I listened Donald Trump today in that listening session floating the NRA line about gun free zones, concealed carry guns for teachers and teachers packing guns, and frankly he sound like a Dope!
9
Teachers with guns, at best, is a stop gap measure. It might deter some shooters but we need to take the same steps that Australia and Scotland have done. Ban certain weapons like semi automatics and hand guns and register all guns.
6
No one knows how close the armed assistant principal, Mr. Myrick, came to be shot at by law officers who on arriving found an armed adult roaming the premises. In some communities, no one would have known him and would have blasted away, loosing bullets which go where they want. In Florida, Mr. Myrick is the guy to shoot at according to the self-defense, fear-factor, law. Mr. Myrick was lucky. Listen to his free lesson. It would instruct to know how few NRA-fake-braggart-experts have participated in an educative wild west gunfight. NRA are not in control even at their private podium.
8
Only the NRA could come up with something this ridiculous -- add more guns to the mix. Unbelievable. No more weapons of mass destruction! They are not for sport or defense - they are for combat.
#Enough
5
Here's a guy with experience and courage and common-sense. “There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
9
Perhaps we could just merge high schools with the privatized prison system and get some synergies. Prisons already employ armed guards; we'd just have to give them a bit of retraining on how to teach children. Don't laugh, I'm sure the NRA and Republicans are spit balling this already.
7
This country's gun fetish is killing us. The solution is only complicated by NRA's generosity toward our lawmakers, nearly all of them Republicans. There is no reason for owning an assault rifle other than to kill people.
Other countries are able to keep their school children safe. That's because we're the only country that so values gun culture. What we're hearing the Republicans doing is what they are paid to do by the NRA; they are waffling about trying to come to a solution that the gun manufacturers and NRA.
A ban on assault rifles is a good start toward firearms being well-regulated. And yes, "well-regulated" is right there in the Second Amendment.
15
Here we go, another solution that puts MORE guns in the hands of Joe Public and has the potential to put more lives at risk than not. How about instead of spending 4 billion dollars on a wall we spend 4 billion to fund more security guards at school? How about we leave it up to the trained professionals instead of your math or english teacher? How about we think about why this kid was able to collect so many guns and how it's harder to buy marijuana than it is to buy an AR-15 (guess which one actually kills people?) To say that guns don't kill, people kill is missing the point. If you have someone who is intent on killing, wouldn't you rather them only have access to a knife rather than a semi-automatic weapon? This attitude of buy more guns to solve your problem simply lines the pockets of the gun manufacturers without solving any problems. It's like the drug industry and opioids--their solution is to substitute one problem with another that benefits them financially. Don't fall for it!
9
Or.... students in high schools throughout the country could boycott school until our "leaders" make assault weapon purchase illegal throughout the United States.
10
So train educators to use a firearm. Then who next?
Bus drivers, ministers in churches, ushers and popcorn vendors in movie theaters? People attending outdoor concerts? Musicians on stage at shows? On and on...
Where does it end these days?
Basically every American would need to be carrying.
10
Already contacted the NYT on this via twitter, since there was no comment section earlier today.
Please read this article in full. The headline remains misleading. This was an assistant principal was not a principal, and he was not armed while inside the school. He went to his hopefully locked vehicle, got his unloaded gun out of a hopefully locked case or glove box. Loaded it, and didn't fire.
The shooter was apprehended by him as he was leaving the scene of the crime. He had already killed two people, one of which was his intended target. The damage was already done as it was in the Sutherland Springs shooting. It is highly likely that this shooter had no ammo left, but that is left unreported.
At least what is reported is that Mr Myrick believes if the shooter had an AR-15 he would have killed even more people. His lever action rifle probably only held 5-8 bullets.
8
Arming teachers is an insane idea,--one last ditch (I hope) effort from the Rightwing and the NRA to avoid the inevitable. Our primary role as adult human beings is one of sanity. In lies in fulfilling our primary role as adult human beings, the protecting of the younger generation from harm.
First is the tactical and the cost. this would be nearly impossible to set up and administer without a huge investment. Even then the rightwing would be forcing many teachers to so something against their will. It would also be against their nature, which is to be sensitive to students and 'be there' for them in teacherly ways.
Second, students would see teachers differently, many would be in fear. The whole student/teacher dynamic would be harmed. Then there is the practicality of having a gun on while the teacher has texts, chalk or markers, pens, papers, etc. in their hands.
Third, teachers have enough to do already. Adding one more role, a dominant role, would make the profession highly unattractive. No, we must not put teachers on the Front Lines. There are better places to 'draw the line' and that is with Congress doing its job and our incompetent president signing it. is the "
Fourth is the "Are you nuts???" factor. What kind of mind thinks of this?? Seriously, those proposing this want everyone armed and where will that end? Will we make teachers into insensitive prison guards?? Is everything in life going to be militarized?? This is a draconian proposal.
8
Teachers are already underpaid for the work they do in relation to the education they have to achieve just to become a teacher. And now people are asking them to be law enforcement as well? That is a horrible idea! I would rather pay higher taxes to have armed police and metal detectors in every school than to keep supplying guns to the populace. That is a very lazy approach to this situation.
3
And, not to put too fine a point on this critical discussion, WHY, WHY, WHY would I ever want my students to think and or worry about whether or not I am packing? Beyond absurd...
14
ANYTHING but accept that these "tools" and those that fetishize them are a scourge on safe, sane society. Teachers and principals are there to help kids learn, why in god's name should they also take on the role of soldiers? Insane.
8
Retired teacher, Still visit many schools as a ref. The idea of schools as armed fortresses with teacher warriors in every other classroom with a locked weapon somewhere in their room wont make the school a safe place.
Lets get back to school as a fortress. Athletic fields usually open up from several doors. I know one school where the gym is across from the main building. Openings everywhere from windows, doors to parking lot, bus pick up area, deliveries, kids going outside for lunch. The fortress is leaking.
Security guards with guns? How many? Costs? Effectiveness? A school of two to three thousand students is enormous. Here comes the person with an ar 15 through one of many doors, entrances, to a facility with multiple activities before and after school day starts and ends. Is security in the auditorium area? Gym for a ball game? Walking the 3rd floor hallway? counseling two kids who just had a fight?
At a minimum lets do away with weapons of mass destruction. Even Heller lets the state limit guns with rules, regulations, training and yes taxes on ammunition too. Yes, security guards and teachers with guns are an option, but with hundreds of millions of guns don't expect these types of awful events to end. But lets take weapons of mass destruction-ar 15 type weapons- out of our society. That is a start.
6
I would listen to this fellow.
2
We are taking around the problem. Enough of sorry excuses. Enough of thoughts and prayers for the dead. The dead are just fine. The survivors huddle in fear. Enough talking.
Our laws do nothing to curb the gun violence destroying our country, destroying our children, destroying our civic culture, eating away with senseless, numbing tragedies. We are done talking.
Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (including suicides, murders and accidents) than the sum total of all the Americans who died in all the wars in American history, back to the American Revolution.
Will we do anything to stop the damage? There is no excuse for the deaths that will come. There is no argument that rationalizes the deaths. Background checks will not filter the inevitable unexplainable tragedy. Screening troubled or disruptive individuals for mental defect is a stupid, empty solution. Arming educators is a stupid, harmful idea. The next mass killing with one of these military weapons is only days away. Persons who want to kill will still find a way to kill. The solution is the means they use.
Semiautomatic, military-style weapons (a list is easily complied) with high-capacity magazines are the common factor is mass killing. These weapons have no place in public hands.
Nothing will change until these guns are gone or controlled. We are all prey for each other. We are entered into a war with each other. You can smell the cordite. You can see the blood on the walls.
8
Arming school personnel is not the answer.
3
Why is the NYT GIVING INK to NRA talking points?! The elite mainstream media should know not to normalize freakishness: arming teachers is a fringe freak notion that doesn’t deserve serious discussion.
I could write a more appropriate article. Two sentences:
* America’s teachers are alarmed by demands from the NRA that they pack pistols in school.
* Military personnel experienced in the chaos of firefights with semiautomatic assault weaponry reject the NRA demands and side with the teachers.
9
Has anyone at all considered that before very long, there will be some teacher who will just shoot a student? It would be similar to a cop who is fearful or panicked shooting an unarmed citizen.
And then there's the possibility of a student taking a teacher's gun... two teachers shooting at each other... and on and on. That's where it's heading.
7
Mandatory universal education on the issue of civilian firearms possession is the way to end this evil.
1
This may be a 'non sequitur, but deserves to be said:
Prior to start shooting ,the gunman was loading his gun while in a seldom-used exit corridor.
By chance, one student stepped in, saw him loading the magazine.
"Better get out of here", the gunman said. "It is going to be messy".
The student rushed to an adult nearby, possibly a counselor, administrator or a teacher, who instructed him to rush out.
Now, think of it, if you will:
That student must have realized what was about to happen, saw the gunman loading - that is, not yet capable using the gun for shooting.
That student had a chance to struggle with the gunman, scream for help, a chance of preventing the murders and, become a legend, a national hero - an honor he would proudly carry for the rest of his life.
Instead, he'd now probably bearing the heavy burden of having been able, but having failed to prevent the murders.
Yes, he was just a kid and, considering the circumstances, one cannot expect a kid to affect such a quick decision. The adult mentioned did not elevate himself to the occasion either.
The takeaway?
You decide!
1
Just imagine the first time a student is killed in the cross fire between an armed teacher & a gunman (never a gun woman as far as I can see?) Or is killed by a bullet from an armed teacher going through a wall. Or the teacher is mistaken for the shooter by the arriving police? (likely if young and male.) Or teacher's gun goes off accidentally in class? The ramifications & recriminations don't bear thinking about. This is complete madness as far as I can see. The idea also gives me even more sympathy for teachers - already underpaid & overworked, buying classroom supplies from their own money and dealing day in & day out with ill mannered children, not to mention the occasional belligerent parent and children with social problems. This sounds like yet another stress point - now they are supposed to be trained security guards too? Target practice after school tonight or exam marking?
I can see a mass exodus from the profession.
I think this whole 'arm the teacher' mentality is getting very close to victim blaming; we've given up on stopping the perpetrators, so now it's up to the victims to protect themselves.
One last thing; this obsession with high powered weapons like AR 15s.. I fail to see why people who want to use these don't just join the military? Hunting rifle? Fine. But if you want to play with military type guns, put on a uniform. Hang on... then you'd be part of a 'well regulated militia' wouldn't you? And isn't that the whole idea of the 2nd Amendment?
7
Where can the teacher, who will be busy all over the classroom, keep a gun that will be safe from some misguided kid grabbing it? Will the gun by loaded? If not, how would there be time to actually do something? These advocates of teachers with guns have surely not thought this through.
3
Putting more arms in schools will not help anything. Both Columbine and the school in Parkland had armed security guards in place when their shootings happened, and neither could prevent their students from being massacred.
The idea that one person with a gun is going to be able to stop a gunman armed with military weapons is a fantasy straight of Hollywood action movies.
6
Mr. Myrick needs to sit between the right and the left and not move until both parties come to his understanding of the issue.
I'm an educator and I sure won't be picking up a gun anytime soon. Myrick is 100% right there -- it is NOT my job. But I don't have any problem with a retired officer - a person with a career of handling both the public and guns - being assigned to a school. Just today, I looked around my classroom to see what I could do to help students if such horrific event came to be. We have only one door (with a big class window) and we're on the second floor that is more like a third floor due to the building's structure. Jumping out the window, provided they even opened and we had the time, would land us on some steep cement stairs running across the building, and maybe the sidewalk. Something would break. Better than shot, I suppose.
As for the NRA advising schools - just stop it. We are not listening to your bad ideas. Your ideas, your ideology, your obsession, and your disinformation about the 2nd amendment isn't welcome in settings where we are trying to have kids trust us to guide them to a better future. The guns that you so ferociously support have taken the future away from too many.
5
So it appears that the prevailing "progressive" opinion is that during an active shooter situation at a school the only one who should have a gun is the active shooter.
“We protect our banks that way,” he said. “We protect things we love. America protects things it loves. We don’t care if it’s expensive.”
No.
We can trace the rise of mass shootings in school and in this country (and in this country alone of all nations) to the NRA's drive to increase gun ownership in the face of declining sales as a result of the decrease in the number of people hunting for sport.
Armed teachers? Armed guards protecting schools?
What is this? Iraq? Syria?
5
Students have to hold bake sales to buy standard classroom supplies. Little kids are "lunch shamed" for falling behind on their cafeteria payments. But someone, somewhere, is going to provide funding for a gun in every classroom?
2
This is the key statement:
"He loaded and took aim at Mr. Woodham, but did not fire out of fear of hitting someone in the background. “I knew not to shoot because the backstop was not safe,” he said. “I didn’t just go blasting away.”
How many teachers with a gun would follow this philosophy and not just start blasting away and causing extra harm with the misguided idea that they could really outshoot a crazy man
5
The sad fact is, nothing will be done unless the Republicans are made a minority, and the NRA is weakened. Listening to them now after the latest mass murder says it all. We're hearing the same old excuses. If Americans want something done about gun violence VOTE the Republicans OUT ASAP.
4
A political party that constantly professes a profound hatred of everything to do with government except for the military, is wholly incapable of marshaling the government to solve this or any other non-military related problem. This is made abundantly clear by self ascribed definition and directly observed history.
2
Wow. So this is what it has come to. Just stop and think about it. We need to arm folks at our schools rather than solve the gun problem. Australia seems like Utopia from this stance.
3
Arming teachers, which Trump suggested, is such a silly idea that it is akin to the president laughing in the survivors' faces. Think of your own grad school music teacher, or junior high English instructor or your high school chemistry teacher shooting it out in a surprise attack in a classroom or hallway. y mother was a teacher, mt sister was a teacher and I was a teacher along with many of my friends -- and I wouldn't have bet on any of us in a gunfight.
Think of the sheer logistics involved: a hundred thousand schools in the U.S. (or more or less) and the need for at least two teachers packing in any one school as the other might be out sick. Police and military have hundreds of hours in firearms training so summer shooting schools for teachers would be needed.
Finally, soldiers and police are killed almost everyday in ambushes, despite being highly trained. What chance would Mrs. Grundy stand against a school shooter who had been planing the attack for m months, if not his whole life. And who would the shooters kill first if he thought teachers were armed?
2
I have been teaching for several years and I will rail against this whenever I see it crop up. The solution to this problem is not to arm teachers. This is merely another example of addressing a symptom of a problem rather than it's root cause. Not only that, but adding weapons into a school environment in ANY capacity is so incredibly dangerous I can't even imagine how this is a legitimate talking point. What happens when a teacher is over powered by a disgruntled student? now they don't even have to sneak a gun into the building since staff will be carrying for them. Absolutely appalling.
4
If we're going to turn to guns as a solution to a problem, what is next? It is wrong headed to think violence is the solution to violence.
1
An unarmed teacher, and his/her students, are at the mercy of a school shooter, who is, by definition, armed.
Since so many teachers have commented about not wanting to carry guns in class, how about making it optional; i.e., let those who wish to carry guns, and who have the appropriate training, carry guns according to an established protocol. I predict that the second or third time an armed teacher stops a shooter there will be a mad rush for teachers to get guns.
No, this is not an end-all solution to the use of guns by deranged persons, but it might be part of a broader solution.
Many have commented here that "teachers shouldn't be forced to carry firearms". I didn't see any reference to them being "forced" to. Some have said they prefer more intense back round checks, banning various guns and equipment etc. None of these goals has much of a chance in stopping a school shooting...Schools are a soft target for mass shootings. Stopping some deranged student or adult from going on a revenge spree is virtually impossible to stop unless you harden the target as the teacher says. Get security, lock them all down. This can be accomplished by restrictions of students freedom and by paying more taxes! Real Estate taxes in most states...Having it known that schools are hard targets may deter some mass shooters. They want easy kills. They'll go to a movie theater or a park or church instead! There are plenty of soft targets. Then we can secure all those too! So if you want your kids protected, go to your school board and complain until they put a referendum on the ballot to raise everyone's real estate taxes to pay for your proposals. Good Luck!
If there are certain teachers who wish to carry a concealed weapon for extra protection for themselves and the children how is that a bad idea? I don’t think teachers should be made to carry weapons but a program for teachers who do wish to carry a pistol is a good idea. I really don’t see how it can hurt. Obviously the weapon must be secured but if done correctly then students wouldn’t even know which teachers were armed and which weren’t. That’s a clear deterrent even if only a few teachers were armed. It is time to start thinking outside the box and this us one of those ideas that may not solve the problem but certainly can’t hurt and could actually be helpful.
My father during the Civil War in his country of origin was a physician, even as the dead bodies were piling up in the morgue at the hospital, he never picked up a gun in middle of a war zone because he was a physician first. It was against his ethical stance to do so. Doctors aren't supposed to kill.
The bar in this case is even lower in an ethical sense.
The NRA and their associate nutterati are the problem.
1
A disruptive idea is to create a fund with a gun-supported funding source (the NRA comes to mind) to pay for a Mr. T meet Mr. Rogers type older adult assigned to each classroom to keep everyone safe/supported/ready to respond. Teachers won’t be burdened with the fear of fulfilling their heroic role in a crisis, kids will gain a caring adult in their lives and the older adult would have gainful employment and a purpose. Cost 24-45B a year.
In the mind of the average gun fan, all legit gun owners shoot with 100% accuracy at the indisputably correct target. In reality - and as a target shooter - I can tell you that for every kid an active shooter kills, armed teachers would most likely kill just as many bystanding kids as they tried to take out the shooter. Not to mention the chaos and confusion the police would encounter arriving on the scene of a shootout.
3
Arming teachers is not "the best idea the GOP can come up with" so let's stop with that lazy response to spin this as a GOP/Trump issue. Yes the GOP needs to get tough, but so do the Democrats. Did Obama do anything to really solve the problem in his 8 years? He signed plenty of executive orders , why couldn't he have signed one related to gun control? Why didn't Bush do anything before that, or Clinton before that? Because they all run into the stonewall that the NRA puts up with their lobbyists. I really hope these kids who say they will make change happen , really stick with it and this becomes the Minsky moment in the gun contol debate.
As far as arming teachers, not a good general idea, but plenty of schools here in Philly have armed guards/police and metal detectors. Why can't local police take a 30 minute break from writing traffic tickets and park in front of schools as they let out?
Why can't we "harden " the schools a little more - dead bolt locks so teachers can lock classrooms from the inside, harden front access windows and , instead of guns why can't there be some supervisory teachers with access to high powered pepper spray devices? Not perfect solutions, but a start.
3
Seems like the best solution is send all of our children to Australia K-12, no wait, better’d make it college too, or longer.
4
..."he has long advocated placing trained personnel, possibly retired law enforcement officers, in every school, as a deterrent."
.......
So now school districts that are increasingly underfunded are supposed to have the money to have a trained gun specialist stationed in every school? . How is one 'specialist' supposed to cover the whole school? A gunman could enter and begin shooting anywhere.
