What are your thoughts about teachers and staff being allowed to carry a firearm in school?

Question

A small school district in Harrold, Texas is allowing teachers and support staff to carry firearms on them so long as they have a concealed weapon permit. The superintendent of schools for the district says the County Sheriff is about a half hours drive away and that's not close enough for the school to be protected.

What are your thoughts on it? For it, against it, ambivalent?

Answer 1

I think that is not the most clever idea that someone has brought up to protect schools?

why cant they put metal detectors?

or..listen to this idea of mine, why cant they just build the schools next to a police station?

Answer 2

If the school is that bad, why aren't there police on site?

Answer 3

Where else are they gonna get the target practice?

Sorry, I guess that's a serious question.  If an armed teaching staff could have avoided Columbine, then I suppose that's a good idea.  If the pilots during 9/11 were armed, there wouldn't have been such a huge loss of life.  But what's gonna happen is some fool teacher is gonna shoot a kid by mistake or something.  Just keep the guns out of the schools, period.  

Answer 4

I have not had enough time to process what I really think. My first reaction was shock, I have not gotten past that yet. I don't have a good feeling about it in general. Could they not have gotten a metal detector like the LA schools? It all concerns me & is more than a little scary that it's coming to having the people who teach our children being armed.

Blessings!

Answer 5

I think it fine those d**n kids are getting rowdy they all need to shoot them they cant take it !  

EDIT LOL at guy below me

Answer 6

Absolutely no guns in school! Are you kidding -- flamethrowers only...but seriously folks, would we have half these problems if parents were doing their jobs or if they realized that it entailed more than copulation?  Give me all the thumbs down you want, but it won't change the fact that I'm right.

Answer 7

Anybody who legally can own a handgun (ie: no felony or assault convictions) should be able to carry anywhere they wish.

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity ... will respect the less important and arbitrary ones ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." — Thomas Jefferson

I think all teachers and staff and in colleges students should be allowed to carry. Think about it....if one guy goes nuts and starts shooting the place up, how many more guns are going to be pointed back at him.... Gun Free Zones only work if EVERYONE follows the rule. Right now the only ones that follow this are the law abiding....

Added: what the heck is this country coming to when people rely on police and government to protect them....HELLO...did everyone forget the reason why we are here and what "governement's" role played when this country was formed.... If you call yourself an American grow some.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security."

If something is being done against someone else or to you that you don't like, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Don't just stand by and think it is someone's "job" to fix the problem....If even a couple of students or staff were armed at Virginia Tech 32 may not have died. If more good people were armed during their day, less bad guys would get away with armed robbery, rape, and murder over 10 bucks.

Anyone has a problem with what I said, move to England...I hear their FULL gun ban is working just fine....

"use of handguns to commit crimes rose 40% two years following the total ban on guns."

Lantz, Gary (2/2008), Backfire in Britain,

   American's 1st Freedom, Feb 2008,

   p27 and 28

Let the thumbs down begin.......

Answer 8

it sounds like a good idea. it just might decrease school shootings and attacks

Edit: I hate the fact that kids today can't even go to school without worrying about some psycho shooting up their school. believe me I'm no supporter of guns. I say a gun should only be used for protection

Answer 9

It is a sign of degneracy of society due to neglect of encouraging

real religiosity in the society.

Answer 10

It is just another example of how bad this country has gotten. It is not about war or guns in school it is about the mental health of the citizens in the USA. Anyone, who thinks this is OK, is insane.

Answer 11

"Miss Johnson, may I borrow your 9mm?"

Answer 12

okey heres my opinion. School teachers should not be carring guns to school persay but more like riot gear like bean bag guns or tazers and pepper spray and at most a 12 gage. but in larger schools with student related violance and i do belive that schools should have a weapons locker but if you live in a puny *** school district in the middle of texas and the principal is parranoid then he should relize this. Cops are allowed to travel faster then civilians in case of emergancy also in a school shooting riot police or the gard would get involved. Also probably locals would have guns too. so theres alot to be considered with this topic.

Answer 13

I think that there should be no possible way that anyone can get into any school with a gun.  Why haven't they taken the necessary precautions to ensure that can't happen...I wonder.  Don't schools have metal detectors and security or cops around by now?  

