Texas school district to let teachers carry guns

We need to eliminate hand guns in our society not start arming each other - the wild west is over!

traderfjp wrote:We need to eliminate hand guns in our society not start arming each other - the wild west is over!

I don't know traderfjp...........There are good arguments on both sides of the gun issue.
(I always liked Archie Bunker's (All In The Family) solution to the skyjacking problems of the 1970's............"You's should just arm all your passengers!" )

traderfjp wrote:We need to eliminate hand guns in our society not start arming each other - the wild west is over!

I think , You really need to re-think that statement. The wild west may be over but our country believes in the right to protect our families and ourselves. Bad people will always find away to do bad things, look at England's home invasion stats now that they have banned firearms, Austraila is the same.

With the line of thought you have, whats your take on Corvettes, Porch's and the like? They possess way to much Horsepower than needed, should they be banned as well.

Not to create a pissing match, but I always get nervous when people start to talk about empowering our government to take away more of our rights as free people.

Devil 505 wrote;

The concept is fine John but how effective will a (licensed) middle aged "School-Marm" be against a tough 16 year old drug dealer student when he decides to take her gun away & use it on his classmates?

You never allow them to get within 6 ft. of you.

chemung wrote:You never allow them to get within 6 ft. of you.

The student or the teacher?

I don't want to get into a debate that can't be won. We both have our opinions. The average person doesn't own a hand gun so for me if the government banned all hand guns and started confiscating them it would ultimately make me safer. Are u saying you couldn't protect yourself with a shotgun? - do u really need a concealed weapon to be safe? Do u really want to arm teachers? I'm a teacher and there is no way in heck that you could keep the students 6ft. away and still do your job. If u really want to arm teachers then give them stun guns. Stun guns are rarely lethal.

Comparing hand guns with a car with lots of HP makes no sense to me. Cars with lots of HP don't kill people. Although, if Nick Hogan didn't have a fast car he wouldn't have been racing and wouldn't have critically injured his friend. I don't like giving up rights either but hand guns are something I would like to eliminate from our society.

Ed.A wrote:

traderfjp wrote:We need to eliminate hand guns in our society not start arming each other - the wild west is over!

I think , You really need to re-think that statement. The wild west may be over but our country believes in the right to protect our families and ourselves. Bad people will always find away to do bad things, look at England's home invasion stats now that they have banned firearms, Austraila is the same.

With the line of thought you have, whats your take on Corvettes, Porch's and the like? They possess way to much Horsepower than needed, should they be banned as well.

Not to create a *censored* match, but I always get nervous when people start to talk about empowering our government to take away more of our rights as free people.

The average person doesn't own a hand gun

I guess I'm not "average".

Just one thought:

"If owning a handgun was outlawed-only outlaws would have handguns"

WoodNCoal: The thought is that if you banned handguns and started a program where the government would buy them back for say 500.00 it would make it more difficult for criminals to attain one. We have a glut of guns on our society and they are readily available and for not a lot of money.

Oh man!!......I feel a gun debate coming on!!



(Moving this to the "Gun Thread")



Hey....wait a minute.......I can't do things like that!

(Richard would never be crazy enough to give me that kind of power here!)

Quick 2 cents:

Best home protection = Shotgun

Best "street" protection = concealed hand gun

("street "defined as anyplace that is not your home)

I went to North Warren Regional High School between 1978 and 1982. The principals name was Rodney Rufe. During the five days of hunting season, students were allowed to bring a shotgun into the school. However the students must register the shotgun in the office and produce a valid hunting license. before proceeding to their locker. None of the rest of us ever even thought of foul play or anything bad. Columbine would never have happened at our school because they would have been taken out within a very short time.

Some points:
1) No one who is armed in school would remain secret for long. Teachers and faculty dish the gossip, kids overhear and have gossip of their own, everyone is known and seen daily. There is no way to have a long term air marshal type set of people in the school from a secrecy standpoint.

2) While concerns for non-mass murder type criminal acts (drug dealer student stealing or taking weapon and killing another student, for instance) are real in some districts, they tend to be relatively few urban and some suburban districts where there are already entry security and some amount of armed hall security in place. These districts are not likely to adopt such a policy and regardless they already run the "rip the gun away and start blasting" risk because they're probably using rent-a-cops or perhaps retired police who don't have anywhere near the kind of training that has been suggested is necessary to have a weapon in such an environment.