States with more guns have more gun deaths according to a study done in Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
America has 4% of the world’s population but almost half of the civilian owned guns in the world. United Nations data shows that America far and away leads other developed countries when it comes to gun-related homicides. Reviews of research done by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Centers state: The US is an outlier on gun violence because it has way more guns than other developed nations.
Gun Violence Archive reveals there is a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident, not including the shooter – nine out of every 10 days on average in the US.
The NRA has worked to instill fear in Americans as the number of killings has increased, upping the number of guns in the population. It is a vicious circle of 'more guns = more deaths creating more fear = more guns = more deaths = more fear'.
We desperately need gun sensible gun control laws.
2
So much as the police approach every stopped car in full anticipation of using their weapon, the President thinks that teachers should approach their work in much the same manner. And we know how well the police thing is going...
1
I'm a retired teacher. Believe me, you don't want teachers to have guns on campus. Especially at faculty meetings.
3
The ATF and CDC are prohibited by Congress from releasing and sharing data with anyone.
The ATF is legislatively prohibited from releasing data. Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.
Repeal Congressional prohibition on the CDC from releasing data about firearms related injury and deaths.
The ATF should be enabled with a *funded mandate* to spearhead the battle against mass murder – school shootings
Enable the ATF as the branch of law enforcement to be the paladin in battle for gun control policy?
Enable the ATF to collect the data needed to help Congress design national gun control laws.
A national policy on gun control, gun restriction, gun regulation
Without data, and data tracking, there is no control.
13
He has a right to his opinion and I salute Mr. Myrick for his honesty and courage for stopping a potential mass shooting at his school, but there is a school district in Missouri and one in Texas where teachers are being trained in the use and carry of firearms. WaPo reported that this is a growing trend and my understanding is that even community colleges like in Colorado have even legalized concealed carry on their campuses as well. Even where I live some schools hire police officers to patrol school campuses and my state has no school shootings because of this and Arizona is the most gun-friendly state in the nation.
The fact is the law signed by President George H W Bush and passed by Democrat-controlled Congress was why tragedies like what happened in Florida have occurred. The tragedies of school shootings is actually an indictment of the proponents of supporters of gun regulations. Gun control is really victim disarmament.
5
Had teachers at Parkland been armed, it would have made no difference.
Even had they had a good look at the shooter, it would have been folly to fire at him in the midst of all those students.
Even experienced, well-trained cops have trouble hitting a moving target with a handgun. Adding more guns to the mix with teachers is a recipe for disaster.
"my state has no school shooting" Really!!! Last month a student brought a gun to school in Arizona and committed suicide in a bathroom. In December, just across your state line there was a shooting in New Mexico In 2002, in Tucson, at a university 3 professors were killed in a school shooting. Arizona has one of the highest death rates for firearms in the USA (per CDC statistics). Only by the grace of God has Arizona escaped a large scale school shooting like at Parkland. Being the "most gun-friendly state in the nation" has nothing to do with your state's luck so far.
3
Teachers are not security guards, they are not policemen, they are not the military. If you expect them to be armed security they need training and hazard pay.
22
And the gun lobby, representing the manufacturers, strongly recommends the "we need more good guys with guns" approach solely to increase sales and profits for the merchants of death. Imagine you are law enforcement arriving at a school with numerous individual waving guns. What happens next ? Some "good guys" will likely be shot.
13
What choosing to increase risk of unintended harms may do, is direct attention away from small arms and toward more destructive devices. A person who is intent upon harming others, and who is capable of planning ahead, will overlook the "weapon of the moment", and alter the dynamics. What response then?
The idea of arming teachers is ludicrous. Does this suggestion include training and arming teachers who have never handled a firearm? Or even those who have?
I've owned firearms for over 50 years, have extensive experience, and regularly engage in a variety of shooting sports, both long guns and hand guns. There is no way that I would ever want to be engaged in a firefight, especially a school setting.
Has anyone thought about the mental and emotional process experienced by "a good guy" about to engage in a firefight with a bad guy? It should be unthinkable that the NRA or any cop would float such idea - both the NRA and LE know darn well that even among highly trained, experienced, constantly-practicing cops, the average cop "hit rate" (i.e., accuracy) on a target is 40 percent or less in a live firefight. One should wonder what happens to the other 60+ percent. One should also wonder about the accuracy of a teacher who can't spend hours every month practicing shooting skills. Further, it's one thing to leisurely, calmly shoot at unarmed pieces of paper on a stationary target stand 10 or 12 feet away with a safe, inert backstop, and it's another thing when that "piece of paper" is moving around, is armed with a semi-auto pistol or AR or both, firing back at you, with a backstop of students and teachers behind. This idea has more carnage written all over it.
Better to improve and make universal the NICS background check system and ban high capacity detachable magazines.
25
I love the idea. If a teacher wants to undergo extensive training, I'm all for it. I have an 11 and a 13 year old, you bet I would prefer that teachers at their schools were armed. It's called common sense, something that the left lost a long time ago and has replaced with passion and emotion. Not a good development.
3
It never ceases to amaze me how the left can respond with detailed, nuanced data - including from ex-soldiers and police officers - about the myriad of ways in which this is a terrible idea. Everything from first time combatants not having steady aim or reflexes to the "I thought he had a gun" unarmed shooting prospects of a CHILD. Then the right goes into hysterics, screeching about how any control equals taking away all of their guns, while being contemptuous of any point the "left" makes as not having common sense and logic, and being entirely emotion.
Some control does not equate to the government taking away all of your guns.
We still had guns when there was an assault rifle ban.
The number of mass shootings was minimal.
Why we now pretend that never happened, and there are no other nations on earth that have solved this problem, is beyond me.
The police undergo extensive gun training. How many negligent homicide lawsuits are filed against them each year? Can you imagine the first time a teacher is put on trial for making the wrong call? Normalizing this country's gun fetish is neither common nor sensible.
In the confusion and panic of a confrontation with a school shooter, your daughter is as likely to be shot by an armed teacher.
Wanting to see your daughter in the midst of all those amateur-wielding guns is parental irresponsibility taken to new depths.
1
My daughter is an elementary school teacher. So, in addition to her long hours & meager pay (with which she often supplies her students with pencils, paper & lunch money), she is now supposed to carry a loaded weapon & be expected to use it prudently & accurately?
This is clearly insanity. Rather, let's require all NRA members to "muster" every Saturday, as the "well regulated militia " in the Second Amendment implies. And perhaps we should limit their guns to as many single shot, muzzle loading muskets as they can afford.
22
I am a teacher in Vestal High School in central New York. I don't want to carry a gun, nor do I want guns in my school. The problem we face is not killing maniacs who come to a school the do harm, it's to stop them before they can. Sensible gun control means real background checks that are mandatory for everyone. It means registering all guns and gun sales through the FBI. It means age restrictions, and not selling weapons designed to kill lots of people to anyone. No one needs an AR-15. No one.
22
Well said.
President Reagan was surrounded by extremely well-trained officers, yet he and three others were shot by a nut-case with a revolver. If trained officers with only one job -- protect the President -- couldn't stop Hinckley, how do we expect relatively untrained teachers to protect a school of 3000 from a shooter with an AR-15? I'm a gun-owner, but I'd never try to take on a guy with a semi-auto assault rifle with just a handgun. The idea is ludicrous.
26
“If Luke Woodham had an AR-15, he probably would have killed 20 people instead of two,” he said. “There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
This is the bottom line and we'd all better wrap our heads around the fact that defending against an ambush attack is not as easy as it sounds. Mr. Myrick is humble enough to admit his own limitations and so should everyone else. Myrick's case, the weapon the shooter was using was designed for hunting animals, not killing human beings in rapid succession.
23
If educators are carrying weapons, they may as well have bullseye targets taped to their chests and backs. The intruders will know who to shoot first.
15
“There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
Well said, Mr. Myrick. Exactly. The problem is high-capacity and rapid fire weapons. You can't kill a lot of people with a gun that doesn't hold a lot of ammunition.
So what do the NRA nuts say? Let's flood the schools with a bunch of teachers and kitchen workers and custodians with guns. So they can return fire when the kid with the AR-15 opens fire. So we can end up with twice as many wounded and killed. Brilliant.
16
You know what other society has the expectation that everyone is armed?
Westeros.
How's that going for them? Good?
3
That's all we need. Teachers running around with guns.
How about the cops during their patrols show their faces in schools and take a stroll through the hallways.
3
Why was a principal allowed to have a gun at school? Why would anyone think any school staff should be armed. That makes as much sense as army flight attendants.
3
Let's call arming teachers the Archie Bunker approach. He proposed stopping airplane hijacking by arming all the passengers.
Need we say more?
8
All teacher's need guns, knifes and brass knuckles along with Billy clubs and bazookas. Face it, adolescent nutcases will just up the ante and become better equipped if faced by armed teachers. It is a matter of time before the body count goes sky-high as teenage gunmanship becomes DOC Holiday and Bat Masterson-like in killing skills. One wonders how many disturbed teenaged boys are there in America? One-thousand, or possibly ten thousand amid 200 million loose guns. Statistically, what are the future odds of more, substantial school massacres killing scores of classmates tomorrow. An astute high-school math teacher might run the probability stats from historical data and make a prediction.
2
Hobbyist gun toter training index.
Minimum training days required for a Pastry Chef : 96
For a Ringling Bros. / Barnum & Bailey Clown College grad : 48
For a Macy’s SantaLand Elf (including rehearsal) : 5
For a certified Professional Dog Walker : 4
For a McDonald's employee on the french fry station : 3
For a Santa School diplomate : 2
For an Adult School Crossing Guard : 1.5
For a certified Walmart Greeter : 1
For concealed carry weapon-firing proficiency in 26 states : 0
27
Great post! Thank you.
So the guy that proved the idea is effective disagrees? huh?
1
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. He is the black swan. It worked. But more often, more guns begat more gun fire.
3
The guy who had the sense in the moment not to shoot into a crowd knows most people would not have that discipline.
Who knew the world could be so complicated?
15
You missed the point that he was an experienced veteran gun owner, who knew not to fire his weapon.
He's contrasting himself to ill-trained teachers with no experience.
Placing even one person-even if not identified-in a school to be the carrier of the "football" so to speak, will only serve to make any and all non student personel targets, to be eliminated, on sight, by kids who have seen too many movies. It will not matter to them who's got a gun-if the person is kooky emough to go gunning after other students, Surely he'll think of beginning by eliminating his oppsition. This is clearly one of the most unthought out ideas ever. Why not just have every teacher drive to school in a tank, go to class in armor ? But in reality arming anyone sets up a "us versus them" situation and makes bad situations worse. Kids who might be talked out of stupid acts won't talk at all from fear of being betrayed by some cop. Cops, entering a school may shoot everyone and anyone on sight in possession of a gun. They are not known for patience or willingness to think about a situation.The FBI is not responsible for protecting schools from students-the school itself ought to have been aware that it was "lighting the fuse" of an explosive situation by epelling Cruz. Make schools getting fed money have to justify expulsion and design a scond string education system or get the kids proper socially responsible jobs to teach them forbearance and let them earn money-all the while placing a "hold" on their ability to purchase, use or own firearms. some kids might be saved . As Reagan found out in the 80's, you can't stop a bullet with a bullet.
5
Arming teachers is a really stupid idea. People who become teachers obviously don't do it for the money, or respect. They want to educate kids,help them learn how to be good people and maybe give some kid a future that was thought improbable. More guns in schools aren't the answer. The American people and students are crying out for help. We want stricter gun control,we don't want mentally unstable people to have access to guns. We want to live without these horrors every month ,without students deaths,without the thoughts and prayers.
13
And when a teacher goes off the deep-end, who do we arm next? The students?
20
“There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.” Amen.
26
An observation....all of these school shootings lead teachers to drop out of the profession and parents to pull their kids out of public schools. I don't think the far-right is clever enough to have orchestrated this, but it is ironic that these shootings advance their goal of decimating our public school system.
Far-right orthodoxy is a cancer on our society.
15
We don't give teachers adequate school supplies, but we are now supposed to arm them?
24
It's the American way.
5
We don't arm bank tellers. Every bank gets at least one fully-trained armed guard, and there are many more banks than schools. Asking teachers to carry guns is so absurd and on so many counts.
11
Down-home guy with a flag in his front yard says
“There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
I think that says it all.
We need more level headed down-home guys like him to publicly take a stand. Liberal ladies like myself don't get very far in the gun debate.
18
Teachers are't police or soldiers. The only way to stop school shootings in the short term is to have armed police at every school covering every entrance every day the school is open. Expensive? You bet. Perhaps someone can suggest a better way to (almost) assure the safety of children in school.
2
Remove most guns from the citizenry.
11
I'm with you there.
It's the only way.
The Dean of the U. of Penn Landscape Architecture program left his position at a Texas University the minute they approved gun-toting on the campus. We have a hard enough time keeping teachers. Add guns to the mix, and you will get no-one willing to take those jobs.
12
That's how most everyone feels at my husband's Texas campus. If only there were available academic jobs elsewhere, no one would stay in this misbegotten, rotten, cowboy state.
It's way past time for common sense gun control laws. If that fails, then it's time for a TOTAL BAN on all guns. Period. The NRA is too clever by half. It's far more dangerous than any terrorist organization (with the exception of white men, or domestic terrorists).
8
Very soon NRA volunteers will form a well-organized milita to fight school shootings. Good guys with a gun protecting our schools. Bound to happen any day now.
6
Mr Myrick is right. Semi-automatics like the AR-15 should be restricted. The default response from NRA types after a shooting is to suggest more guns. More guns.
3
The GOP stands for Grossly Out of whack Priorities.
10
I genuinely wouldn't have felt safe in school with police walking around either. Jesus. It's a school not a prison.
5
Politicians must defy the National Rifle Association. Such Second Amendment extremists hold positions based on hysteria not history, on hyperbole not humaneness—on power and selfishness not probity and selflessness. Arming educators is not just an oxymoron. It’s moronic. Politicians must show the moral courage of the young people offering hope and ideas now. Doing the bidding of Second Amendment extremists is cowardly as well as selfish, and endangers all of us—and our nation.
7
I have come to support at least exploring the idea of armed personnel in schools. Whether they are trained teachers or school marshalls should be debated. And of course participation would be completely voluntary. But something has changed in America in the last generation. Schools are now officially targets, the softest of targets. And targets need to be protected. We would reduce the casualty toll in the next mass school shooting if an immediate responder were available. Even if it just reduces the death toll in the next incident from 20 to 10, wouldn't it be worth considering?
In contrast I have no hope whatsoever that any substantive legislation on either gun control or mental health will be forthcoming any time soon. And I'm not willing to do nothing.
I say this as an individual who has never owned and under no circumstances would own a gun — I don’t think the guns are the problem.
It’s our attitudes. Instead of treating guns indifferently as a tool, we glorify guns as some sort of great salve for all our problems.
Until that changes — and I have no reason to believe it ever will — we’ll continue to have all sorts of gun violence.
I'm not opposed to restrictions—but they only work to a point. Don’t count on them to stop school shootings.
1
They haven't stopped shootings in Australia but they have reduced firearm deaths by 50%.
I'll take it.
10
Given the current situation, I don't think its wrong to discuss more security in schools, including armed guards who are trained to confront shooters, but do we really need to give guns to teachers?
I'm a teacher, and I've been learning more about what to do in the event of an emergency, but I say train more professional security officers. By all means let's give teachers and schools more resources to protect students, but let's leave the shooting to the professionals!
6
How is a responding police officer know a shooter when multiple people are running around with guns?
However, just think of the money the gun manufacturers will make in gun sales to schools!
17
If people want teachers armed to provide additional security, then they should be paid for that service. I suggest $100 dollars a day every day they bring a gun to the school.
Let's see how fast legislatures figure out a better way to secure schools when they are required to pay for the service they are requesting.
8
My wife is a principal. My sister-in-law is a principal. Our niece is a teacher. My Mother-in-law at 89 is a teacher and has been both an administrator and college professor - teaching for over 65 years. They all would put themselves in harm's way to protect your children. But, don't ask any of them to carry a gun. What a moral tragedy to even suggest that a teacher of children bear arms while teaching.
21
As a former teacher, it would be absolutely nuts to arm teachers. Can you imagine the accidents that would occur? All schools need to do like the urban schools I worked in. One entry point with metal detectors, increased(unarmed) security personnel & a school resource officer(police officer). That's what can be done right now. Next, vote out anyone who doesn't support common sense gun reform(military style weapon ban, high capacity magazine ban, "red flag" laws & better background checks). Good luck to all the teachers & students- the majority of Americans stand with you!
15
So are we only going to focus on our kids when they are only at school? What happens when they leave and decide to go to a concert, the movies or church with the rest of the family? Do we arm the band, the concession stand staff and the choir?
Instead of politicians promising a chicken in every pot they now are promising an armed guard in every school. There's just one thing we all know they aren't going to pay for any of it, they don't' even put up the money to fix the educational system.
11
I don't support this idea at all, just more nonsense from the NRA and 2nd amendment folks immune to rational discourse.
And on concealed carry permits – I do not know what the annual or semi annual requirements are, but those folks should be required to go through the same high stress drills and mock situations and training that police officers do.
Every cop I have ever asked about this will willingly admit that under stress they are far less accurate marksmen, and they worry about the level of training of concealed and open carry people.
11
I think this guy is right in that an armed guard or security officer is good, but arming teachers is not. Teachers are spread thin enough with their current responsibilities already. Their training would be insufficient, and I’m worried that such a proliferation of guns in school would lead to accidents. Think about a third grader opening the teacher’s desk drawer and pulling out a gun.
7
I can't even believe this is a real conversation. About a thousand objections immediately come to mind:
1. Cost of training and maintenance
2. Increased danger from accidents as well deranged students / teachers
3. Liability costs
4. Etc. Etc.
I'm sorry, but from my own limited high school experience I knew kids that would have done anything to get their hands on a classroom gun. I've known teachers (quite a few of whom were Vietnam Vets) who were prone to rage not all there. I've seen accidents in all aspects of school management and resources. The minute you put guns into teachers hands that will need to be the most important consideration one makes in terms of hiring, firing, etc. You would be forced to hire a fourth tier educator with excellent fire arms training over a first rate one with no gun experience or put your school at risk for potential liability.
5
When I was in the military they told us the only plausible self defense weapon is a shotgun, because pistols rarely hit their intended targets - even if the person firing is highly trained. Like NYC police trained. This idea was rooted in evidence-based studies.
I think it is likely whoever comes up with the idea of arming teachers have not had training in the past, or in some perverse way like the idea of gun proliferation. Either way they should not have a say in public discourse.
11
At my public school in Los Angeles after they issued iPads to all the staff and students the tech support provided was someone they hired whose relevant experience was they used to work at Best Buy. I can only imagine the talent pool the District will draw on to keep its firearms running at peak performance. Gun manufacturer's would be laughing all the way to the bank if they ever start arming we teachers. If I shooter ever does come to my school, I plan to just throw my broken down iPads at them, that's about all they're good for anyway.