The guns just being there could mean the loss of innocent lives.  Kids don't deserve to have their lives cut short, and teachers aren't paid enough to take that risk.

Fix the schools...make them bulletproof...make sure nobody gets through the metal detectors unnoticed.

Answer 14

Well, just as there are responsible teachers, there are irresponsible ones.  Even with a concealed firearm permit, who's to say that a mentally unhinged one isn't going to randomly fire at a student and pass it off as "self protection"?

We have one armed police officer at our school- which I still feel uncomfortable about.  She's pretty disconnected with the school, though, which makes me a little happier-  it's harder to get personal when there's no one you know.  I'm just very uneasy about any ol' person having access to a gun in any ol' place, especially a place like a school where there is a lot of turmoil, drama, and stress.

Maybe I'm just scared of it because of my paranoia.  I know I've unintentionally unhinged some teachers myself (Not to the asylum, but they have come to tears over it after class; so they tell me.)  I'd be afraid of those teachers carrying them, because I'd have "threatened death to them" by that point.

Plus... how many kids have snuck papers off a teacher's desk before?  How easy would it be to sneak a gun out of a purse or desk drawer?  A student would not have to have access to their own weapons to commit a school shooting.

A couple of properly trained police officers in a school is a better alternative.  A school should belly up and offer a few hundred bucks a day for their students protection instead of allowing possibly irresponsible and poorly-trained teachers and staff to carry them.

Answer 15

This could be a REAL lengthy post.  But I'll sum it up real quick.

Teachers with concealed handguns are the closest and fastest protection for our children in an emergency situation where being armed could be the difference between your child leaving for school and never returning home.  Not ALL teachers and staff need to carry them, but those that are adept should be able to.

Answer 16

The superintendent of the school made a good case for their decision and the criteria for this program passed the school board unanimously.  I am for it.

Answer 17

That is BS to the highest degree and Eric H has the right idea. If the school is in such a precarious location then hire cops to stay stationed there! In this situation a disgruntled student doesn't even have to have his own gun to go ape **** on his peers if he can locate his teacher's concealed weapon! My school's in the middle of the town, albeit a small one, and we still have armed officers on campus, so I'm not sure how they justify the teachers needing guns.

Ach! This is ridiculous and I don't see how it was allowed to happen, I'm enraged at the thought. But I don't like guns much anyways so I guess I was bound to take this side of the argument.

Edit:

Here's why I think it's a bad idea. When is the only time a gun is useful? When it's near at hand and relatively easy to get to. If a kid brings his own gun in and pulls it out in class the teacher doesn't have time to be searching through keys and getting lock boxes or accessing secret drawers with false bottoms. It needs to be handy so he/she can get it out and take control of the situation.

Now here's the problem with that. If the gun is handy then it's good for defence but equally dangerous. If a student with a problem finds out where the gun is, all he needs to do is wait for the teacher to walk to the other side of the room and get up and get to the gun first, and now you have either a hostage situation or dead people. Or if the teacher leaves the room even for a second, maybe to give a stern talking to to a insubordinate student, or to run a quick errand while someone else (probably ignorant of the gun's location) watched the classroom and that's a window of opportunity. So unless the school employee carries the gun on their person constantly it is constantly creating a threat.

Another bad side. Who the h**l decided teachers don't get disgruntled as well? What if a workplace affair goes bad, an already unstable teacher gets pushed over the edge by a student or anyone else. Then the teacher/janitor even have to sneak the weapon on campus. They could just walk in with it loaded and let loose.

So frankly I think if they feel it's that unsafe they need to make room in the budget for an armed officer or two to stay on campus with a walkie talkie.

Edit 2:

So here's basically my stanpoint. Yes it could save live, but it has just as much a possibility of enabling the taking of lives. So if it isn't having a direct and very definitely POSITIVE effect on the environment then I prefer we go with the option that has the least amount of deadly weapons on the campus at any given time.

Answer 18

I'm for it 100%. If a few of the Teachers at Columbine had been armed, things there might have turned out differently.

Guns are the best thing ever invented to deal with ruthless amoral predators, or deranged sociopaths.

I for one never leave My front door unarmed.

*Edit*

I guarantee You every Police Force in the entire country does not have the manpower or the intrest to station officers at every single school in their area.