3) In those districts that would consider this policy, they are likely in suburban and rural areas where they do not have entry security and either have none or very limited hall security. As such the greater risk, even with faculty carrying concealed (or open carry) weapons, is that someone will come in with a weapon of their own and either commit a directed violence or mass murder type crime. Allowing responsible, law abiding adults (who are already faculty and are thus "trusted" and considered responsible) to carry is a minimal risk increase. The risk falls even lower if you require some training above and beyond mere CCW licensing.

4) On training. First, I think it is smart to leave it to the district or county to set the training requirements they deem necessary. State regulation is too wide a level for such a decision, since they will at best have to set minimum standards to meet their most crowded and problematic school districts which places unnecessary and undue burden on the vast majority of districts in a state. And what politician worth their salt stops only at the minimum requirements for a law, particularly when "the children" are involved? That said, the state has a role to play by making non-binding recommendations, perhaps on a graduated scale for districts with different risk factors. Second, it has been suggested that something on the order of SWAT type training and testing regimens is necessary. I disagree. First, those people train for much different jobs, scenarios, and risk levels of encountering those scenarios than faculty that are maybe going to encounter such a situation in their entire lives. Second, the most likely two scenarios for faculty to encounter where they'd even consider use of deadly force are already being in the room that an assailant (armed or not) enters or encountering an assailant while guiding students out of the building. These both chuck deescalation, negotiation, room entry and clearing, and a myriad of other skills SWAT and other LEOs train for out the window. Its all about protecting kids and self, seeking cover if possible and available, knowing when to engage and when to evade, fast reaction, ensuring clear lines of fire (background and foreground and being aware of people entering the line of fire), and being accurate and controlled with shots. My feeling on this is to make training on the "immediate" scenarios annual and mandatory, encourage weekly range time but require only monthly (done on the honor system, likely verifiable after a shooting if necessary). Encourage participation in the training and policy with cost sharing schemes between trainee and the district.

5) If such policies are allowed in the state then the state should pass liability minimization laws for faculty and districts if a person under such a program is involved in a shooting. Again, these are not SWAT or even police officers. Those groups maintain high levels of liability because they train a lot and it is their job to deal with those situations day to day. Faculty and districts wanting to adopt this kind of policy, which is aimed at stopping incidents before they become worse then they already are, should be encouraged by minimizing their liability exposure. This will help keep district liability insurance to a minimum and hopefully free a faculty member under the program from having to carry their own liability insurance. Important is that this state law does not link liability minimization to any specific set of training requirements as that would just become the backdoor way of enforcing statewide minimum regs that are too stringent for the majority of districts.

pvolcko wrote:1) No one who is armed in school would remain secret for long. Teachers and faculty dish the gossip, kids overhear and have gossip of their own, everyone is known and seen daily. There is no way to have a long term air marshal type set of people in the school from a secrecy standpoint.

I disagree. You have to think "Outside The Box" a bit here Paul. We wouldn't be talking about one particular school, but rather a whole school district. We would also be dealing with a cadre of "School Marshals" (I'll use SM for short from now on) who would be moved from school to school on a regular basis so that the kids & even the faculty would never know which custodian/cook/maintenance man/electrician/plumber (whatever) was the actual SM's at any given time. Any gunmen would therefore never know who the actual SM was to target them immediately.
These SM's real identities would only be known to the principal & Vice Principal of any particular school. Like federal Sky Marshals,there will never be enough funding to provide a marshal for every flight or school, but the bad guys will never know which school they are protecting at any time. (Which schools would be protected, on any given day, would depend on highly secret threat analysis & manpower availability studies)
I would even go as far as to make this a state position, taking well trained state SWAT officers to be assigned as SM's on an irregular basis. ( that would assist with funding & provide a "ready made" cadre of trained officers to immediately be able to fill these, new SM positions.....and, equally important, spread the "boring" SM job among a large group of officers so that the "misery" could be shared! )
In the late 1970's, b4 the Sky Marshal program was fully working, fed agents from almost all agencies would be temporarily assigned as marshals to flights & everyone hated this duty! It was exceedingly boring & prevented you from doing your real case work, which never seemed to be an excuse for your supervisors to complain about why your work was not finished! )



I'll have to come back to your long post, from time to time to make my ideas/responses/changes known, when I have time, but I think this idea would be allot more effective than a "School-Marm" with a gun!

Wood'nCoal wrote:

The average person doesn't own a hand gun

I guess I'm not "average".

Just one thought:

Me either then , or my wife or my sons....or my father, my best friend and his wife as well....whew.