3
I'm a retired teacher. The idea of arming teachers horrifies me. It would turn them into law-enforcement professionals like the police - but semi-trained and inexperienced in dealing with serious emergencies or even the everyday realities of regular police work through which, we hope, said police become gradually more and more skilled, steady and professional.
Possible outcomes include a teacher shooting the wrong kid, the wrong adult, a first-responder, or unwittingly setting off a lethal episode by misinterpreting a situation. Imagine the compounded tragedy - and lawsuits - this would produce.
Would armed teachers be required to practice regularly at shooting ranges? What if some teachers turn out to be very bad shots (as I suspect I would)? Would armed teachers need to engage in regular training sessions re violent public assaults, as I'm sure police, military and other protection agents do? Where would they find time to do this? The vast majority of teachers are already working so hard that the time and responsibility required to become efficient, gun-wielding, emergency-handlers would add an unfair, unrealistic and potentially debilitating burden to their busy lives.
No, sad as it is, teachers are there to take a bullet for their students if they possibly can, not to become proficient at shooting them.
And I believe most teachers would agree with me.
7
Those suggesting arming teachers are avoiding the issue of (say it!) gun availability: guns already in circulation and guns being manufactured and marketed. They are not thinking that suggestion through to it's effect/affect.
The point made over and over is that nowhere in the world, a world filled with mentally ill, is there mass shootings (not only in schools) as we are seeing here in the US. How does this make America great?
4
The good guy with a gun theory breaks down in practice when the good guy was mislabeled, or changed after his evaluation.
The current focus on mass shootings in schools is because that is where the latest mass shooting occurred. However as matter of statistical likelihood the chances of any given school being the scene of an active shooter situation is next to nil. In fact the threat is not even to the school as a whole, but only to about 15-20 students who will be killed.
For this reason the idea of arming teachers in every school in America, to try to mitigate the harm that can be done by an active shooter at a school is significantly overreacting, as the chances of that situation taking place in any given school is next to nothing.
And the same is true for the students currently protesting and demanding of lawmakers to enact laws so as to prevent another school shooting from taking place because they feel their life is threatened by the phenomenon of school shootings.
What these students fail to grasp is the actual threat that school shootings pose to them. There are 50.7 million students in the US from elementary through high school. And so if every other or third year there is a school shooting that kills, say 20 students, the actual threat to students as a whole is statistically nil.
In fact students probably have a greater chance of being killed during the commision of a crime, not to mention car accidents, than they do in school shootings.
So while school shootings are horrific events the actual threat they pose to the lives of students as a whole is close to nothing.
You are missing all the collateral damage a shooting does from family, students and teachers. Plus this is the tip of the iceberg in total gun violence.
I'm really curious to explore this idea of arming teachers. To me, it seems that having a few people with handguns squaring off against someone with an assault rifle is a massacre waiting to happen. I have heard stories of POLICE OFFICERS standing down until SWAT shows up if they believe suspects are armed with that heavy of firepower, and rightly so, because .223 rounds are able to defeat most types of ballistic vests.
Furthermore, what happens when one of these "good guys with a gun" misses and shoots an innocent person? Do we just write that death off, or are there serious legal repercussions?
The NRA doesn't have answers to any of these questions, because in the end they don't really care. They just want to distract and delay until the news cycle moves on.
4
Mr. Myrick was able to help in this situation because the student needed to stop to reload.
“If Luke Woodham had an AR-15, he probably would have killed 20 people instead of two,” he said. “There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
What else really needs to be said? This has been the common sense argument against these types of weapons for decades, yet nothing ever gets done to remove them from the hands of civilians.
4
To arm teachers is insane. The NRA is showing it’s true colors of being a mouthpiece for gun manufacturers. More teachers armed = more guns sold. It’s despicable!
21
Arming teachers is probably the stupidest ideas, in a mountain of stupid ideas. Has anyone thought this through.
- Who will pay for the guns? Who will pay for training? If the schools, where will the money come from?
- How will the deal with insurance issues?
- How will guns be kept safe in a classroom?
The only ones benefiting from this dumb idea are gun manufacturers. But then, they are the ones funding the NRA and thru the NRA, these politicians c
14
A long time ago, I taught among some unstable, abusive, violent students (some ditto their parents) AND teachers AND administrators, and the idea of any of them being acknowledged and/or licensed to carry in school is a terrifying concept: there'd have been bloodbaths. It's a stupid, obscene idea to arm educators. Get some competent police officers in the schools. Maybe metal detectors (get rid of electronic devices, too). And definitely do something about gun control and the availability AT ALL of semi-automatic weapons, etc., which are simply murder weapons.
35
The cowards in the NRA and the politicians they fund (also cowards) make me me wonder how they handle their auto insurance claims. If one has to have a driver's license (and training), let alone auto insurance, surely we can do the same for gun owners. A little $$ out of their pockets might do a whole lot to change this country. That being said, we should also- asap- ban assault riffles, large magazines and bump stocks. In addition, no one under 21 should be allowed to buy a gun unless a parent allows. I would go much further if I thought possible, but the above is a minimum agenda.
Mr. Myrick is a breath of fresh air in terms of courage and honesty, something the NRA lacks, as do all the politicians who accept their blood money.
20
We could base new teacher hires and salaries on successful completion of gun training certifications. Picture your favorite English or chemistry teacher shifting smoothly from the isosceles and weaver stances with their 9 mm during their interview with the school board. It would be great criteria for further teacher accountability, and the word will get out quickly among the students--respect will follow. Just knowing a little physics and chemistry won't be enough to get you a teaching job any more.
Yet another example of more hare-brained American politics at the expense of public welfare, all to avoid pixxing off the NRA gun lobby. When did this nation stop making intelligent decisions? [something something about corporate money]
16
Guns at schools? Why stop there? Keep a gun under your table everytime you get together for a family dinner! Who knows what those crazy kids might be up to!
7
You know where you can NOT be armed? The Capital building. Can’t bring a weapon into Congress.
George Bernard Shaw famously wrote, “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.” Today’s tragic version is, “Those who can’t teach can’t because they’re too busy learning how to shoot.” I only wish it were something to laugh about.
3
The right to own an assault rifle turned machine gun and on and on about self defense is really about the right of people to feel that they are in charge of their turf. That they have control, evn for example, if they need to protect themselves from the government.
No matter how many guns you own, protection from the government is not possible. There is surveillance everywhere and the police are militarized and everywhere, as are the armed forces.
The right to own a gun is the last refuge that we have any control. It is an escapist belief, as nonsensical as believing in the tooth fairy or Santa. When this last pacifier is forced out of their mouths we will the full rage that lurks behind the prop of believing in individual control burst forth.
The NRA and its lobbying acts as a dam on the pent up fury of millions of people. It will be cathartic when this prop is removed and we can see the hopeless anger for what it is. Despair.
3
Joel Myrick is absolutely correct, but he's preaching to the choir. He and people like him - responsible, smart gun owners - need to get out and talk to the people in this country who believe that AR-15s are not the problem. They need to talk to the people who, every single time a mass shooting happens somewhere, volley back with the farcical argument that "Well, if the suspect had used a car to commit this crime, would we ban all cars?". They need to talk to the misguided men and women in our nation who think we're still living in the Wild West, or the morons like my friend's neighbor who, when a guy was arrested a while back in an upstate New York mall for brandishing a gun and scaring fellow shoppers, intimated that if the shoppers had been armed there would have been no need for the police. They need to talk to the people whose persistent belief in the sacredness of the Second Amendment has crossed over from reality into lunacy and is rapidly sending this country over a cliff. These people won't listen to gun-safety advocates, liberals, Democrats, "coastal elites", survivors of mass shootings, or anyone else who thinks guns need some sort of regulation, but they just might listen to the Joel Myricks of this country.
To Mr. Myrick: thank you for speaking up sir, and I'm so sorry for what you had to endure back in 1997. I'm sorry that, 20 years on, we're still having this endless conversation as a nation. It's an insult to you and to the people you lost that day.
10
" “There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.” - Joel Myrick
3
Who in the world thinks it's a good idea to make schools into magnets for sickos intent on "suicide by gunfight"? There is a perverse romanticism to "die in a blaze of glory."
The NRA response to any gun problem is always, "More guns!" isn't it?
The reason why they have to advocate putting guns on teachers and principals is that they're arming all the nuts out there, creating the very bullet-infested environment that necessitates it.
Gun-possession mania is in and of itself prima facia evidence of mental illness. Abundant numbers of gun-ownership fanatics are possessed of a kind of Hobbesian social Darwinism, survivialists envisioning themselves someday victors of conflict red in tooth and claw.
5
last thing I want is armed teachers in my HS. they have enough trouble teaching. thank you tenure. I'd rather arm the kids.
2
I got news for all your parents who are worried about the safety of your children.
If a gunman enter my school, *I* will NOT be taking a bullet for your son or daughter just because YOU are too stupid to vote people into office who will impose regulations on the gun violence industry.
Either you value your children more, or you value your guns more.
IT IS THAT SIMPLE.
25
“There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
Exactly.
12
Would we ask a soldier to kick down a door in Falluja wearing nothing but fatigues, running shoes and a sidearm? Asking a teacher to confront a purpose-driven killer who is wearing tactical gear, carrying an assault rifle with high capacity magazines and semiautomatic pistols while carrying a handgun and wearing Dockers and a golf shirt is a truly stupid idea. When that teacher is taken out who will help keeps the students safe? Teachers have a role to play in an active shooter situation but not as Wyatt Earp. How about vote yes on school levies that will install protective equipment and make campuses less accessible to murderers? Last point: No one needs an assault weapon in this country. Get rid of them.
21
Before a single teacher is ever asked to carry a pistol, every single student in the USA should walk out of school and refuse to return until legislators act to make them safe.
24
Perfect, let's just turn schools into shooting galleries. That seems like a very bright idea because, as everyone knows, the more guns available in a society, the more peaceful it becomes. Ha! The NRA treats us as being stupid, and they're right, because so far they are winning by rejecting even the most benign and sensible gun regulation. How is it that the 2nd amendment matters more than the life of so many innocent American that die each year at the hands of maniacs, the depressed, the enraged or the simply evil?
6
Pro-gun legislators will not give in to the pleas of children or anyone else.
They should be asked, "Do you support freedom to rape?"
"Do you support killing your own children or grandchildren?"
But only voting them out of office, only by defeating the NRA cash machine,
only by restoring humane humanity and compassion to politics and to the nation will anything change.
6
Arming teachers is crazy. I don't want to become a teacher so I can learn how to defend kids from bullets. It's about as ridiculous as asking an accountant to go get training with assault rifles and expecting him to defend the firm in case a former employee retaliates against the company.
7
Good God be real. This is not a time to offer up half-baked attention diverting ideas about arming teachers. We risk being as cowardly as the many gutless elected officials who hide from real dialogue and decision making if we do not rise up and demand changes in a failed process. I am a teacher with 40 years experience and what I see is the damage this culture of violence is doing to the spirt and souls of our youth. It is a criminal and shameless. We have failed our children!
8
Great! Arming teachers insures sure-fire lawsuits whenever the French teacher fails to take-down a shooter, mistakes a box of KFC for a bomb, or uses extreme measures to insure the glee club stays in tune.
The all too typical American response: Identify every animal in the room...except the elephant.
7
This article wasn't about arming teachers. Did you read it? Or just do the TL;DR pile-on hysteria thing?
Good one!!!
Headline A: "An Armed Principal Detained a Campus Gunman. But He’s Against Arming School Staff."
Headline B: "An Armed Principal Detained a Campus Gunman. And He’s For Increasing School Security With Highly-Trained Armed Professionals."
Just sayin'.
1
That this (teachers being made to pack iron) is even being put forth by people as a "solution" in the United States of America is absolutely deranged.
To the people proposing such a ridiculous notion, fraught with its own peril, I ask this: Why did you get to grow up in an America without this absurdity and existential fear and dread but our kids don't? If you let this continue you have absolutely failed in your responsibility of adulthood and also your debt to every sacrifice made to protect this country and our way of life. What is wrong with you?
Men bear an outsized responsibility here too. The shooters are always men and the calls to arm teachers, pastors, theater ushers, and concert singers (?) are always men. I'm a man. I grew up around gun and know how to shoot. Where is your manhood? What generation of men before this one would have stood idly be with this insane status quo? Certainly not the founders that wrote the Amendment being hidden behind, or any fathers or leaders up until now.
5
What would have happend to Lorezon Prado, who was mistaken by the SWAT team as the shooter? Do you think a teacher would have shot him by mistake?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/florida-shooter-lorenzo-prado_us_5a...
1
You Americans and your guns! Arm teachers? What next? Please forgive me for saying this, but it is clear to me that when it comes to guns, you Americans lose all common sense. No country in the civilized world arms its teachers. And no country in the civilized world has such a problem with shootings and massacres. Ask yourself one simple question: What is more important to you? To have the freedom to bear arms or to have the freedom to enjoy and play with your children, and see them grow up as beautiful human beings? The problem here is not unarmed teachers, but guns! What you need is simple: You need gun control, just as any other civilized country has. America is no different.
15
Absolutely, categorically absurd. Can you imagine? Having MORE guns in a school building? Regular, everyday teachers walking the halls with guns? Scores of "good guys with guns" not knowing who the "bad guys with guns" are roaming the halls, particularly in an active shooter situation? It's like, cray cray.
I am all for having armed guards at schools, perhaps multiple guards depending on the size and layout of the school. But arming teachers? Jeez. We love our freaking guns so much we will go to any length to keep them. We seem to love them more than our own kids.
5
The guns have never been the problem. You say this style of gun has no place in civilized life? What about the maniacs that wield the weapon? Rid your self of one single tool out of a limitless tool box and what do you change? A shooter could take 2 semi auto hand guns that no one is talking about banning, and kill 18 people as fast as it takes to pull the trigger. A shotgun that no one has ever talked about banning, is far more harmful and you do not even have to aim. Point and shoot. The wounds are devastating. Something designed to kill a deer and something designed to kill a moose? These are not talking about being banned and so much worse to be shot with than the small caliber AR-15. Shoot me with the one that is not banned by the Geneva Convention.
Students who experienced the most recent school shooting have been clear that they believe their lives were saved because their teachers acted quickly to get them out of the hallways and into locked classrooms. What would have happened if instead all the teachers left those students to retrieve a gun?
2
Teachers are educators, not action heroes. Anyone who proposes arming teachers has been watching too many movies. Let's get real. How many teachers would volunteer to join their school SWAT team with little training and no body armor?
Arming teachers would exacerbate the U.S. gun problem by allowing more guns in public, potentially enabling increased conflict, and possibly even sending a dare to criminals.
Note to Congress:
1. Study the gun laws in those European nations where gun violence is low.
2. Then improve the U.S.'s gun laws accordingly.
Pretty darn simple, wouldn't ya say, Congress? (Oh, sorry, unless this prudent strategy might interfere with your sacred relationships with the NRA, other gun lobbies, and the almighty dollar!)
2
Mr Myrick’s opinion holds more weight than all the GOP politicians who have been bought by the NRA. He has experienced this all too common tragedy. Yes, Mr Myrick, let’s ban assault weapons. If you feel the need to have one, you ought to be in the military.
1
If American police officers trained to use guns cannot shoot suspects in a leg, for example, why should anyone believe that a school teacher armed with a handgun could shoot a terrorist armed with an AR-15, quite possibly surrounded by students running in all directions.
Teachers unite and say no. Otherwise you are accepting the responsibility for killing one of your own students. If you tell us, yes, I am ready to take on that responsibility and will arm myself as soon as allowed, then here is what you must do: Quit teaching.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
3
Part of the problem is that the NYT, WaPo, CNN, and MSNBC never report the instances in which guns save lives. It happens, and it happens more often than liberals realize. When it does happen, it’s plastered all over right-wing media. (I imagine gun accidents are downplayed, too.) As a result, liberals and conservatives aren’t even equipped with the same set of facts whenever this argument arises.
Don’t get me wrong: I emphatically reject the argument for arming school officials for too many reasons for this word count. The only way to decrease gun violence is to restrict access. Period.
But I wish left-leaning media acknowledged the examples gun-rights activists have in mind when they stake out their position, if only because knowing your “enemy” is important to successful counter their claims.
1
that's because, Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news.
1
The New York Times is the paper of record. They report a lot of everything, I suggest you buy the paper instead of read it on-line. The right-wing media is just that - right-wingers, who jump through hoops to try to prove their pre-conceived ideas, like climate change is a hoax, or guns save lives. Get a grip on reality, dude. Don't read right-wing 'media'.
2
Armed school security is not a panacea. It would be costly and marginally effective. A typical mass shooting is an ambush attack. It doesn’t matter how well-armed you are; if someone gets the jump on you they have the upper hand.
Meanwhile, what about everywhere else? Say we give schoolchildren a modicum of security. What about the people being murdered at concerts, nightclubs, movie theaters, in church, or at work?
2
Let's arm the students as well as the teachers. Give each kid a gun on the first day of kindergarten. Why hasn't the NRA thought of that?
That's the next step after they arm the teachers.
Since inevitably a few teachers will go nuts and shoot up a school and then the NRA will suggest that children should be armed to protect themselves "just in case." Then the cafeteria and maintenance staff, school secretaries, delivery people... And then parents coming to the PT conferences should be armed. And just to be fair let's arm the school mascots. Maybe even the class hamster.
1
Seeing and hearing the Florida high school students speaking out and organizing, I have been very moved by their impassioned eloquence. Where is an analogous organized movement among teachers for "gun control," or specifically the banning of military weapons in private citizens' hands? Where are the teachers' unions in this? Why have there been no organized teachers strikes nationwide to demand national legislative change? What could possibly be more important for teachers' unions to organize around than this? Why aren't there millions of teachers and parents marching and demanding that elected officials represent the citizens and not weapons manufacturers and profits from killings with lies about defending the Constitution! If they were really defending the Constitution, they would not be tolerating traitors in the White House! Where are the teachers and teachers' unions??!! Where are the parents? Why aren't there nationwide organized "work stoppages" in support of the Florida students who are trying to force duplicitous, complicit "lawmakers" to do what is right! Why should high school students in Florida have to have a "go fund me" effort and sell t-shirts to raise money to try to make OUR elected officials do what they SHOULD be doing - yet still be ignored in Tallahassee! The corruption is deep and the stench is overwhelming, but American citizens are starting to locate their spines and their voices!
1
Here in Israel, all schools are fenced and have armed guards. Teachers and principals are not armed.
All malls, movie theaters, public buildings, clinics, and hospitals are all guarded by armed guards.
And to get a gun license here you need to get a form from the police proving you don’t have a criminal past, a medical statement proving you’re in good mental and physical health, and be over 21.
It’s not rocket science, nor is it difficult.
3
Background checks are not good for much. Someone without a criminal past may well have a criminal future.
1
That is defeatist thinking.
