NEWS: Free Hand Gun Training for Teachers!

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

Why would we need guns?

They are a 'tool' designed to kill. It seems to me that outlawing or strictly controlling such things is not such a terrible measure.

I guess that illusion of 'defending' yourself still holds strong with some. Rest assured, the English no longer threaten your shores.

Oh and I am an English teacher - not a good one.
To speak troth, I am a teacher of Dramatic Arts - I am hardly suited to be a gun-toting professor - much too dainty for such things.

The ability to carry firearms is paramount, in the effect that it equalizes the level of threat regardless of age or physical capacity.......

An 80 year woman can kill someone with a 9mm handgun just as easily as an 21 yr old male.......

Therefore a person who would not be able to fight off an attacker now has a chance, if they are armed with a gun. With this being said not everyone should be allowed to possess firearms. Their distribution to the general public should be based on the capacity to act responsibly and in a way that is in accordance with local laws. Those who are violent felons, sexual predators, mentally divergent etc.......... should not be allowed to possess firearms. The real problem lies in the fact that society is not able to sufficiently regulate the distribution of firearms. And therefore it is forced to deal with the 1-3% of the population who are too unstable or violent to responsibly possess them.

I just know I feel a lot safer with no guns around me.

LOL......... I would be more worried about crocks and stringrays........

exactly.
I'll leave the guns to the 80 yr old ladies.
haha

we should do everything we can to make sure that the only people in our schools with guns are totally insane kids.

why should dangerous criminals have the advantage of being almost positive that a potential victim is unarmed?

Myself, being someone who survived the Clark County School District, I'm all for teachers being able to carry guns.

I personally think that in all of these school shootings that we've been hearing about there is a situation of one too few guns, not one too many. Meaning that schools are easy targets for those who have a gun and want to kill and create havoc. There is litte if any resistance to a person who wants to go on a shooting spree inside of a school simply becasue there isn't anyone there equiped to handle it. Granted, you have the school police but there isn't an armed guard for every classroom. This article stated 2 per campus. My highschool had 1 and 90% of the time that I saw him, he was inside the front office, not patroling the school.

As for the risk of an overall shoot out, yes the possibility is there. But I'd rather loose my life trying to defend myself and the people around me than to just lay down and let someone murder them all. Yes, there is the risk of stray bullets killing people. But in a situation where someone is walking into a school with the intent to kill, people are going to die. It's just a matter of how many people you let the shooter have the opportunity to kill.

Is this a good solution? No, it's not. It would be great if people could just get over thier differences and live together peacefully, but that's not happening.

Something else I've learned along the way is this: Your personal safety is your personal responsibility. The police are here to protect the "community" not the "individual".

As for "Second Amendment" Issues... as more states adopt the "Stand Your Ground" laws we should become more greatful for the ability to carry arms by which to protect ourselves.

Do they hand out vests at the front doors, cause I know I want one. This is the dumbest fucking idea ever.

some how I dont think it would be required that they carry guns. Its an option for them to do so. Your not gonna see 8 million teachers all the sudden run out and buy guns. The percentage that all ready own guns will more than likely be the ones who take up the option.

Will teachers who are blind be permitted to carry guns?

this is a dumb idea. if a student brings a gun to school and is planning to start some shit, they're going to go after the armed people first. without warning. If the teacher could be packing heat, the logical (as logical as anything in these kids' minds could be) thing to do would be to blindside the teacher at the very beginning of things. This would greatly reduce, I would think, the teacher's chances of survival in these situations. I'm fine with armed law enforcement officials at schools (although I lament that it's ever necessary), because these are people who are fully trained, and paid, to watch their own backs. Deputizing someone with a degree in middle-school ed and a minor in children's literature is unfair.

This definitely sounds like a bad idea.

That being said, in the service of interesting debate I'll play devil's advocate for a moment with a hypothetical situation.

In the case of a Columbine type incident, one of the fatalities is a teacher named Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is fully trained, licensed, and permitted to carry a concealed weapon in his jurisdiction. As with most jurisdictions, he is not allowed to carry his concealed weapon in the school. The school had armed security personnel, but they ran away from the gunfire instead of towards it.

After the incident, Mr. Smith's family files a 10 bazillion dollar lawsuit against the state, school district, principal of the school, private company which provided the security personnel, and the security personnel themselves.

The state has determined that private citizens should be allowed to carry concealed weapons for their own protection. However, like most states, the made schools off-limits locations. In essence, they accepted full responsibility for protecting their citizens when on school grounds since they removed the capability for them to protect themselves they would otherwise have within the state.

Where does the culpability lie in this case?

Again - I'm against arming teachers. I throw the above out as a starting point for discussion.

I guess you haven't followed too many gun control threads here. Responses generally seem to be about evenly split pro- and anti-. And "knee-jerk" typically doesn't describe anything but the most avidly pro-gun people. You know, the whole "cold, dead hands" group.

Beers is a wing-nut.

He was interviewed by the local NPR station (I'm shocked he did this) when he was running in the Repub primaries for Governor.

In one of the odder segments he stated that he thinks Social Security is a form of Marxism and that he doesn't have a Social Security card.



I'm thinking this bizarre idea will be hung around his neck next time he's up for election. And that may be the last we ever hear from him. He was the one guy in the primaries that almost made our current Governor-Elect (the alleged sexual-assaulter who plagiarized a really whackjob screed a year ago from an email he got) seem moderate.

I'm sure if you ask nicely the nice robber will put away his gun then...