We have no sure way to prevent such horrors as the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. We can’t predict which very few of the very many persons with grievances will choose to vent their rage by loosing a hail of bullets at innocents. And schools would be unable to function if they were so locked down as to eliminate the possibility of a gunman walking through the door.
We can, however, take measures to reduce the likelihood and severity of such an attack. We can also prepare to defend ourselves if the worst happens. When someone is shooting at you and the students in your care, the best chance of stopping the shooter within seconds — when the police are minutes away, at best — is to shoot back. The more persons able to shoot back, the better.
It makes sense for appropriately trained teachers and other school personnel to be armed and ready to confront an assailant. This isn’t just a theoretical proposal. In 2008, the Harrold school district in Northwest Texas introduced a “guardian plan” under which some teachers and other staffers carry concealed handguns. A few other school districts have followed suit. But the practice is far from common in Texas or in the nation at large.
Says Harrold’s superintendent, “Nothing is 100 percent. But what we do know is that we’ve done all we can to protect our children.”
The Harrold district’s provisions for self-defense are controversial. They shouldn’t be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
9 replies on “Let Teachers Bear Arms”
.… It makes sense for appropriately trained teachers and other school personnel to be armed and ready to confront an assailant .…
As, if the alternative is that they be slaughtered as if ducks in a shooting gallery, it makes sense for six and seven year-old children to be armed and ready to confront an assailant.
We make too much seem mysterious about guns, at least twenty of which of every size and shape and caliber were at any given time sitting about the place, on view and immediately accessible, in the (rural) home in which I grew up. As in every neighbor’s house. Without a single gun accident that I can recall.
Screw “letting” them. Require it.
Were it not for Friday night football, Christian parents in all 50 states might have long ago led the exodus out of the Prussian model socialist schools; in favor of Christian homeschooling and private schools. The sooner the public schools are seen for the blatant govt. indoctrination camps that they are, the sooner sane alternatives will appear… alternatives which, by themselves, will help reduce the number of drug addled, dysfunctional, we evolved, there is no God (taught by the schools) victims of all ages who turn to killing others in response to a world without meaning.
Dear Paul,
Anyone who has practiced law or taught soon realizes that schools, especially elementary schools, are not a place of refuge, but a place of constant and continuing conflict.
This issue is not this senseless and psychotic incident, which no gun control law could have prevented (but armed teacher(s) in such as the Harrold school district might have reduced the severity of).
I know that more and more of the children attending our schools are the offspring of broken homes and single parents, many of which are on the verge of desperate in their relationship with the other bio-parent. Schools are the situs of many of the parental kidnappings. Ask any teacher about the rationality of the “split” parents presenting for the teacher/parent conferences.
Teachers NEED the option of protecting themselves and their charges.
This horrible incident is being used as an emotional springboard for the anti-gun lobby. As always, the issue is not the tool, but the person controlling it.
If the reformers are going to be consistent in their illogical thought process they should also take this opportunity to ban cameras “to protect the children”. After all, without cameras there could be no “kiddie porn”.
I’ve read your column & all the other comments. I find it pretty odd that anyone would expect teachers, who are low paid, should now be expected to go out & become law enforcers! They are already psychologists & surrogates while teaching classrooms that are too large. I think the solution is more in the arena of employing trained armed guards while taking advantage of the technology age. (You do allude to the need of cameras & the illogic in banning them.) If Google Earth can zoom in on activities around a home from outer space, surveillance equipment can be placed around a school that is non-invasive.
Many years ago(around 1979 – 19080), I was a substitute teacher in the Miami, FL area. A that time the ara was experiencing a sure of violence, wih an average (in the county) of about a murder or so a day.
In one schoola high school in an upepr middle class area-during lunch, middle aged woman teacher showed e her weapon – I forgot the caliber– and told me that she would as soon come to school naked as come to school without her gun.
I have no idea if the administrators knew, but she taught there fo many years. And the school had very well behavd staunts.
last words: well behave students
I’m not suggesting that we mandate or “expect” teachers to be law enforcers, so much as we allow teachers, after some level of training, to carry concealed weapons. Again, only IF they wish. This would permit them to defend themselves in the unlikely event they had to and also to defend the children they are teaching.
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