Our experience here (and in most sane countries that actually enforce gun control) says otherwise.
Arming teachers is the equivalent of trying to stop rapes by telling women what to wear, to not drink when they're out, to never walk home alone, etc. The potential victims are not the issue here. It is the shooters and their easy access to weapons of mass killing that are the problem. It is insane that we refuse to protect our children and even more insane that the sole reason for that refusal is MONEY. The GOP and the NRA have the blood of thousands on their hands.
2
Is it true that 1,600,000 teenagers are presently eligible to buy AR-15 assault weapons?
"An N.R.A. task force recommended in 2013 that schools increase their police presence, install security guards and designate staff members — including teachers and administrators — to be armed and trained."
So we need to be a police state now just so the NRA can line their pockets with money from the gun manufacturers? Why don't we just hire the TSA to screen all students and staff as they enter the building? And can you imagine a gunfight in a classroom? The paranoia of the gun nuts regarding rational restrictions on automatic- and semi-automatic weapons never ceases to amaze me. It will also be increasingly hard to find teachers willing to tolerate the chances that a disgruntled teenager can get access to guns. But then there are a lot of Republicans who don't feel our citizens should have a free education. But hey, let make American great again....
2
The lack of morality intoday's shameless Republican Party is glaring. They stand up for uncontrolled weapon sales to any buyer even when it means putting children's lives at risk. They defend the Trump-Russian connection. They suppress voters and gerrymander districts systematically. They slash taxes for extremely wealthy and cut social programs for the truly needy. They promote racism and white supremacy. Only massive amounts of corporate money and a powerful network of right wing propaganda machines keeps them in power. Republicans have sold out our democracy to the highest bidders and we the people must stand up and shout them down at the polls in every election going forward. Failure to do so is to abandon the future of our children and grandchildren to a one-party state controlled by the greedy owners of the GOP.
1
Liberal Democrats conveniently forget that Obama had control of the Congress when he was first elected. Why didn't he implement gun control? Now all of sudden it's Trump's fault.
Schools should have at least one well armed and trained security guard.
1
What good is a well armed security guard going to do? The Florida shooter killed 17 people and then disappeared before the security guard could get there.
Will you be satisfied with 20-30 kids killed as long as the security guard can take out the shooter?
Blame Obama. Of course. MAN that gets old.
"Control" of Congress is not an absolute guarantee of a win.
Mindless gun-violence-industrial-complex-supporting Republican votes would still be needed.
Now tell me why most Republicans in office refuse to vote for common sense gun laws. Will you answer that? Of course not.
And just saying "Second Amendment" doesn't answer it. All of our rights have some limitations.
1
Sure, pile on the bureaucracy, fill the classrooms beyond capacity, reduce my pay and benefits, take away my union and reduce my rights, continue to demonize me as lazy and overpaid and the source of all of society's problems, make it increasingly difficult to discipline socio-pathic, violent and/or disruptive students, and give me a gun. Brilliant idea!
2
You want to know what America is about? Read the Preamble and the First Amendment, everything else is expendable. That's all you need to know about the Constitution.
I've been a subscriber to the NYT since Trump won the election. How many mass shootings in the U.S. since then? I don't know, I've lost track. That the band aid solution to the gun problem in the U.S. is to arm teachers is a symptom of a spreading sickness...true insanity.
And that people think this is a good solution once again says we prize guns and our 2nd amendment more than we prize human lives.
VOTE the NRA out of your politics by abolishing big money donations. Don't let the NRA hold the country hostage any longer!
Arming teachers, debating gun-free zone effectiveness, blaming mental illness are the NRA lackeys' way of kicking the can down the road and keeping the 85% of Americans who want sensible gun laws divided and distracted. Ban assault weapons and enact universal background checks. ENOUGH.
I am happy to see someone who knows what he is talking about address the emotional toll a gunfight takes. And in his case he didn't even fire a shot, to his credit.
But in the imagination of gun owners and advocates, there is very little price to pay to have a teacher kill a deranged student in a school. Almost like its a simple matter of training and execution. (No pun intended).
But the reality for all of us is a school shooting, either way, takes a huge toll on everyone, including the hoped-for hero.
And lord help the person with a pistol that interdicts a shooter with an AR 15.
1
The politicians need to listen to these teachers and administrators! Mr. Myrick's experience and opinions make a lot of sense to me. We need our teachers to teach. Their job is already difficult enough. We cannot expect to attract the best teachers if you expect them to also be trained in armed military combat! Why are the politicians allowing the NRA to run things? Most people don't even agree with the NRA on these extreme issues!!??
That's all it will take is for one "trained" teacher to leave their gun unattended for this notion of arming school personnel to be revealed as a foolish endeavor. Mr. Myrick had the state of mind to think of his backstop while aiming at the gunman, but will every teacher?
1
What kind of a nation have we become where we have to arm teachers to protect the students. What happens then, if one of those teachers , in a fit of rage and anger shoots his/her students? As a parent, I would be paranoid to think that the teachers in my kids class is armed. I wish the pro-life Republicans would fight to protect the lives of living young children in school.
I agree with Ms. Cropper when she says we should outlaw the AR-15 military rifle on campus. The military version is automatic. Oh wait, it's already banned. Good, now we need to get the FBI to enforce it. Second, we let the employees of a school carry concealed after they're licensed and they don't have to report they're carrying. We don't need the media reporting that 100 or 0 employees are packing heat. Let the bad guys wonder.
We're doing a good job so far. Out of 133,000 schools in the U.S. we have only had 6 shootings that resulted in death in 2017-18. If school employees who choose to carry had weapons we could react that much quicker to limit the death caused by these fringe left wingers who seem to do it mostly for the attention the media give them and for their hatred of the people in charge. The best place to kill, if you're a crazy person, is where no one is able to stop you - gun free zones. If we like lots of murder we need more gun free zones but when we're ready to stop this madness we will do away with them and allow decent people to protect those around them.
First, teachers are not police. When can they brandish a firearm? During a fist fight? Knife fight? Assault? What would be the "rules of engagement" for a teacher?
Police are trained, and practice. Will we require teachers to spend X hours on training and at the range?
In Florida, SWAT members aimed at a child who resembled the shooter, mistaking him for the shooter. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/florida-shooter-lorenzo-prado_us_5a...
What will a teacher be asked to do? Ask questions? Shoot to kill, then ask questions? Hope that their aim is good? (Remember, some of the kids were hit by ricocheting bullets. Are we going to ask the teacher to go out into the hall, and blow away anyone in it? Are they supposed to leave their kids in the meantime?
It truly sounds like a good, Old West kind of solution. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. It creates a false sense of security, and creates more danger than it solves.
2
Teacher with guns. Madness. (But of course it does sell guns, doesn't it?)
3
President Reagan, if you look at the pictures, was surrounded by at least a dozen law enforcement officers ALL CARRYING GUNS in the seconds before he was shot.
Good guys with guns are NOT the answer.
5
In an encounter involving guns, the element of surprise wins every time.
2
The sad fact is that none of the recent spate of mass gun shootings, in schools or out would occur if a substantial number of the victims were armed. While no one is suggesting arming students, if 3 or four teachers had firearms in each school, these types of massacres wouldn't occur. If only 3 or 4 patrons at the aurora Colorado theater had had guns, then that massacre also wouldn't occur. Massacres generally occur when one person or group of people has guns and the other group has none. Even 9/11 would have been prevented if airplane staff had guns. No one is going to stop criminals from getting guns, but as long as they are the only ones to have them, massacres will occur. To quote Berholt Brecht: "seven are no match for one, if the one has a gun."
1
The series of stories about guns in the Times today sound as if American lawmakers are so deeply beholden to the NRA that they want to turn our country into a war zone, where everyone has a gun.
Think of this:
* They talk about hunting with AK-15s as if that is the most natural thing in the world to do.
* In Florida they tell students that they have to keep government out of people's lives, i.e., their guns, as if the students' lives and their futures don't matter nearly as much as gun manufacturers' profits.
* And they talk about arming school employees as if turning our schools into armed camps and Iraq-like green zones is a logical response to a terrible, terrible situation.
What is wrong with this country?
I hope all of those young people will not be discouraged, but will continue their push nationwide to turn this around. I will stand with them on March 24 and I hope that readers of this paper will stand with them, too.
I'm hoping this will be our own American Spring - a nationwide call for change. If our so-called representatives won't outlaw weapons of war, they all should go.
2
So we'll end up with multiple people carrying guns. One is the shooter, the rest are the "good guys with a gun." All of them look the same to each other: person in civilian clothes carrying a gun. This is not a good idea.
We can't even provide pencils for students, teachers have to buy supplies out of pocket, but there is suddenly money for glocks?
4
Guns readily accessible to hormone charged teenagers - what could possibly go wrong?
2
I cannot imagine anything more contradictory to the fundamental purpose of education than turning schools into fortresses.
5
How many public places are there now in the United States where someone is legally allowed to openly or un-openly carry in a gun? And if I am there, how do I ever tell if that is a good guy with a gun or someone who has snapped and decided to shoot everyone in the place? So why are lawmakers protected by having no weapons allowed in the places where they work? Is it like the health insurance they reserve for themselves--what is good for the average American is not good enough for them?
4
Great! Gun battles in our schools! What a wonderful idea. I guess there aren't enough disincentives for people to become teachers. We needed another. Now we want to require them to carry guns and make them responsible for the safety of their students. I guess they didn't have enough to do.
Another CRAZY idea from the folks who brought us Trump. Thanks!
6
Giving guns to teachers? Are you kidding? How long before a teacher shoots a student who is text messaging during class? How is this making the learning environment better?
3
I'm a high school teacher and I believe other teachers would agree that they know several kids who could commit a crime like Nikolas Cruz did. Arming teachers is not the answer. How many police shootings go awry, and yet they are trained to expect trouble, difficult shooting situations, etc.? Even if teachers were trained, they are NOT law enforcement. How many more highly stressful responsibilities things do you want to add to the teacher job description? Why not try metal detectors at every entrance to schools? Give mental health screenings twice a year in middle and high schools. Offer free counseling. Red flag those students and meet with parents. Ban assault weapons. Expand background checks and enforce them at gun shows. Ban online gun purchases - because you can pretend to have any qualification online. And parents - do your duty as a parent. Your kids - especially your sons - are playing EXTREMELY violent video games all the time. They are also watching porn in and out of school. Don't fool yourselves. Garbage and violence in equals garbage and violence coming out - especially in an unstable person. The same goes for adults. if you're watching porn and playing violent games, you're kidding yourself if you think it isn't tearing away at your moral fabric.
5
If they are adamant not to solve the root of this issue and they feel arming teachers is the way to go...why stop there? Lets go all out and do the Full Monty! Let all legal gun owners bring their guns to school. I am sure with some advertising one could persuade any school kids, who are old enough, to undergo the rigorous process of obtaining a firearm licence. With any luck between teachers and school kids a decent size high school would have a couple of hundred guns available to them at all times!
1
After the Texas church shooting, someone in my parish asked my pastor if it was appropriate to carry a gun to Sunday services. When I found out about it, I told the pastor that if I saw a firearm in church, unless it was in the possession of a uniformed police officer, I would immediately leave the parish and find a church that was gun-free. I am a gun owner and a veteran, so it's not about 'hating' the 2nd amendment. It's about being respectful of time and place.
That said, I am a product of the 60's and my experience in high school included race riots breaking out at school events and resulted in attending a school in which we had armed guards - with dogs!! - patrolling the halls of my high school. My children were in high school when the shooting at Columbine occurred and my son was expelled from school the day after Columbine for bringing a table knife to school to cut up an apple. Over-reaction to these horrific events is nearly as bad as inappropriate reaction.
I will happily stand with Joel Myrick on the subject of guns in schools. We need fewer guns in schools, not more. I would pull my children or grandchildren out of any school where the staff is armed. I heartily applaud the teens who are marching on Tallahassee and I will make a point of joining any march in the DC area.
We need to ban weapons of war from civilian ownership. We don't allow civilians to own hand grenades or rocket launchers or tanks, why do we allow them to own AR-15s and their ilk?
5
Quoted from the article: “It puts very well-trained concealed-carry people inside the school,” Mr. Rieck said.
Mr. Rieck and I have very different definitions of what "well-trained" is. "Well-trained" is a solider or Marine with an Expert marksmanship badge. Police officers are mediocre at best with guns, which is understandable because shooting people isn’t, or shouldn’t be, their primary job function.
Someone with a concealed-carry permit and a few days of classes to their credit is a rank amateur. They are textbook examples of “Know enough to be dangerous.” The minimum training requirements for a concealed-carry permit are a sick joke in most states. If you can fog a mirror and pull the trigger you will get a permit.
6
The point of these guns is to kill many people in a space of a couple of minutes. They pick times and places where large amounts of people are crowded together. No one with a gun can make a difference, but they can certainly end up being shot dead by police whose job is now made much harder having to determine which gun-toting person is a 'good shooter' and which is the bad one.
3
Thank you Joel Myrick for your good judgment and speaking with a voice of experience. I am glad you were there that day but sorry you had to experience gun violence first hand.
2
Metal detectors have been used in Saint Louis public schools for years (middle and high schools I know for sure, not sure about primary), because of gangs etc.
if you went to a basketball game after school hours............the same thing. Just like airport security. My wife had her pepper spray taken before a game when they inspected her purse and of course returned it after the game when we left.
Also, don't speak for teachers, just speak for yourself. Some would feel safer with training and a weapon. Even medics in Vietnam carried weapons when under fire. The enemy did not discriminate.
1
When my daughter was in middle school I took six kids the funeral of their friend. Four boys were hanging out at someone's house on a snow day and found a gun. These were all normal kids from normal families. They started playing cops and robbers. One boy ended up dead.
Kids are attracted to weapons. As a child I made "guns" and slingshots from wood rubber tubing and clothespins. My grandsons pick up sticks and pretend to shoot each other. I taught in grades 8-12 and dealt with kids shooting each other with rubber bands etc. If kids know there is a gun in the classroom you can be sure that ONE OF THEM WILL FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET HIS HANDS ON IT.
5
Under the GOP tax bill in 2017 - the amount that can be saved tax free to send your children to private school from birth was increased to $10,000 per year. So only poor parents with kids in public schools will have to contend with 'armed to the teeth' teachers and potentially students. Again this is an issue where it's 'US' the poor, against the rich who are running this country to the ground.
1
The biggest threat to teens' lives is not mass shootings. The biggest threat to teens is overpowered cars. Limit teens to cars that need 10+ seconds to do 0-60, and you'll save a lot more lives than with gun control.
Yet, you don't see any kids protesting fast cars.
Yes, but we place lots of restrictions on our young people before we let kids drive cars in an effort to reduce this great loss of lives!! We require extensive training, insurance, proficiency tests, and have age restrictions and graduated levels of responsibility before letting young people drive cars. About the only thing required to get a weapon is a few dollars.
Arm teachers. That's insane. My sister is an educator. She says young people who go into teaching usually quit with in 3 years. It's a hard job to begin with. Loads of responsibilities already. If being a sharpshooter becomes one more requirement, will we have any teachers left?
3
Training in firearms response is about highly selective, extremely accurate and judgmentally flawless decision making in less time than it takes to say Jack Robinson. Many mistakes are made by trained officers, 1000 rounds a month minimum training on a Hogan's Alley type range, is rarely available anywhere. A school shooter is not selective, accurate, or trained, he simply operates a weapon that does that for him. Why is that unclear? The weapon does the killing, the shooter just operates it. The AR or Glock kills, the shooter is simply the intermediary.
3
Simple things, first.
Schools are built like prisons. Kids are trapped in classrooms with no way out. Put exit only doors in all classrooms on ground floors. Examine other methods of allowing escape routes on higher floors.
Install master lock systems that can be operated from the principal's office. All outside doors can be locked with the touch of a button, the same for classrooms (out, but not in). Police would need a means of access.
Consider all non-lethal methods of stopping or slowing someone shooting. A school administrator behind a bullet proof shield using an automatic firing paintball gun could stop a shooter, but would have to risk his life in the process. Shooters are bullies and bullies often retreat when confronted; they don't expect opposition and aren't prepared to deal with it.
Ask the cooperation of the national media not to play up school shootings, especially the cable news channels. Thousands of people die from the flu. Why don't we get wall to wall coverage of that? Since 9-11, 2001, more than half a million Americans have died in car crashes. Let's go live! Who is seriously debating what we can do to stop those horrid deaths on the highways?
Some of the kids in Florida had access to kevlar and used it as a shield. Let's look into making it more widely available.
Install a sound detection systems to help police know where the shooting is coming from so they have a chance to stop it.
A national "turn-in your guns" program, voluntary.
1
You obviously have no experience in public schools these days. Your ideas are not very reasonable and still would not address the root cause. Limit the amount of weapons that are in the USA and that will start a decline in these school shooting; witness Australia.
What is the purpose of a gun, any type of guns? Why do people forget that a gun is a single purpose device designed for harming and killing. There is no place for any type of guns in civilian life. Guns should be restricted to those who are highly trained and licensed to use them, like the military.
2
There are fringe benefits to arming teachers (which just may offset the obvious danger of an out of control student (or two) getting hold of a teacher's weapon). Just think how much easier it will be for teachers to maintain decorum in their classrooms. One shot in the air ought to do it. (Better reinforce those ceilings first). Plus, teachers could use their guns to gently encourage shy students to participate in class discussions. Works for me!
2
Only a person utterly lacking in empathy would think arming teachers is a good idea. Does anyone believe a person who wants to teach children for a career would simply agree to such a stark role reversal?
It is the job of elected officials -- municipal and federal -- to preserve the peace. It is not okay to shove that function onto the general public because society can't -- or won't -- fix the problem. Figure it out.
2
What happens when we start seeing unarmed students getting shot by "good guys with guns" because they were fumbling in their backpack for a pencil?? How about the bystanders that get shot while witnessing a school fight? Fine, put an armed police officer at the front door (you're going to support raising your taxes to pay for that, right?). Give schools stronger fire doors and some training in how to deal with school shooters. But more guns = more people getting shot. the only REAL solution to is re-examine the role of guns in our society, including putting up barriers to people getting them who are not going to act responsibly.
3
Those teachers who want to carry a fire arm should be allowed, indeed encouraged pack.They can conceal. No one would know. Then they must be trained. They need to defend themselves and their schools. Cruz would never have entered a school if he knew he would meet resistance. It's a no brainer.
1
Arming teachers seems questionable at best. I predict that if more teachers are armed the numbers of casualties in mass shootings at schools will increase dramatically. If an armed teacher goes after the gunman, will they act as prudently as Mr, Myrick and refrain from shooting--and potentially creating more victims? Or will they shoot and create more carnage? What if multiple teachers jump into the fray each with their guns? What happens when the police arrive--will it take them longer to secure the scene and ascertain who the active shooter "bad guy" is? Plus the risk of a teacher committing suicide at school, getting into an argument that escalates, or having their weapon taken from them is just too high. Bad idea.