*Edit 2*

If a Person is determined enough they will sneak a weapon past any security You name, all the way up to a stripsearch, and I don't see them doing that to schoolkids. There is no way to make Schools "bulletproof" That's fantasyland.

*Edit 3*

Call Me insane all You like. My Fiancee was Murdered by an amoral waste of oxygen. I'll be damned if that ever happens to anyone in My Family ever again. Better armed and alive than helpless and dead.

*Edit 4*

You made some good points Vicky. I admit the idea is not 100% perfect at all. I would just like somehow for one of these incidents to be stopped before another bunch of innocents die, just once.

Answer 19

since many kids are packing illegally, why not let the staff pack legally...  it might well help to equalize things.

Answer 20

Thats good, ever here ''The right to bare arms''?

Answer 21

Oh wow, really? Let me mull this over and I'll edit Gorgon. Thanks for the Q, it's very interesting.

Okay. Without knowing the specifics (general behavior of students at school, how this decision came about, etc), here's my opinion:

I'd go with against it.

Why would a teacher or other some such staff need a gun? Well, they would need it for protection. From whom? Either students, other staff members, or some random crazy dude. What if a student pulled a gun? Should we trust these teachers to pull their gun out and be intimidating enough to convince the student to drop it, without freaking them out to the point of where they (the student) feel the need to use it?

Also, what if the student refused? Would that give the teacher the right to shoot them? I would think not .... unless the student fired the gun. But is the teacher trained with firearms? Who's to say they won't accidentally shoot another student or staff member?

Let's look at it from a different perspective. What if the student pulled a knife? If the teacher put a gun on them, they would probably be willing to drop it .... but is *probably* good enough? If the student refuses and threatens another person, is that a good enough reason to use the gun? Again, I think not.

What if there was a fight? Would the teacher be allowed to pull it out then?

What if the teacher was careless (as all humans are) and a student found the gun? Stole it? Used it on another person or themself?

What if the teacher pulled it out if they were threatened, and the student managed to get ahold of it?

Again, let's go back to is the staff member trained to use the gun? I don't know anything about firearms, so I don't know if there are laws where you have to take a class or practice sessions or whatnot.

When would they be allowed to show the weapon? Use it? Who has the authority to say when? Does the superintendent or corrections officer sit down with the staff members and say "Okay guys, if the student pulls out a gun, you may pull yours out.", etc? Are they allowed to use it if the student threatens another person, or only if the student uses it? Or is it completely up to them, if they feel threatened enough to use it, then they should?

I foresee a lot of problems with this .... for instance, if there was a hostage situation. If the teacher hesitated and decided not to use it, wouldn't they be blamed for not acting if a student or staff member died as a result? (Not with the law, but in the eyes of the media, parents, etc). What if they did use it, before the student harmed anyone? Would they be criticized for shooting a student who hadn't done anything? What if the student died as a result?

Here's another thought - what if the student wanted to play a joke and brought a realistic toy gun to school? Of course it would be grounds for suspension, perhaps even expulsion, but is it grounds to possibly being shot? Yes I know the student would probably drop it if the teacher ordered them to with a real gun, but what if the teacher used the shoot-first, ask-Q's-later method? We have no idea how a person would react under those circumstances.

Okay those are my ramblings for now. I think if the school is really that bad, then they need more correction officers around the school (we are a very small high school, mostly nonviolent aside from a few fistfights, and we have 1 officer).

Is it impossible to have another police building nearby? I'm not sure how that works.

Very interesting Q Gorgon. Thanks.

Edit:

I totally see where Darth is coming from on this, but it's such a funky Q. I'm against it, but I'm not happy about being against it either. It's sad that we have to even discuss teachers being allowed to carry guns in school. Just goes to show how crappy everything is.

Edit:

I know Darth, I know. It's so horrible that we have to choose over possibly saving innocent people to possibly causing their deaths.

Edit:

Food made me think of 2 more things.

1. Who am I to judge whether a bunch of teachers/staff members in a school in Texas, where I've never been nor have any idea of what the situation is, should be allowed to carry firearms? What do the parents think?

2. If I found out that my teachers were permitted to carry, I'd be a little frightened. What do the students think?