffy but generally speaking the kind of person who becomes a Marine in order to personally visit constructive chaos and kinetic wrath on the enemies of America don’t make real good teachers in public schools. If public schools had the discipline of the Corps that might be a different story but they don’t.
My point and reason for spelling all of this out here is that just because someone has earned the designation Marine and deserves your gratitude and respect doesn’t mean he/she is automatically the kind of person you want armed in a classroom every day either.
That kind of person is fairly rare as a percentage of the population though not sparse in a numerical sense. I don’t think I’d want the job myself if I had to do it as a teacher. I might consider it (if I were younger) as a guard or officer of some sort but not as a teacher. Teachers should teach not face armed attackers. It’s bad enough that teachers have become something akin to absentee parent babysitters, that’s just asking too much of them. Marine or not.
So … The solution? I think, as someone who has fired more than one shot in anger, that we need to designate, train and deploy real, no-shit shooters to our public school systems. People whose job it is to protect those kids with overwhelming lethal force. Being a combat trooper is a young man’s game. There are plenty of such people who reach an age where running around the world nullifying bad guys is just physically too much and besides, they’ve done their part to keep the world safe. That kind of person would be strongly drawn to continue their sheepdog role in a school somewhere. You still get the kind of person who runs towards gunfire but that’s his job, he knows it and he likes doing that so he has become good at it. Marine or not but Marine ex-combat troopers would be very adept at that sort of occupation.
An active shooter IS a combat scenario, you want combat capable people to deal with it. Not some purple-haired nose-ringed land whale with a gun and delusions of social Marxism plus an insatiable desire to turn kids into the same kind of weirdo they are. I don’t want that kind of person near kids armed or not.
You also want those combat capable people properly equipped and that means a rifle not a handgun. Handguns are always a second choice, a backup weapon incase your rifle fails or they are a compromise to convenience and concealability. Handguns have severe limitations in accuracy, reliability, knock-down power and require a degree of skill an order of magnitude more than a rifle. This is why a SWAT team responds armed with rifles. You want your guy to be able to nullify a threat instantly from the muzzle to whatever range his eyes can see inside the school boundaries. Not from the muzzle to 15 – 30 feet which is the effective range of most handguns and handgunners. If he has to fire you want the threat down and done, not bleeding out and able to get several more shots off.
Lastly, putting one or two people like that in every school will drop the incidence of active school shooters down to statistical zero. Schools will be where you go to get shot by a pro not where you go to slaughter unarmed innocents with impunity. The deterrence becomes overwhelming and that’s is what is required at this time. We can work on rebuilding the nuclear family as best we can when we can if we can. Those kids need protection NOW.
Your comment about using a rifle instead of a pistol in these situations reminds me of something I read a while back. At some public gathering (may have been a parade of something) the Sheriff showed up with his sidearm. A woman, somewhat jokingly said to him:”Expecting trouble?” His response, with calm and sincerity: “No ma’am. If I were expecting trouble, I’d have brought my rifle.”
Amen to that sentiment. Handguns are better than no gun at all but they’re not the best gun by a long shot. Double entendre intended 🙂
I don’t want to get graphic here so I’ll just say that too many people get their views on the stopping power of handguns from movies and not from actual experience. For example, I had a friend who shot an animal with his .45 ACP, a cartridge I favor if limited to handguns myself. The animal was hit solidly in the chest cavity, rolled over, got up and ran away. He couldn’t believe it, it didn’t surprise me at all. The animal still died within a few moments but it did not die instantly. It was much smaller than an average sized man.
This is very typical for handgun performance. It’s also why Tier One operators always use a double tap.
In an active shooter scenario protecting kids — A handgun is better than nothing but is still nowhere near the optimal weapon.
While we’re at it, how about putting cameras in all classroms? I knwo that there are drawbacks to it, buy at least it forces teh teachers unions to put energy into defending their positions rather than finding new ways to push Marxist agendas
Absolutely agree. Not sure what the drawbacks would be. I can only think of the good that would accomplish for teachers and students alike. Does it come across as Orwellian? I guess so, but in some circumstances, and child care centers is another one, camera surveilance is better than the alternative outcome of a Uvalde.
I agree with both you and Dindy but with a slightly different approach. Having a camera in every room would be very helpful from a tactical standpoint in the event of an active shooter scenario.
I think it would be a good idea to have one outside of every exterior door and interior sensitive area doors too.
Sure, the shooter would likely disable the camera though I have to wonder if maybe some of them aren’t even that smart but … Sometimes knowing where someone is not is as helpful as knowing where they are precisely.
As for the effect of the cameras themselves otherwise — People just get used to them and ignore them. When was the last time you thought about the cameras watching you in Target, Walmart or any of the grocery store chains? I hate to say this because I’m a bit of a privacy enthusiast but people who have no ill intentions and a clear conscience just don’t care about those cameras. We go about our business and ignore them as a necessary fact of life and a means to keep costs down in a retail environment.
If it’s OK to use cameras to protect jeans and bananas I’d say it’s even more OK to use them to protect our kids.
Then again, I’m biased to a degree. I’m a big fan of cameras, I have a system with 21 “views”, or cameras, here on the property. I’ve been building and using camera surveillance systems for a long time, it’s part of what I do professionally. There’s a way to interlock the views of cameras that makes it nearly impossible for someone to get at one to disable it without being caught in the view of other cameras.
I also think it would be helpful to the teachers in a school environment. It affords them some protection against violence and also against false accusations. Plus a teacher should be able to pull a video file (not to erase it, ever) to review something that went on in a class, to critique and improve their own teaching methods, etc.
Agreeing with Dindy and ACTS, cameras in classrooms would serve multiple purposes.