2
Teachers should not be armed, but they should receive pay and retirement benefits equal to those of police officers in their states, since the NRA and Republicans have transformed schools into potential combat zones.
3
The NRA is far more than a "gun lobby". I am not sure what it should be called, but it has clearly evolved into a political agency with the goal of tilting our entire society toward a militaristic, guns first, far right wing orientation. They oppose domestic dissent and encourage police to crackdown on those who stage public protest, a neo-fascist effort exemplified by a video promoting violence by police against demonstrators. Here's a link to the "clenched fist" video made by the NRA: https://tinyurl.com/yd96vrtc
The NRA's 30 million for Trump might have done more to assist in his Electoral College victory than anything the Russians did. In a free society, we don't stop people from trying to influence elections, but it is clear that big money has completely taken over the process and corrupted the functioning of democracy.
Until "we the people" are willing to match and exceed the contributions of billionaires and corporations, we will continue to see democracy eroded bit by bit and the worshiping of weapons of death increase. It means that everyone above the poverty level needs to contribute regularly to fight back even if it is a small amount. The NRA doesn't just want guns in every hand, they want to control the destiny of our society, top to bottom. They are winning.
5
Frankly Mr. Myrick's response was not that intelligent...i.e...teachers should be teaching. I guess the Heimlich maneuver and cpr and protecting the bullied are off the table too. I think the article could have gone on without his insights but God bless him for ignoring his own advice and saving lives at the risk of his own.
Teachers teach. Now they are being required to be security guards too? Come on! Have armed guards whatever but stop trying to do things on the cheap by burdening teachers on top of what they already have to do. We don't expect bank tellers to be armed nor grocery cashiers. what next? Experts and specialists are what's called for here not arming teachers.
We expect teachers to be social workers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, substitute parents, and whatever else. So now we want to add security guard/police to that list?
What other logical gymnastics are we going to do to justify wanton ownership of any kind of weapon, as well as to avoid any mature discussion about our gun culture?
1
As a high school teacher, I can see many problems with arming school staff.
First, since our professional development is focused on a very different area, we won't be as completely prepared for a high-pressure situation with many schoolchildren around who could be hurt in crossfire. If I miss, I could hit one of the very people I am trying to protect. Emotionally, it would be horrible. But would we also be legally liable in that situation? Who would pay for the damage caused by a teacher who missed?
More troubling--what if the person intent on causing harm is a former student (as was the case in Florida)? Are we supposed to callously discharge a firearm intending to harm a student whose papers we graded, whose IEP meetings we attended, whose guidance counselor we have worked with over and over, as we were trying to get this very student help?
Only someone who isn't a teacher would possibly think this is a good idea.
1
Notably, the gunman who attacked was using a lever-action rifle and not an AR-15, and he was shot while reloading. Arming teachers with handguns will not help when attackers can bring rapid-fire rifles that are easy to shoot and can carry many rounds of ammunition.
Its hard to imagine teachers being willing to pack heat. It's another wacky idea the NRA thinks is a rational response to the gun mayhem that they have aided and abetted.
If we're going to require teachers to carry guns, we're going to get a different type of people wanting to become teachers. That's not encouraging.
1
Teachers teach.
Law enforcement protects.
Mr. Woodham says it all, "There's got to be some common sense. There's not a soul on the planet that needs an AR-15 except military." (I'll add law enforcement.)
I haven't heard one (1) person give one (1) good common sense answer why ANYONE needs an AR-15.
I own a gun, I grew up with guns, I'm not against the private ownership of guns. But I am against the private ownership of military style weapons, of assault rifles, of high capacity, rapid fire weapons that serve only one purpose and that is to kill humans as quickly as possible.
We can honor the 2nd amendment but still regulate the types of guns that are sold and privately owned. We can honor the 2nd amendment but still require age limits, comprehensive background checks, seizure of guns by police if a person makes threats, is exhibiting mental health issues or has been Baker acted. We can honor the 2nd amendment but still require those that buy guns to store them safely and to undergo extensive safety classes.
Two ex-cons, in a parking lot shootout north of Los Angeles in 1970, killed four young California Highway Patrol officers before fleeing on foot. One later committed suicide; the other, Bobby Davis, was captured and sent to prison.
In prison interviews with a colleague and myself, Davis explained how he and his partner killed, first, two of the officers who had approached the Davis car with guns drawn. He said, "A gun is just a club until you pull the trigger and you can't scare me with a club." Then he explained that when you know what you're going to do next, you can do it faster than the other armed person can react.
Further, he said that as the gunfight with the second pair of officers unfolded,
the young patrolmen made the mistake of not keeping their heads up eat all times. He explained, "And in combat, you can't keep your head down." And then he added the biggest point: "And, they missed."
So much for a "good guy" with a gun being able to stop a bad guy with a gun. Those four officers were trained professionals. And the NRA wants to arm teachers.
I noticed that Mr. Myrick never fired his gun. He was afraid he did not have a clear background. How many of these newly established armed personnel that the public wants in their schools would be able to show the same restraint?
1
If we ask teachers to be our security will we pay the two salaries? Or will it be more like today when we just expect them to jump in front of students for free?
Let's reduce the risk a bit... maybe reduce the legal firepower. Then we can talk about asking teachers if they'd consider being part of a teaching militia.
1
I taught for 25 years. I'm not pro-NRA, but I did take an NRA-approved firearms course in 1967, at summer camp. No matter what the law, some kid could still probably get a powerful gun, as so many are out there already. Personally, if I were a teacher in a school with an active shooter, I'd rather have a gun than not. What's the use of being helpless? I'm sure if teachers had guns at Columbine and Parkview Elementary, lives would have been saved. Frankly, I'm for rescinding the Second Amendment and ridding the country of guns. But that's not going to happen overnight.
Great idea! Arm the teachers. And there is a second benefit from this.
Teachers can put their guns on the desk in class and demand attention from the students. If they talk or are distracted, a warning shot over their heads should get their interest back on the subject at hand.
Safety and education improved immediately. And bears will also think twice about entering a school.
Welcome to the Great America that Trump and the GOP promised.
1
Arming teachers is a desperate act of last resort, a really, really bad idea that can only hold water in this environment of total frustration of all attempts for common-sense gun legislation. I understand why lots of people support this. We're scared spitless about what will happen to our kids at school, and all other avenues of response are closed.
Give it a few years, and we'll likely find out that more people get shot because of the good-guy guns introduced into the school environment than are shot by our parade of berserkers. Thanks for the brilliant idea, NRA.
Mr Myrick's views on this matter are identical to mine, a teacher who owns a dozen guns (bolt-action rifles, a shotgun, and revolvers) and and uses them for hunting and target shooting. I have no training in law enforcement. And given my absent-mindedness when focused on academic matters, I doubt my ability to keep track of a handgun while at school. My profession is teaching. Hunting is a hobby. I'd like to keep things that way.
As the graph by Adam Lankford (U. of Alabama) shows, the U.S. is the world's sole outlier when it comes to mass shootings and the availability of guns in the world. Sadly, American 'exceptionalism' often means that Americans except themselves from self-evident truths that the rest of the world recognizes. I applaud these students, but I'm not overly optimistic.
1
Thank you Mr. Myrick for your well-reasoned opinion on this. It makes me hopeful that there is a way to have a rational discussion on this.
As a parent, I personally don't want my child to be in a school where administrators and teachers are armed with guns. It sets a wrong tone for a school and, if there was ever a reason for the guns to be used, I am skeptical it will help much.
Banning automatic weapons is the way to go. We already seem to be forgetting Las Vegas where armed concert goers were helpless in protecting themselves from the shooter in a hotel room stories above them.
We had an incident here in my little, peaceful town where a man showed up at a playground with a holstered gun. Parents saw that, naturally feared what he might be up to, grabbed their kids, and fled the park. The gun carrier did nothing illegal. One of the myriad problems of arming more and more people with more and more guns as a solution to preventing gun violence is it creates a culture of fear and anxiety. Does it really make people feel safer when they see people around them armed? Could you relax in a dark movie theater if you saw the stranger in line ahead of you was carrying a gun? Would you allow your children to play at a park or leave them at the mall if you knew there were armed strangers there? The proliferation of weapons is not making people feel safer and it is making American society more dangerous, not less.
An excellent, well thought out article and view point. I agree 100% with it.
I am a retired Army officer, served in combat zone in ODS, and a 21 year public high school veteran teacher. The proposals advocated to arm class room teachers are ill-concieved for a host of tactical, pyschological, logistical, and legal reasons. Many great reasons to oppose arming teachers are described in the comments already posted.
The biggest reasons why I would never want to be an armed teacher are (admittedly, these are personal and somewhat selfish):
the fact that if I ran out to confront the shooter, I would be scared that our school resource officer (SRO - a specially trained police officer from our city police force who is almost always on campus), or another armed teacher, would take me out in the extreme chaos that always exists in combat situations.
How do I safety secure my weapon and ammo and yet have it quickly accessible?
And finally, as some other teachers have addressed, I have more than enough on my plate to deal with. This is one more extremely serious responsibility that I don't want and should not have to bear.
The only logical and effective solution to our current situation involving school shootings is to enact sensible and wide spread gun control laws.
I am a teacher trained in therapeutic crisis intervention. The last thing I want is to have to worry about guns in schools. My goal is to prevent crises. Part of my training includes the ability to recognize and remove weapons during a crisis in a bid to keep everyone safe. When someone is in the outburst phase of a crisis, they generally are not in control of themselves. Afterward, they may not even remember what occurred. I cannot imagine having to worry about adding a lethal weapon into that mix. Even if we were trained—and I have handled and shot various types of guns—shooting a weapon during a practice, for sport, or in another controlled situation is VERY different than handling one during the heightened state we all are in during a crisis. Just ask a police officer or someone who has served in the military. What we need is to teach our students how to cope with the stressors in their lives in constructive ways. Give us resources to do that. Give us enough social workers, psychologists, school nurses, and teachers, not guns. Give us smaller classes so we can really get to know our students, not guns. Give us the best and the brightest, the curious and creative and dedicated people who want to help. Give us health care, and mental health care, and jobs that pay a living wage for struggling families, not guns. Guns won’t help prevent more tragedies in our schools. There are resources that will, and we already know what they are. They are not guns.
An AR is not magic. It is not any more or less lethal than any other gun. It does not have a higher rate of fire than any other semi-auto rifle.
Or you can implement the CA restrictions on all semi-auto, magazine fed rifles.
Regardless of restricting and/or banning guns you think are causing or exacerbating the problem, we still need a systematic, comprehensive Plan B.
The Navy Yard shooter used a shotgun. The VA Tech shooter used pistols. The NYC attacker used a truck. Etc. Shooters legally buy, steal, or have friends buy guns.
Therefore you want: validated safety plans, funded security guards, funded emergency exercises, funded computer-based emergency management tools, and (most importantly) funded universal first aid training. I deliberately repeated "funded" because there are no free solutions.
Just providing universal first aid training can save over 20,000 lives/year. See the Natl Acad of Sciences report.
I am a teacher at a large urban Los Angeles high school.
Carry a gun? Why certainly! Of course, I'll receive enough training to stay calm when bullets fly, and I'm sure the district and state would be pleased to pay for the hours for us all to receive such instruction. And they'll buy our guns and ammunition too, and pay for renewals and insurance and gun locks and classroom gun safes and security measures to make sure our guns are functioning, and my administrative reviews will include my marksmanship, and I'll be able to select from a list of approved assault weapons, because after all, if students can have an AR-15 then so should I, and when students are running and screaming because of an unidentified threat, or a fight, or pizza, I'll be able to keep just the right person in my scope, and no one else, and when I accidentally shoot an innocent student or teacher, the district and NRA will cover the litigation, I won't have it hurt my credential, and we'll just chalk it up to the need for more training. And let's not forget triage practice, advanced first aid, hand-to hand combat for when I'm empty, and coaching for how to talk to families of people I've gunned down, and whether the wounded would get an incomplete.
Can't see why anyone could disagree with such fine logic.
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Arming teachers is a good idea, if a teacher wants to volunteer then extensively train him/her, train on the rules of engagement, much like Police get trained. Give the teachers a wage increase who pass the training and actively carry in the school as the last last defense . It could save many lives.
The right answer is that is depends on the teacher. If she or he would prefer to be able to defend their students and is willing to receive the proper training and certification, then why not?
Very few individuals understand about arming teachers . If you want to arm teachers the requirements should be as follows. The teachers has to qualify as an expert on a firing range, has to qualify each year, has to go to the range twice a year, responding to a shooting will be in very close quarters has to compete a combat shooting course. I qualified as an expert as an Air Force officer .
By extension, would we also arm physicians in pediatrics offices, or nursing staff in the pediatric care units in a hospital?
One more problem that the community refuses to solve laid at the feet of teachers. I am a thoroughly dedicated teacher who spends hours preparing for my classes, evaluating lessons for relevancy and effectiveness AND I care about my students. But if I am in a school where teachers are permitted to carry arms I quit. It is not our job to take a bullet for our students OR to shoot at troubled students because society chooses to sit on its hands.
Arming teachers shifts the blame lawmakers can assign away from their responsibilities onto people who should not be delegated the responsibility of defending their students with deadly force. This is not their job and they should not be expected to carry guns. Suggesting that more guns in the solution to shootings at schools and public places raises the firepower of the assailant. It has not been proven that arming anyone, citizen or teachers, provides a solution.
Arm teachers, IDK. Think of all those who died at home because there was no gunsafe or it was unlocked. Now think of a school setting. Kids are smart and word gets around as who carries. Also, people over estimate their abilities and in a pressure situation things could get worse. And when the police arrive, they have to sort out the shooters, in a pressure situation.
The purpose of schools is to educate. To budget in increases for supplies and training to deal with active shooters and guns on campus would unreasonably tax schools that are already expensive enough. In this era of declining tax dollars, we can't afford to direct any more education dollars away from classroom learning. If we choose to interpret the Second Amendment to permit ownership of AR-15's, so be it, but then I think it follows that we will have to accept an increased risk of being killed by an one in school and wherever we go in society, and leave it at that. Anything more would constitute a de facto, ongoing public subsidy of the private gun industry.
I am a retired teacher who spent more than 20 years in high schools. I was teaching the day Columbine happened.
If I were coming into teaching now, and you told me I had to learn to handle a firearm, I would find another profession without a blink.
I loved my students. But I would not have died, or killed, for any of them.
1
Whenever I come across someone who advocates arming teachers, I ask, “ever been in a firefight?”. The response is almost always “no, but....”.
I have been in a firefight ; many of them, serving with the airborne in Vietnam. “No, but....” is a worthless answer. It’s born of ignorance.
A firefight is chaos...a devils brew of gunfire, yelling, screaming, running, diving for cover. The noise level defies description. A person NEVER knows how he/she will react to it until it happens. Many well trained troops experience panic during their first firefight..they don’t run, but, some freeze, others shoot wildly about. How likely is it that a teacher in his/her first (and last) firefight will act calmly, rationally?
This is a breathtakingly bad idea.
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Thank youi for this intelligent comment about arming teachers. I am glad there are still some adults among us.
2
Right so best that only one person has a gun - the one intent on murder.
Thank you for this. I find it astounding how the pro-gunners and NRA use the murder of students and their teachers to advocate for MORE guns!
2
My wife has been a teacher for 35 years, and no way should or does she want to be armed, she's not a law enforcement professional, she's thinks those ideas are nuts.
Personally, I don't have a lot of hope for any substantive changes in the gun laws, when I think of the 20 little 5 and 6 year olds gunned down in Sandy Hook, and the lack of sympathy or even respect by the Republican's in congress for the parents of those butchered children, it hard to imagine them changing with all the blood money by Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, and the Gun Lobby, they have accepted and has bought them off with, and now add Donald Trump to that list, who is completely bought and paid for to the tune of 30 Million Dollars.
There is something wrong with our society, when you have people like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson talk about arming teachers, or concealed carry in schools, then you know the NUTS ARE OUT THERE.
I'm really sad, but in many ways happy that I don't have to go to school to worry about shooters, or everyone carrying guns like the wild west, this isn't odd, it's just plain crazy.
Only a sick screwball without any common sense or sense of reality would like concealed carry or armed teachers in classrooms, it's no school I would ever attend or ever want my children going to........let's get some rational common sense back in this country, and stop letting the NRA and GUN LOBBY STOOGES like Limbaugh and Carlson get on their soap box unchallenged with their lunatic ideas.
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It's not a society anybody would want to live in. My sister is a teacher, I'm glad she's retiring soon.
Guns have one purpose. They do not also cook dinner, they do not also get you to work. Harvard's study on homicide concludes an elementary, ineluctable, excruciatingly obvious fact:
More guns=more death.
More homicide, more accidents, more suicide.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/
Newt may look at the staggering number of teachers in this country—more than there are police—and see kickbacks that might keep Callista in pearls until the end, but all I see is a nightmare of logistics, danger, mishandling, bumbling, and theft, national debt, and potential tragedy.
I'm a high school teacher. There's a teacher shortage now anyway, and a good half of us would quit rather than do this. That arming teachers could even BE a conversation is telling about this society, about big manufacturing's stranglehold on Congress. Kids get into everything. I'd spend my entire day guarding some gun, locking it away where, if the event ever came up, I might actually NEED it for genuine protecting of kids, I wouldn't be able to get to it in time, and kids would try to take it away—teens, for all their charms, are volatile and suggestive—and I can't shoot anyway. Just. How did we ever, as a society, get to this macho-paranoid idiocy. The gun drills we have are humiliating enough to this American.
Besides. When you get under a school desk, you end up with gum in your hair. Which is far as far can be from Callista's blonde crash helmet of privilege.
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Callista is, let's not forget, OUR current Ambassador to the Vatican. These are scary times.
Let’s not repeat something that worked and saved lives because ... why exactly? Teachers gonna teach? No rationale, no logic, just covers the gun control talking points: I had a gun, but I didn’t keep it loaded. Only police or retired police can possibly keep people safe. I believe in the second amendment - in theory - but don’t worry, I hate the NRA. Typical gun control pablum, devoid of any logic or thought.
5
This has nothing to do with gun control talking points.
Yes, teachers gonna teach. That is their job.
For evidence you rely on one incident that even the "good guy" with the gun doesn't feel comfortable with but you completely ignore what might happen when you blithely add guns and non-experts to an environment like a school. What problems would be created that didn't previously exist? You're trading off a Hollywood style resolution of an unlikely event-- a shooter on campus is still unlikely and it must be the perfect scenario for your solution to be effective (perfect shot, no bystanders / backstop, no confusion, one gun drawn, perfect aim)-- for the day to day safety of schools.
No thank you. This has to do with our lives. It will not make schools safer. It will make them more dangerous.
Talk about devoid of thought.
Come up with something else.
Note the impact that an AR-15 might have had in this particular situation, as the interviewee points out. What saved lives in this instance was a quick thinking, responsible gun owner, as well as the murderer's choice of weapon.
Guns are machines with people-killing capabilities, and NO ONE needs a semi-automatic people killing machine for any reason other than for people-killing.
How's that for logic?
I think it's a wonderful idea. Many have long liked the school to jail pipeline so let's get kids used to jail by making schools more like jails.
1
So now we need to expand our 'well regulated' militia to respond to other nominal members of our militia who go off the deep end. (Either everyone legally in possession of a gun is a militia member, or they're not covered by the second amendment.)
Also, either you're sufficiently mentally ill so as not to be responsible for your actions, able to have your rights limited preemptively, and not susceptible to government punishment. Or you're sane enough to face harsh consequences for your actions. In a rational world, you can't be both.
Lastly, we're told we also have to re-embrace Christianity. Just like our pious Republican legislators who publicly pray after every mass shooting. And now think marriage vows are mere suggestions. And who universally seem to believe in punishing the poor and rewarding the rich. For verily our Lord has said the money changers can pay to fit through the eye of a needle, enjoy their earthly rewards, and then buy the necessary indulgences to get in the express line to heaven.
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We do have some legislators who have a strong protective instinct for a fetus in utero, but after being born you're on your own. And while their marriage vows are only sacred in the abstract, they certainly become much more important the minute gay people show an interest.
1
How foolish. Schools have been targeted, but so have theatres, shopping malls, sports arenas, military bases, churches.....
It boils down to this:
Either we forbid private ownership of military weapons;
Or we tolerate arming the occupants of such places on the dubious premise that it will protect them. As schools become supposedly more secure (a shooter can't soot his way in?) next it will be a school bus; as each new atrocity occurs we increase the security perimeter around affected sites until the whole country becomes a fearful armed camp.
Only this Exceptional Nation would even think of tolerating the latter curtailment of freedom, ironically in the name of protecting freedom.
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I like that the scope of the perimeter starts at schools and expands out from there. We might not be able to got forever but starting with our schoolchildren is a great place to begin.
If we are going to allow conceal carry handguns at schools, then we should allow them for visitors to the White House and Capitol. It should be called the Firearm Fairness Act. Then let's see how quickly our elected representative work to change gun laws.
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Don't forget to tack "Freedom" onto that name -- Firearm Fairness and Freedom Act - alliteration and all, the 3F's Act.
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Presidential Secret Service details pledge to put their lives between bullets and the president.
Teachers don't sign up for armed detail or putting their lives at risk. They sign up to teach.
What teacher training school has combat training? Why would we want any too.
The whole trajectory of arming teachers and principals is ludicrous.
Focus needs to be on free availability not just of guns, but of battlefield weapons.
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Follow Israel Example
We should follow Israel's example, which has been shown to work: harden the schools and have both uniformed and plain clothed armed guards. Fences with auto barrier with limited entrances, with a uniformed guard at the entrance. Other guards patrol the grounds and schools. Note Israel does not arm the teachers, but provides others who are trained in armed security to guard the students and school. Why shouldn't a school, where our children are during the day, get any less protection than we give our legislatures, govt buildings, power plants, etc?? In this sad case, the coach that died was also a school security guard. He should have been armed with a pistol with access to locked up long guns.
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I want folks to stop for a moment and imagine the school that this post envisions: Uniformed armed guards patrolling the grounds. Fences. Barriers. Limited entries. A "hardened" building.
This is a prison, not an environment for exploration and learning. Please, do not succumb to fear. We owe it to the students already sacrificed in this senseless struggle. Evidence — data that has no bias — shows that more guns in an environment leads to more gun violence. This is not in dispute.
Yes, follow Israel's example. Make service in the military mandatory so people get good, sensible gun training. Make private ownership of gun very limited and subject to a host of reasonable restrictions.
By the way, many schools, and all the ones I taught in here in Texas, have armed, specially trained city police stationed in the high schools. Many have metal detectors and such. Our doors are kept locked. Most of your ideas have been taken up
1
What you describe could pass for a prison.
I think the originalists are right. Americans have the right to own as many guns as they want..... any type of gun that existed in 1776.
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[[Bill young california
I think the originalists are right. Americans have the right to own as many guns as they want..... any type of gun that existed in 1776.]]
Very funny. And original, too.
All the firearms in 1776 were military style firearms and they still are today. It just depends on the date of when those firearms were in common military use. Your grandfather's hunting rifle killed millions in the Great War.
And you may only make your statements in the town square or by writing them with a quill pen and posting them via mail.
1
The NRA has a great dream - everyone armed. School teachers, yes. Armed guards at the supermarket, can't be too safe. Convenience store clerks, stop those robbers. Armed bartenders, might be a fight.
So many guns to be sold.
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Arming teachers with guns is insanity. But then again it reflects the total incompetence of Congress who have sold their souls to the NRA in exchange for money. I am so proud of the students from Florida and around the country who are standing up to the powers that be to demand common sense reforms to the wild west mentality of the GOP. Just maybe there is hope for America's future if these brave young men and women are successful in their quest.
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Agree with your sentiment except that it is unfair to expect that these young people should carry this responsibility as a "quest" and for "the future." They need all American citizens (those who are sane and not corrupt) to join them NOW. The young people you note are taking up the cause but it is not only their cause and they need everybody (the sane and not corrupt) with them! Even though it is inspiring and uplifting to hear and see the Florida high school students' impassioned eloquence and determination, it is also sad that they have to lead on this. We all need to prove to them that the same kind of citizen power that forged this nation is still latent in all American citizens' hearts and souls and we need to stand with them and FIGHT against the forces of death, destruction, treason, totalitarianism and anarchy and fight for the fading soul of American representative government, democracy, and whatever remains of decency.
It's all about the money. More gun sales, greater profits for the gun industry. Our elected representatives are right up there enabling the gun companies.
The NRA just wants to increase gun sales, so they're calling to arm the teachers!
If there are multiple gun toting people at a school how will the cops know which person is the shooter? The assumption is that the shooter is a kid. Do airports arm all of their staff?
Why didn’t this outrage come after the Texas church shooting or the Vegas shooting. Trump suddenly discovers a problem with bump stocks when charismatic children call him out. We need to protect all folks not just children. This gun issues is about everyone and should not be a shiny object issue.
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The NRA is a major source of funding for the Republican Party. They may have even funneled Russian money into the Trump campaign. Unless and until we throw the GOP Congress out of office and change the balance of the Supreme Court there will be no true attempt to control the sale of weapons in this country, including the sale of military grade automatic rifles.
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It is crazy to equip schools to be armed camps. What other country has such a situation? There always have been and always will be either the mentally disturbed or persons with personality disturbances fantasizing about killing other people or themselves. These fantasies remain fantasies unless you make weapons easily available. Yes, it is people who do this, but what society arms them as we do? As a mental health professional I have seen many people who have survived suicide attempts in the hospital. All were happy to have survived, but none of theme used guns. They were dead. Several other countries Scotland and Australia have solved this problem by the commonsense solution of removing powerful guns that should NEVER be used for hunting by voluntary means. It worked. But we have the NRA. A big question, who funds these groups that use huge campaign contributions to bribe our public officials in advance? The public has the right to know why they prevent sensible solutions.
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What other country has armed security on school grounds?
1. Israel
2. France
3. Norway
4. Germany
5. Austria
6. Australia
7. Russia
Hardening soft school targets is not unreasonable, and is what some of the students are asking for, as well as Mr. Myrick. That's not to say that teachers generally should be armed, nor that AR-15 should be heavily restricted. And it's not to say that dangerous people like the Parkland shooter should not be flagged for concern, help, and no guns. There are a number of things that can and should be done. Time to act thoughtfully, without partisan rancor.
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Most schools have been "hardened". About all that is left is setting up vast security zones around the school buildings and then inviting the TSA to inspect all students and visitors.
No, teachers should not be armed! Yes, ALL weapons should be "heavily restricted"; especially those assault weapons. Yes, "dangerous people" should be identified and helped. And maybe the President and all national and state legislatures will "act thoughtfully, without partisan rancor". Unfortunately, I'm not capable of holding my breath and waiting, especially for Trump & NRA funded politicians, to do anything of significance.
I don't see hardened schools where I live, but maybe I'm missing something. I'm okay with limiting the big guns. I would like to see some more concealed carry by administrators and some teachers in the schools. Looks like some consensus may be emerging on at least some of this.
Even police officers can't always use guns safely. How many times have you heard trained police officers say "I saw him reaching for his waistband..." as the explanation for why they shot an unarmed person? For their own safety these police officers had to act before confirming that the bad guy has a gun. According to Dr. William Lewinski, a psychologist who has defended police officers in over 200 police shootings, "in simple terms, if you see the gun, you're dead."
Imagine the chaos that would result if everyone is armed, and ordinary citizens start behaving like these police officers. If you look suspicious to a "good guy with a gun" then if you reach for your waistband — you may not even have a gun — but it doesn't matter, because the "good guy with a gun" is forced to make a split-second decision, and shoot you in order to protect himself and his family.
And thanks to "stand your ground" laws, the good guy will not face any charges if he reasonably perceived a threat, even if the perceived threat later turns out to be not real.
When everyone is armed, such threats — both real and perceived — are going to increase. There will be many shootings in response to these threats, by both good guys and bad, and innocent people will die in the crossfire.
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Educators are not law enforcement. Beyond the notion that you've asked a person whose job is to nurture young humans to take on yet another broadly scoped and deadly responsibility, what are you doing to the dynamics?
Educators and administrators can walk around schools armed and students won't worry at some point if a teacher won't shoot at them if they make the teacher angry? Educators are human also - what happens when one of them breaks down in the classroom and has a gun?????
Wouldn't it be so much easier, safer and less traumatic for everyone to restrict access to guns in general using generally agreed upon gun control measures?
Why would ANYONE prioritize owning a death weapon over the lives of actual living, breathing human beings?
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The question we need to be asking why don't other first world countries have our mass killing statistics?
Let's make politicians, the NRA, and all those who come on TV to defend guns answer that question.
30
I grieve for a country reduced to even considering sending its children into armed camps to be "educated" represents a viable solution to lethal violence by firearms.
With a lifelong career in teaching at all levels from middle school through post-grad, if I had ever thought that packing heat in the classroom would be a required component of my professional training and repertoire, I would have chosen a different calling.
The idea that kindergarten and grade school teachers should be lethally armed is flat-out obscene. A society that doesn't think so suffers severe collective mental derangement.
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Seriously. Most teachers - most good ones, anyway - enter the profession because they want to help young people and nurture their academic growth. With everything teachers do each day, the idea that they should also be ready, willing, and able to shoot someone at a moment's notice is absurd.
Certain people shouldn't have guns, and that includes some teachers, and not just those who would be naturally nervous around or adverse to such weaponry. I had a couple of rotten-apple teachers in elementary school, and the idea of either of those women with guns horrifies me. My kindergarten teacher in particular was short-tempered and given to yelling; why she was teaching kindergarten at all is beyond me. I remember being terrified of her and, looking back, I can say that she had definite anger management issues. A gun in her classroom would have been a disaster.
1
Thank you, Lindsay. The country needs to hear from actual teachers who toil at the cliff face every day. The "bad apple" teachers you cite are rare but, as with any calling, they exist. The fact is, no teacher should be asked or expected to serve as an armed SWAT counter-terrorist in a classroom with children under their care. Any such notion is insane.
Keep teaching; keep talking!
1
I taught for over 30 years and trust me, you don't want me to be armed. First of all I've never seen a gun except in the movies, wouldn't have the slightest idea how they work, would probably lose it, and with my eyesight, not a good idea.
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Instead of taking continuing education courses in the summer, you'll be sent to Fort Bragg for weapons training. Yes, these people are THAT INSANE.
Although, he's probably a good man, this is not a picture of what you normally think of when you remember your teachers. Picture the people who taught you. English teacher? Math teacher? History teacher? Picture any of them with a weapon? Do you see any of them in a confrontation with an assault weapon armed intruder? Teachers with guns as a deterrent? Willing to bet lives on that? I'm a Marine veteran with 2 tours in Vietnam and 34 years in a public school classroom. Based on what I've seen, where I've been, and what I know, unless your kid is enrolled at West Point, the Naval Academy, or Marine OCC, you do not want their teachers carrying guns.
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Leave the gun fighting to the highly trained professionals. The last thing we need is more bullets flying in overcrowded schools. Who is at fault if a teacher misses his/her intended target and kills a bystander?
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I would blame Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hasn’t the GOP taught us they are responsible for all the world’s problems?
The American Federation of Teachers and Melissa are dead wrong.
Unfair burden? Too much work to save kids' lives. Put the guns
in the locked desks of Administrators. All they have to know is how to hold them and pull the trigger. Just make sure the kids know the guns are
there and if they bring one onto campus they will face a citizen's arrest
at gunpoint or be shot. The NRA will love the program. All the noise
about new laws is just noise.
"All they have to know is how to hold them and pull the trigger."
Sure, and to drive all you need to know is how to turn the key and step on the gas.
Can't see how anyone could possibly get hurt.
Teachers should absolutely be trained to respond to emergencies like school shootings...but it's unreasonable to expect them to be armed and ready like police officers.
The smart response to an active shooter is to run, hide, and fight only as a final resort. Protecting the children means guiding them to safety and keeping them hidden and quiet, not rushing out with a weapon to play hero.
10
I am a retired professional who decided to substitute teach in high school because I love teaching young people and there is a desperate need for subs. (Pay is a bit above what McDonald's pays) After the Parkland shooting, I thought I might reconsider. That same week my high school called in the police and canceled classes because of threats of violence. I am shocked that I do not feel I can be a sub without extensive training needed to deal with school violence. Substitute teach? #neveragain
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How many times have I told my students over the years that I am not a policeman and if I had wanted to be one I would have become one and not a teacher. Of course I was relating to enforcing foolish administrative requirements that I felt were wasting my time, but the analogy still works.
Teachers teach; they can join the military or police etc. if they want to carry a weapon as part of their jobs.
The foolishness of much of the discussion never ceases to amaze me. Institute gun control, tighten restrictions and don't sell to teenagers. Other solutions like arming teachers are not solutions.
16
It's not just schools, it's a movie theater, outdoor music concert, workplaces (eg. UPS, San Francisco), religious places, etc. etc. Crazy as it sounds, I now have to worry that someone who didn't like the prices at Trader Joe's will come w/a gun sometime, and kills us customers...
10
The day you ask teacher (who spend six years in college to do the difficult job they do) to be weapon trained as policemen and women, will be the downfall of public education in our country. But I suppose we already have experienced that, with Betsy DeVos as the one in charge. This is very frightening.
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The Second Amendment was crafted in a time where memories of British invasions of colonists' homes was fresh. There were muskets. There were no concealable, semi-automatic and automatic guns and rifles. This amendment will be the death of this nation.
14
Let’s stop the myth that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. There is no evidence that it’s is true. More people are killed with their own weapons then they are able to stops bad guys. Let us not turn our schools into shooting galleries. No one needs an AR 15, let alone needs one immediately. A prolonged waiting period for weapons is not unreasonable. Anyone who thinks the founding fathers thought we needed weapons to kill each other has not studied history
19
Mr. Myrick was heroic on that day, but this kid had a 30-30 single shot rifle and still managed to kill 2 and shoot 7. No telling the damage he would have done with an AR 15 and multiple magazines, and he would have had Mr. Myrick's pistol severally outgunned. Police officers train their entire careers and still make horrible mistakes when it comes to use of deadly force, see Philando Castile, how can we expect citizens without that kind of training to behave?
16
The huddled, quiet class of the teacher who can't bring herself/himself to carry a weapon would be shot through the walls by the teacher who felt they could. Irony would make these tragic situations all the moreso.
4
Several years ago, my longtime ophthalmologist turned me over to a new man in his practice. This man was a Israeli and had moved to the US with his family.
I asked him why he moved his family here. He did NOT want his children growing up and going to schools that were surrounded by fences and armed guards everyday. Of course, these guards are not there to protect the school children from fellow students, but from terrorists - a bit different, eh? I can't help but wonder what he thinks of these "wonderful" ideas to arm our teachers.
My late husband was a teacher for over 35 years. He went through Naval OCS and I assume learned how to use a weapon. But he was not a hunter or a target shooter = he was a secondary school math teacher. I cannot even remotely imagine him having a gun in his classroom! I also can't imagine him being able to shoot someone, even someone threatening harm. He'd have been far more likely to do what that assistant coach in FL did - throw himself between the shooter and a student and be shot himself.
Today's teachers are already being held responsible for teaching children things that parents once did and also be social workers. And they are expected to teach their subject matter so that their students learn something. Now, we're going to turn them into trained marksmen? Ludicrous!
There are an awful lot of "cowboy" fantasies going on out there today.
13
Here's a solution to the gun control problem, allow citizens the right to carry guns into legislatures, governor's offices the White House, and courthouses. Let the folks who make and enforce the laws live by the same rules and unfettered access to guns as the rest of us.
I go to the Atlanta airport and there is a guy walking around the concourse carrying an AR-15 (just because he can), let's allow that same guy to roam the halls of the various legislatures and executive offices with the same abandon and see what gets done...
15
Thank you about the Atlanta Airport warning. That’s Delta’s hub,
isn’t it?
Basically, this is asking school staff to be prepared to engage, at a moment's notice, in urban combat in a setting densely populated by children. Engaging in this kind of combat, at least from I've gleaned from the nightly news, takes real training, in part to prevent injuring/slaughtering innocents from friendly fire.
So should prospective teachers be sent to Fort Polk, where they can get specialized training in the U.S. Army's Joint Readiness Training Center, before they are permitted to step foot in a classroom?
Or how about a bodyguard for every child? Or teaching kids in airplanes, which are some of the safest places in America, thanks to the TSA and strict gun control aboard 727s?
Or how about restoring sanity in this "war-torn" country and getting the guns off the streets and out of the schools, churches, malls, movie theaters, post offices, and public squares?
22
In my teenage years I was looking after my brothers one night when I heard noises in the garage. We were a gun-friendly house so I took a loaded handgun and went to investigate, thinking there was an intruder. I was so nervous I almost shot myself in the leg only to find that it was a stray dog.
Arming civilians and putting them in high-stress environments is one of the worst ideas i have ever heard.
16
Give teachers firearms, and the following will happen:
- they may stop or minimize a school mass shooting
- more likely, they'll try to return fire, putting their own students into a cross-fire zone, likely leading to more student deaths. There is not enough training to prepare teachers as a general rule to wield firearms with discipline in a chaotic scene, with their hearts pounding and fight-or-flight hormones/ instincts raging.
- poorly teachers will mishandle or mis-store their firearms, shoot themselves in the foot, and students will find unsecured firearms and endanger the teachers and themselves; how many kids each year find their parent's firearms and mistakenly kill themselves or a sibling/friend?
- police responding to the scene will have to deal with both the shooters and the teachers, leading to an even more confusing and dangerous scenario for all.
Guess which side I'm on in this debate.
10
To all those who advocate arming teachers and to those who believe that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, I ask this simple question: Have you been trained in tactical shooting, e.g., swat team or high risk search warrant execution? Please don't compare competence in a shooting range setting; it's like comparing apples to railroad tracks. Tactical shooting is a whole different matter. It takes significant training, excellent eyesight, very good physical condition, and drilling, drilling, and more drilling in a live-action context. Shooting range practice is not shooting at an armed moving target, with bystanders nearby, perhaps in the dark, perhaps in tight quarters, adjusting to the echo of other rounds fired, estimating a change in projectile trajectory on the fly as you and the target moves, all of it under stress, and at potentially high speeds. Unless you are highly trained, you are courting disaster. Good luck to all the untrained and untested. God speed to the bystanders.
255
As well, I read a number of years ago in the NYT of a study showing that even the most highly trained shooters (and it cited military and police), as a group, will more often than not, miss a target at a certain distance (don't remember exactly, but do remember thinking it didn't seem like such a great distance) w/ a majority of their shots when using a handgun...
1
Hey now! This is America! Is there no problem that can’t be solved with a gun?
Every gun owner I’ve ever met assures me they are not only the best shot, but would act correctly in any situation called for.
The only surprising thing that surprises me given recent events is that nobody seems to be advocating that we arm the students...
Leslie has hit the nail on the head. Too many people have been watching too many Hollywood movies... News Flash! John Wayne was a Hollywood actor folks!
1
The NRA and conservatives want to arm teachers. But here in Florida, our Republican state legislators will not even fund basic public education standards. Republicans in Florida (lead by Gov. Rick Scott) have slashed funding for mental health, simultaneously passing laws that make it very easy to buy guns. They have even made it illegal for local communities to pass their own laws.
Will the NRA pay for all of these new guns and training for people who just want to teach? Will the NRA lobby for laws requiring teachers become armed soldiers in our schools? Conservatives want to legislate all of these costly laws, but they refuse to fund any of them.
109
The incapacity of gun advocates to grasp how the chaos of shooting goes roughly as the factorial of the number of guns on the scene boggles the educated mind.
I cannot believe anyone would expect any of our teachers, who we pay so poorly, to now put their lives on the line for their students. As if teachers don't have enough to put up with, this is a kind of ultimate disrespect, in my opinion.
16
You have seen that they would rather die than run.
I detest the lack of respect for courage of gun advocates.
An armed teacher is not able to avoid the danger of shooting an innocent person. Besides, the tragedy for he victim of the shooting, the teacher would not be immune either from prosecution or from serious subsequent stress, right or wrong.
5
The answer to curbing violence is not ‘equal and opposite’ violence. That escalates the situation. We don’t need a return to the mythical “Old West” in which open gun-fighting was sometimes acceptable, that’ll only lead to a change in the tactics of shooters (human shields, sniping positions outside of schools) and will likely lead to a teacher shooting an unarmed student or killing a student accidentally in an exchange with a shooter. We’ve proven as a civilization over all of history that when we arm ourselves against an opponent, their answer is bigger guns (Cold War) or guerrilla warfare (Vietnam, Afghanistan). We don’t have more crime or violence in this country than do in most socioeconomically comparable countries, we just have more guns. As for this argument that our weapons protect us: the vast majority of us never need to protect ourselves against deadly force, and the the government turned on us, AR-15s with bump stocks aren’t effective against a modern military.
5
Years ago I was a teacher in the NYC school system.
If it had been suggested that I carry a gun to work and possibly have to shoot a student I would have resigned the next day. Sorry, I signed on to be a teacher, not a soldier or a cop.
It's no surprise that the idea of adding more guns to the mix is promoted by an NRA task force . the NRA is "tasked" with one thing only, to sell more firearms.
21
The reason the NRA is for allowing teachers to have guns in school is because the alternative is to restrict guns on campus. Teachers have a hard time already taking care and teaching our children. It is not their job to stand guard duty over the school as well. The idea that the schools should hire retired law enforcement officers is also a nonstarter, where will the money come from? Schools are already underfunded as it is and this would be too much for them to pay for. The NRA could donate the money it give politicians to the schools to hire guards but that would mean that they care about our children, and they don’t.
5
the other reason the NRA backs this option is because it provides them with a brand new market segment to make even more profit. Money and guns are their gods.
Maybe I'm missing something. The police SWAT or whatever they call themselves now show up and there are several people in the school with guns. What happens next again? They calmly assess at great personal risk who the shooter is and who are teachers with concealed carry weapons drawn.... Nope. Not even in a training exercise.
16
I am a teacher. My middle school administration comes to me and suggests, provocatively, that I need to be armed and prepared for shooters in our school in the future.
Nope, I will not be. Soon, I will be taking a teaching job that does not require me being armed and dangerous in my teaching job. I am a teacher, not to be confused with an armed guard.
10
If teachers are to confront shooters rather than run then they should be paid to be armed guards as well as teachers. In red states this would be a very large pay raise. I suspect that this is a good idea to a lot of people until a teacher kills a child because the teacher wasn’t really trained well enough ( although even well trained police officers sometimes kill innocent bystanders). No, rather than arming teachers hire professional armed guards for each school and send the bill to the NRA.
4
Debunking the "armed teachers/students/bystanders can prevent mass shootings" myth is all too easy. When law enforcement arrive on the scene of an "active shooter," they are trained to simply shoot anyone with a gun who is not law enforcement. Also, if we can't afford to provide classrooms with all the supplies they need, where do people think funding for guns and gun training for every teacher will come from?
7
If you are at the dentist and an armed gunman comes in and opens fire do you expect the dental hygienist to pull out a handgun and protect you while you take cover? Why then do we expect this of our kids teachers? They aren't military or security personnel, they are teachers. We have budgets moving through the government to cut school funding but we have the money to arm and train our teachers? Use the money to reduce class sizes and increase resources so our kids aren't learning in a school system that is woefully behind other industrialized nations. Let's protect them by reducing gun ownership rates and having some penalties for exercising your 2nd ammendment rights in an unsafe manor that makes it possible for a kid to get ahold of a gun and take it to a school. Let the teachers do just that, teach.
15
By allowing teachers to have a gun on the school’s grounds is allowing the N.R.A to win this battle and we give in to their demands to allow powerful, dangerous weapons into our society. We have let guns that are similar to the ones used in the Vietnam war to enter into our society but we cannot allow the N.R.A to make us feel these guns need to be in our schools. Each time we see stories about school shootings or other mass killings it creates fear and we want to protect ourselves and our families. We jump onto the bandwagon and purchase a gun. That’s another point scored by the N.R.A. This is the response they want from our society. This response will only allow for the N.R.A to become more powerful and more influential in our society. Even if we focused more on the mental health issue, the mental health system in this country is underfunded and there is also a legal aspect involved. When a child is psychiatrically evaluated and found to be a danger to our schools or to society it is very difficult for that child to be removed from the school without an extensive amount of documentation. I have researched this topic and found that picking out students who pose a safety risk can be like picking out a needle in a hay stack. We need to get these guns off our streets to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands. We cannot give up the fight and when we look at other options for our children’s safety we are giving up the fight to get these guns out of our society.
4
Let's first test the effectiveness of "arming the employees" in state houses and Congress. That is, get rid of the professional armed guards, x-ray inspections, metal detectors, bullet proof doors and windows in government buildings, and simply tell the elected officials to purchase, learn to use, and carry weapons. Let's see how much elected officials really believe in the "arming the employees" concept.
20
Following the recommendations of an NRA task force is like following the recommendations of tobacco companies about cigarettes. We all know how that turned out. Listening to those in the schools like Mr. Myrick and the teachers commenting, here those are the recommendations to be taken seriously.
8
There are non-lethal options to defend against an active shooter in a school that stand a far higher and far safer chance of protecting kids and teachers. Commercially available bear spray extends over 30 feet and would disable a shooter’s eyes and breathing. Kids would be sprayed as well but would survive unharmed, which is more than could be said about a mis-targeted bullet. Minimal training is involved, the costs are nominal and while it lacks the American macho hero element of a John Wayne solution, I’d rather have live children.
7
Like that idea.
Simplistic and false that increased gun ownership leads to more gun homicides.
Between 1993 and 2013 the number of guns in the U.S. rose by nearly 50 percent but gun homicides fell by 50 percent.
The school safety solution must be focused on the most vulnerable site. The school.
1 Identify and profile high risk students
2 Mandate law enforcement and counselor involvement
3 Ban any gun access to high risk students with parental liability
5 Swap one school administrative position for armed security
1
Gun deaths are up overall. They are nearly outpacing automobile deaths. When you consider the billions of hours people spend in their cars per year( 30 billion hours commuting alone) it shows how dangerous guns truly are. Yes, all homicides are down overall. Still, states with more guns and fewer regulations have higher homicide rates than states with fewer guns and more regulations. Factoring in low gun death states with higher ones obscures the reality of the death toll and the dangers associated with increased gun ownership.
1
"Between 1993 and 2013 the number of guns in the U.S. rose by nearly 50 percent but gun homicides fell by 50 percent."
Utter nonsense! Did you have any kind of source for that or did you just make it up altogether?
1
It used to be that smokers could smoke in most public places, including airplanes. They all had smoking sections. Of course the air was not prevented from traveling from the smoking to the non smoking section. Your ability to safely breath was impacted by the desire of smokers to smoke. Then, smoking was prohibited in most places and the desire to breath took precedence over the desire to smoke. Shouldn't it be this way with guns? People who want to live should take precedence over people who want to shoot their guns.
15
Public school teachers are under-paid, over-worked, under-respected and over-managed. Asking them to carry guns is a) Another thing they have to worry about and b) a surefire way to guarantee incidents where guns go off accidentally, or are taken by students, or used when the Vice-Principal opens the classroom door without knocking for the last time. Anyone who thinks this is a solution isn't very clever, or is in the NRA, but I repeat myself. Meanwhile, in Canada and Australia, there hasn't been a double-digits mass shooting since 1989 or 1996, thanks to commonsense gun laws and serious penalties for misuse. In other words, we have mass shootings because the NRA wants us to. Don't listen to them.
6
One thing that can be counted on after each of these shootings is that we will dance around the central question to the problem. Why do we need guns in our society? As Winston Churchill said, you can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they've tried everything else. Great Britain had a mass school shooting, and almost immediately thereafter took extreme measures to ensure that it never happened again. As far as I know, it hasn't. What did they do? They didn't arm school teachers, they severely restricted access to firearms in their society.
5
Calls to arm teachers suggest that there are no ways to address school shootings before someone comes to a school armed and starts to shoot. There has got to be a better way.
I would hope that irrespective of one's feelings about the Second Amendment that sending your child to spend 180+ days a year with someone who is underpaid, stuck in a room with 30+ kids all day and armed would not sound like a good idea.
The only way to make this suggestion worse would be if it remained the law that these teachers would not have to undergo extensive mental health screenings and training in order to carry a firearm in the classroom.
1
Mr. Myrick is absolutely right. If there were an AR-15 involved in this event he so vividly recalls even after over 20 years, he and probably many others would very probably been shot and perhaps killed. The lever action deer hunting rifle that was involved in this event is a hunting rifle and a legitimate firearm for civilians to own and use. The AR-15 is a military assault weapon. As Mr. Myrick says so eloquently, there is really no sane reason for any gun loving civilian to own, shoot targets, hunt or otherwise use or play around with these kinds of weapons as presently designed and manufactured.
8
Could be wrong, but I think that asking teachers to engage in a shootout with an attacker is a very bad idea. I've read reports in the past on the field shooting accuracy of cops, and I think it ranged from 34% to 43%. This is for cops, who we generally assume to be highly trained. I think that is not always true, but it is certainly true that, on average, cops are better trained in shooting than is the general population.
So, supporters are asking for teachers to take on a shooting role, when their accuracy will undoubtedly be lower than that for cops, not to mention that the shoot-out will be conducted in a classroom or other area of a school filled with kids. A lot could go wrong.
I'm personally for getting rid of most guns because I do not see the justification of what is essentially a hobby when the wide proliferation and easy access to guns has led to an intolerable ongoing slaughter of innocents. Yes, there are plenty of other causes of death that take more lives, but many of the factors related to those are either controllable through choice or not preventable.
I also have not seen good data supporting the self-defense argument (yes, there are anecdotal reports), but I have seen studies that have shown that you have higher risks for gun suicides, homicides, and accidents, on average, if you have a gun in the household. There are also studies (one on Philly streets) that have shown that those who carry have a higher risk of being shot or killed.
5
So little mention of the change in parenting over the last 40-50 years. Let's stop raising spoiled little gods who have been taught that the world revolves around them. Enforce respect for elders, peers, and selves. Use the seat of correction wisely and appropriately. Get them off of their cell phones and make them learn the art of real socialization. Take a look at the video games and movies they consider entertainment. After three generations of destroying our children results will not be immediate, but eventually there will be change.
Last night I saw a TV report on a system designed to "harden" schools against the possibility of a gun attack: Cameras in every hallway and classroom and also linked to the local police, armored doors to resist gunfire, the ability to lock down all those doors remotely, switches in each classroom that can advise a central monitor whether the room is compromised or safe and a system to flood hallways with smoke, making it difficult for a shooter to see and navigate.
And the tab for all this? $400,000....for a single school....in this case in Indiana. Multiply that across a typical school system with a half dozen schools of various sizes and you are easily talking $2.5 million....per system.
And of course we are already starting to shell out tens of thousands to post armed guards in schools. (That was the case at Parkland but it obviously had no impact on the outcome.)
But we can't afford dollars to pay for adequate numbers of school counselors, we don't adequately pay teachers for the vital role they play, we can't afford to maintain art and music, we rely on teachers, in many cases, paying out of their own pocket for classroom supplies.
Is anyone pointing out that this is pure madness?
NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD allows this madness to go on like this. We shrug our shoulders and soon will be shelling out millions to turn our schools into armed fortresses.
13
The schools in Indiana are mediocre at best and chronically underfunded; so were did the funding of $450,000 for this single "hardened" school come from? Local funding or was it the Koch brothers?
I'm pro concealed carry for personal defense but I'm hesitant about arming teachers in schools. I feel like the training a person would go through for self defense is completely different from what he'd be expected to do in defense of others. You're going from defense to offense.
And shooting at paper targets is not the same as shooting at a human being who is returning fire or taking hostages.
Also, let's consider the possibility that a teacher allowed to bring a gun into a school is the one who shoots a colleague or student.
And, what are the liability issues if a teacher designated to carry a weapon shoots and kills a student who is not involved in a gun attack?
2
I am a teacher and I would adamantly refuse to be armed. I'm already dealing with low pay, impossible expectations and the difficulty of having disrespectful students removed from my classroom, if I were required to add firearm training to the mix, it would hasten my retreat from the classroom.
5
The idea of arming and training teachers is unconscionable. There needs to be a concerted and coordinated approach to avoid school shootings. How about training teachers to recognize red flags, such as children or teens with behavioral and mental health issues? Creating a system by which those children or teens are monitored, families are made aware of the school’s concerns about their child, authorities are made aware of the potential dangers, etc. would be money worth spending instead of perpetrating the gun culture in the US unlike seen anywhere else in the developed countries.
2
Like most other teachers I have spoken with about this issue, I hold this belief: we have gone into education because we believe in the power of peaceful negotiation over meaning and the need to teach young people the same. I made a choice not to embrace violent means of dealing with problems and I will go to my grave holding on to the pursuit of peaceful communication and empathy.
In no other place in the world is there such a disconnect between the obvious things I am stating and the militarization of society, except for authoritarian regimes.
If we turn towards embracing militarization of schools, we will be teaching our kids to do the same. That is a sure road towards further polarization, fragmentation, and moral collapse.
10
As a teacher, I believe I am expected to protect my students at all costs including my life. If I am willing to receive quality firearms training, I would like the opportunity to protect myself and students.
1
If we are going to take a holistic approach to the problem of school massacres, everything needs to be on the table, everything needs to be up for discussion and negotiation. That includes armed, vetted and trained adults on campus. It includes a serious look at our inadequate and underfunded mental health system. It also includes logical gun control measures, such age limits, training requirements, the legality of certain weapons/ammunition and far more vigorous and enforced background checks.
This is a complicated problem that needs a multi-faceted response. We shouldn't be afraid to discuss any part of it because it might rankle a special interest group.
Thank you Mr. Myrick, for your bravery in a crisis, and for your common sense today.
I love and admire teachers, and consider them underpaid, undervalued heroes in our society. But another problem with arming them (which no one wants to mention) is that even some teachers must battle with mental illness, can become disgruntled at work, or become unstable after a painful romantic breakup. Even if the vast majority of armed teachers are stable and law-abiding, we only need to have one crazy teacher with a gun to lead us to another school tragedy.
It's just another example of the NRA's fallacy of "good guys with guns" vs. "bad guys with guns." We seem to have a persistent blind spot in our failure to understand that "good guys" sometimes turn into "bad guys," and it may be impossible to see that coming or to prevent it.
Limiting civilian access to guns (especially semi-automatic weapons of war) is a far better solution.
4
School shootings are horrific and seem to be happening more frequently. What happens even more frequently are injuries and deaths that result from accidents, mishandling, and inappropriate securing of guns.
Arming teachers and faculty would place millions of new guns in schools across the country. While this would serve the NRA's core mission to boost gun sales, it would also introduce the high probability of injuries and deaths at schools from accidents, mishandling, and inappropriately secured guns.
Far more frequently than the stories about armed teachers taking on mass shooters, we would start hearing the stories of the teacher who dropped a gun, killing a student, and the gung-ho faculty member who injured someone while showing off a gun, and the first-grader who found the teacher's gun in her desk, took it out to play during recess and killed a classmate.
Next, we'd hear about the armed teacher who was quickly shot by an assailant, because highly trained police and soldiers struggle in surprise attacks, and teachers with guns will rarely get the drop on a heavily armed assailant. Plus, not only will armed teachers be targets for assailants, they'll also be targets for the police when they arrive, because police are trained to shoot first at the people with guns in active shooter situations.
Don't believe the NRA's Hollywood scene where the heroic teacher steps out and takes a single clean shot, putting one right between the assailant's eyes. That's just fiction.
2
The idea of arming school administrators for protection is as negligent as allowing a teenager to purchase a firearm. We no longer live in the woods, we live in an urban society that requires an amendment to the constitution written 250 years earlier. Strict gun laws are as vital to the livelihoods of our children as automobile safety has become. It is up to Congress to pass appropriate legislation.
2
I should think a very few faculty well trained in the use of firearms, shooter management and trauma first aid should suffice. In a school shooting crisis I can see a score of armed, ill-trained teachers shooting at each other, their students, first responders and they themselves falling to "friendly" fire.
Easy access to military assault weapons should be curtailed and purchase of these weapons heavily regulated.
1
Anytime I hear the suggestion that more guns in the hands of decent citizens is the best defense, I cringe. All I can think of is what would happen when the police arrive at a scene where everyone is armed and shooting. How will they tell the difference between the active shooter and the defenders? How will the good Samaritan tell if the other person in the room with the gun in their hand is a shooter or defender? The answer is, they won't. Anyone with a gun in their hand is an active shooter and will be treated as such. The result will be a wild west shootout with more innocent dead.
The too often repeated scenes of children and teachers seen leaving schools with their hands raised in the air eliminates the chance of someone being mistaken for a shooter.
Arming anyone but a trained uniformed officer in a school, place of worship or any public place of gathering is absurd. The fact that I am suggesting that armed uniformed personnel need to be a presence in schools is frightening in itself.
The only answer is stricter and realistic gun control with the goal of protecting the lives our children and the public in general, not the imagined rights of gun owners. The second amendment does not guarantee the right to own arsenals and assault weapons with 30 round magazines, it was meant for single shot flintlock rifles and pistols that took a minute or more to reload.
3
Mr. Myrick, has certainly 'been there-done that'; has the school experience; is thoughtful and well-spoken. Wouldn't it be great if some lawmaker-political types actually got his expert advice (as an educator, a gun owner, a school-shooting survivor).
And isn't it a bit heartbreaking that any school shooting is forgotten. We should never forget ANY event where student lives were lost.
Thank you sir for reminding us of your harrowing experience. And thank you for how you responded, saved lives and kept a cool head. Heroes are so often hiding in our midst.
1
Regulate the sale of bullets. Sentence all involved in gun violence to a life term, not parole. Prosecute parents and custodians of young men who engage in gun violence.
2
America already asks underpaid teachers to work miracles with children who are far too often, in urban and rural districts especially, ill fed, ill clothed, unsocialized, undisciplined, and exposed to massive levels of dysfunction in the home and community. Now we want teachers to be armed security guards too, willing to engage in what amounts to armed conflict with high powered weaponry.
Listen, if someone is interested in and has the fortitude for dealing with armed criminals/enemies, they are going to join the military and/or become a police officer. In rare cases, a teacher or coach will possess these skill sets. But most teachers go into the profession to teach their subject, help, and nurture young people, including very young children. Asking these teachers, who may very well be in their 50s and 60s, overweight, out of shape, or otherwise not boot camp material, is absurd. That something like 50% of Americans imagines this is a good idea really flummoxes me. What are they thinking?
4
Bravo, Mr. Myrick. Common sense, brave and intelligent. He should run for office. He's smarter and more sensible than all of Mississippi's Republican officeholders combined.
1
Here are the stark facts about school shootings which must be considered in this debate:
- Active shooter protocols have never been demonstrated to be effective. Hiding in a classroom waiting to be shot hardly constitutes a rational policy.
-Shooters stop, or kill themselves when confronted with an armed response.
- Killings occur in a few short minutes, long before law enforcement can respond.
- Banning assault rifles my help, but they will still be available.
How about having a rifle available at the school, under strict lock and key, for those faculty who are willing to be trained to use it.
A faculty member ran after Adam Lanza to try to stop him. She was shot dead in her tracks.
1
An American hero, who like many is modest about his bravery.. Mr. Myrick deserves a Mark Twain award for talking common sense about a matter where stooges of the NRA avoid common sense like the plague.
Hiring a trained guard makes sense; so does putting in metal detectors. But surely there is an infinitesimal percentage of deeply troubled people among teachers and school administrators for whom concealed carry at school is a temptation. Further, as someone who fired numerous weapons in the Army, I know you have to devote considerable time to keeping proficient. Just qualifying in a course does't fit you for everyday use.
The chances of a teacher accidentally shooting a student are not inconsiderable, as Mr. Myrick points out. Skilled with his weapon, he choose not shoot the killer when he could have easily missed and hit a student.
The key difference between the U.S. and Japan, where mass killings are rare (I can recall only one -- the Aum Shin Rikkyo nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway thirty years ago -- is the availability of rapid fire assault weapons. Now and then someone runs amok in Japan, but with a sword.
If you can't drink until you are 21, why should you be allowed to buy a weapon at age 18? (Answer, the NRA). A "red flag" law is a no brainer. Finally, reinstate the assault weapons ban -- exceptions for collectors keeping them inside, under lock.
Lastly, don't read the National Review, which criticizes student activism.
1
The sane objective should be less guns, period, given the growing number of studies that validate what would be considered common sense anyway--the more guns there are in this country, the more gun injuries and deaths. That "American Sniper" was shot and killed at a shooting range, filled with people who also had firearms. To stop a raging oil fire, don't pour gasoline on it.
3
I agree with Mr. Myrick. I come from a family of educators, and the thought of having to carry a firearm to class, or keeping firearms in the classroom is horrible. Acting as an educator is difficult enough already. There is a lot of pressure, stress, and your attention is on the students, the education, and the curriculum. Having to act as a bodyguard, or security officer on top of all that, they are just not paid enough. If you think education in this country is in trouble now, just add that responsibility to the mix. We need to be sensible on guns. Background checks, waiting periods, a ban on military style assault weapons and high capacity magazines for starters. Look to Connecticut for sensible gun legislation, as a related article in this publication showed earlier. It’s not perfect, but it shows results.
2
When I hear that the solution is banning assault weapons my first thought is what about the 2 million plus assault weapons that are already out there. Every time this outcry arises the sale of assault weapons skyrockets. Will this be another ineffective solution that is impossible to enforce? Will we hear after the next mass shooting (there will be one) that it was carried out with an illegal assault weapon. We need a well thought out solution, not one that just makes us feel better.
If NRA recommended increase security in school and arm the teachers and staff members with the gun, yes then the school might be a safe place. What about the clubs, concerts, and other places? You cannot arm everyone in this country. It only will decrease school shooting, not the overall gun violence in the US. There are plenty of gun violence outside the school zone!
1
Teachers in Colorado have to buy their own school supplies, and even desks if they want one. This happens right across the country.
Next they will have to buy the guns
and bullets, the locked gun cabinet, and then pay for in service day at the shooting range. The rest of the world already looks on with despair at how teachers are treated in the US, and now this?
1
The kid killed 17 people in three minutes; the Las Vegas shooter killed 58 and wounded 400+ in ten minutes. Rid the country of assault style weapons and high capacity magazines. They have no place in civilian life. Don’t be fooled. These initiatives are meant to distract from the real problem.
121
I’m an educator and could not agree more with what Mr. Myricks said. Finally, the voice of a reasonable and rational gun owner! Why can’t these Second Amendment zealots not realize that no one is trying to deny them their rights?! Why are we Americans so obtuse when it comes to this issue??!!
33
What is more amazing: the shamelessness of the gun lobby that has pushed through a blatantly self-aggrandizing solution to the scourge of mass shootings in the United States? Or that a large segment of the American population supports this idea, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they have fallen for a thinly-veiled marketing plan for the firearms industry? I guess it is easier to come up with a conspiracy theory that a mass shooting has been faked, rather than accepting that you are really that gullible (or corrupt).
21
It's the same crowd that talks about arming teachers that won't fund enough books and pencils for classrooms. And it's the same crowd that worships Ronald Reagan but forgets he was surrounded by a pack of trained, armed men and STILL got shot and almost died.
59
Also, I commented that the "American Sniper" was shot and killed at a shooting range, filled with people who had firearms! I added that you don't put out a raging oil fire by pouring gasoline on it.
2
Two things:
1st: stars donating, news hoopla (again), and no one is remembering that exactly 10 years earlier - Valentines' Day 2008 - the same thing happened at NIU in Illinois? That was "only" 5 college kids, with no place to run or hide, shot by "one of their own." It wasn't as dramatic? Is Valentine's Day now truly guns-and-roses? 2nd: why is the media ignoring the other common factor of child shooters - that they all seem to have been on prescribed drugs at some time. Can you even imagine if the last 30 years of school shootings by other students had been by any other ethnicity???
5
Maybe we should insist that all politicians and judges be armed in legislative buildings and the courts. No, they want to be protected with metal detectors at the doors. I just keep shaking my head!
6
Our "progressives" are magical thinkers. Just how are all the existing guns to be controlled?
5
Not easy. But America is a great and innovative country that has accomplished the impossible repeatedly. I have faith in our country and our people.
2
Buy back, stiff penalties including jail time for possession after a deadline, and more severe penalties if your gun is used in a crime.
3
Buy back the assault weapons and make it illegal to own one. Felony possession for law-breakers. Cost might be as much as $10 Billion but a small sum in the grand scheme of things in America. Cheap for making schools, churches and work places significantly safer.
4
The notion that we should train/arm our Teachers, is a very sorry state of affairs, and is totally obfuscating the problem. No Teacher should have to worry about the safety of his/her students. No Teacher should feel the 'need' to be armed with a weapon. Is that what we've turned into....OK Corral? We think THIS is the better solution, versus....er... I don't know....maybe simply ensuring that guns are LESS likely to get into the wrong hands? The solution, according to some, is More guns in our schools?? Heck, then why not arm all students as well? I mean, what if a student is sitting among the other students, and pulls out an AR-15 while the teacher's back is to the students? So then maybe we need to give all the students guns as well.
And actually, now that I think about it, instead of arming and training teachers (who may not be all that 'interested' in carrying and learning how to use a weapon)....why not just bring members of SWAT teams into our schools instead? All SWAT team members can pick a course they'd prefer to cover...be it English, Math, History, etc. And then we train THEM to TEACH, versus training our TEACHERS to SHOOT. Wouldn't you feel much safer knowing that your school is protected 24/7 by an 'elite SWAT team'? Sure, these guys may not be natural-born 'teachers'....maybe our kids' educations will suffer a bit...but hey, at least they'll be safe, right? Maybe that's the solution.
Do you see how utterly ridiculous this would be?
20
I am tired of hearing about 2nd Amendment rights. All of our Constitutional rights have limits, except the NRA-twisted right to bear arms. Free speech yes, but not "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Freedom of religion? Yea but not one that one justify illegal acts, like sacrificing live people at an alter, as an extreme. Freedom of religion would exlude that as a right. So how come we cant put some limits on the Second Amendment? Is it somehow different? Are there no limits? Should people have the right to own a bazooka? Why are otherwise sane politicians, not the NRA wack jobs, but just average moderates not make this case from both sides of the aisle? We limit our rights all the time. Why cant we make the argument on AR-15s?
25
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." People always forget that first part.
1
Very well trained conceal carry personnel for schools! Yeah, sure. Police are supposedly very well trained and down south they shoot unarmed black men in the back.
13
This occurs very rarely... but it's interesting that you still trust them to keep all of us safe once even law abiding citizens don't have guns.
The nra and its followers created a frankenstein. Now they want us to learn to live with it!? The logic is perverse. Kill the monster!
29
First, the principal's absolutely right, and good for him.
Second, anybody who thinks that you can easily train civilians to have any hope of shooting back effectively against a loon with an assault rifle, kids running everywhere screaming, and people dropping and dying around them is an idiot.
Third. The people who argue for metal detectors and assorted barriers have never tried to get 3000 students through them in time for class.
Fourth...the "hire armed guards!" folks would be exactly the people standing up and shrieking when the School Board explained what this would cost, and what would be necessary by way of taxes to pay for it.
This is simple, except politically: you ban assault weapons, you ban high-capacity magazines, and when you identify the (generally young) men at risk for committing these crimes, you take their boomsticks away from them.
No, it won't stop every mass shooting. Only Parkland, Virgina Tech, Aurora, and so on. Hell, that's only seventy or so lives right there.
Hooray for this principal, the grownup in the room.
50
Robert and citizens of the United States,
Civilians are trained for combat every day of the year in basic training and the police academy. Both of these programs last 12 weeks to 6 months and the firearms training in both could be condensed to 2 weeks or less. Unfortunately there is a huge population of citizens, police, and military personnel that hold the 2nd amendment and the other amendments sacred to the point of fighting for these rights. The deaths from school shooting would be minuscule to the deaths from gun violence in a 2nd civil war. All of the shootings you mentioned were only stopped by having an armed good guy between the victims and the bad guy. The Israeli model has worked for their war tore region for decades, we may need to adopt their methods because guns, knives, bats, hammers, axes, rocks... are not going away.
If the history of home gun ownership is a valid guide, and if we start bringing guns into our schools, children and teachers are much more likely to be shot by accident than by a school shooter. I don't have the stats in front of me, but guns are challenging cars among younger Americans as the leading cause of death, and most of those are suicides or accidents. Put more guns in any environment, and more people die.
60
Indeed, how many times do we hear of 'accidental' shootings, whereby kids got a hold of a loaded gun in the home (or from their mom's open purse, at Walmart??!!)? We need to stop referring to such shootings as 'accidents'. Instead, the responsible 'adults' should be brought up on manslaughter, murder and/or child abuse charges.
17
Great point. So many gun deaths are accidental. Every single day. And the injuries are an even more massive number. We are fortunate to have excellent trauma care. Saves a lot of lives, though it leaves many with debilitating physical–not to mention–emotional injuries.
2
Why are states taking suggestions from the NRA whose only goal is to sell more guns. I'm an Elementary School teacher. There is no way teachers should be armed in schools. Now Congress members are suggesting we not only focus on learning the best skills for teaching the cherished children of our country, they are suggested we carry guns. Guns are only for police and the military who are well trained in their use. I have a suggestion for Newt Gingrich. Stop accepting money from the NRA and instead do your job.
1
The members of Congress should start carrying their own guns to protect themselves. We taxpayers can then stop paying for their security.
115
Many already do.
This is the typical American response to things. Let's not take guns away from people that shouldn't have them, so that everyone else can be safe. No, let us provide guns to EVERYONE so that they can feel safe. Total insanity.
113
A handgun is no match for an AR-15. I think we need AR-15s for all teachers, students, janitors, etc. Now don't we all feel so much safer??
2
Not getting into the pros and cons of the gun debate If you think lock down drills and cameras are keeping kids safe think again. At best it is security theatre at its worst people believe they are safe when they are not. We need to control access to schools. Nothing is fool proof but there are literally hundreds of schools individuals can get into and cause problems regardless of the weapons available
1
We have collectively taken leave of our senses, including our common sense.
1
Since the NRA controls the GOP, shouldn't it really be called the NRAGOP?
32
By arming teachers we are saying that those charged with educating our youth about law and order will also be responsible for killing intruders. That a teacher should be a deputized policeman or woman and that we expect gun battles in schools so let's be prepared. What kind of country is America? We talk about the evils of terrorism when committed by a Muslim, but avoid acknowledging that the NRA is a supporter of domestic terrorism and pays politicians to keep it that way.
79
What kind of country is America? A dangerously sad excuse for a democracy, where the insane, gun-loving minority calls all the 'shots'.
16
This person might be singular. I am aware of people involved in mass shootings who say that assault rifles should not be banned.
1
Sources? Names? One maybe.
3
REQUIRING teachers to carry guns is a bad idea for reasons many readers have offered. But almost as bad is a policy of posting signs outside of schools that say "gun free school zone." Mass murderers want to kill as many people as possible. The mere possibility that someone among the crowd might shoot back is a deterrent. That's one reason murderers target schools and churches and social venues. Most of these guys hate cops, but they hardly ever show up at a police station to shoot them. Cops shoot back.
3
The people who target schools have been students. Almost all of the incidents I can think of from Columbine on have involved students doing the shooting.
It's become a cultural phenomenon, fed by the easy availability of guns. Has anyone thought of public service announcements or other education about why going to school with a gun and shooting your classmates is a bad idea? How about some public education on the topic.
3
I walked into a precinct recently here in Seattle. The front desk is behind bullet proof glass and you have to be buzzed in to get past the front desk. You could walk in and shoot all you want and the police never have to shoot back. This is the main reason why people shoot up at churches, Vegas concerts, and schools - easy access. When was the last time we heard of someone entering a federal courthouse with an AK-47? Or gotten on a plane with even a Glock?
And there is no deterrent when the killer plans on leaving the earth in a blaze of glory. Steven Pollack knew that he would be shot in a Vegas hotel. It did nothing to stop him.
5
I see absolutely nothing wrong is allowing teachers to carry guns with them. Guns are a way of life in Nevada and teachers who are trained properly would be able to use them when they have to deal with nut cases out there.
2
I’m sorry but your idea is misguided. Arming teachers will cause accidental shootings/killings in school. It would also traumatize said educator and student if either of the above would occur. We’ve moved beyond the Wild West quite some time ago. Let’s provide our kids with a more civilized future.
1
Folks aren't just talking about 'allowing' teachers to carry, but some are proposing that (all) teachers should now be looked upon as an additional line of 'defense' against a mass shooter... that teachers should now add 'marksman' to their resumes. This is a perverted way of trying to solve the problem. The real question is.... what has happened to our society, that so many young men feel this angry...this alienated? And secondly, what kind of a society thinks that a person's 2nd A. right should include unfettered access to weapons such as AR-15, accessories such as bumpstocks, etc.? The 2nd A was written when Muskets could only dispense 2-3 bullets per minute, at the maximum. The 2nd A referred to a 'militia'. Our forefathers did not and could not have imagined the 2nd A rights to also include a 19-year old Private Citizen (not part of any 'militia'), with known mental health issues, to legally purchase an AR-15.
What about OUR 1st Amendment right to Freedom of Assembly?...the Freedom to Assemble without a well-founded fear of being gunned down by a mass shooter whom WE enabled by way of our lax gun laws? What about MY rights to enjoy a concert, a movie, go to a mall, etc., without constantly being on the lookout for that solitary white male, who just doesn't seem right?
1
And what happens when the first shots are heard and three teachers run into the hallway with guns drawn. They see another person with a gun and start shooting. How do you know it wasnt the school librarian going nuts and shooting up everyone? Soon, innocent people are getting shot.
Properly trained would mean being a police officer or member of a SWAT team and that takes a while. And now you want teachers to do that? Why not just hire a trained police officer instead who has years of training in dealing with active shooters?
Teachers can't be packin' and do their job correctly. Anyone who thinks otherwise obviously isn't an educator (or at least not a good one.)
43
I am a Sped teacher and a very good one ( at least according to my teacher evals and most of the parents of my students I've had). I could very easily keep a biometric gun safe in my room behind my desk and deploy a shotgun to protect my classroom if necessary. Your logic is not accurate.
Arming teachers plays right into the NRA/GOP concept of a society in which, if you get shot, it's your fault. It's not the shooters fault (no way to predict it!), it's not the NRA's fault (second amendment rights!), it's not the GOP's fault (people don't want gun control!), it's not the gun manufacturers fault (we just make them!), it's your fault. It's your fault for not packing a handgun or an AR-15 when you go to: school, breakfast, lunch, dinner, the library, the theater, the grocery store, church, work, shopping, etc. etc. etc.
The NRA/GOP wants everyone to buy in to the idea that the next time a bunch of children get killed, it will be because there weren't enough guns: in the hands of teachers, school guards, and administrators, and the children themselves.
In other words, the NRA/GOP support mass-murderers instead of their victims, because, for the NRA it means more guns sales, and for the GOP it means bigger checks from the NRA.
For the NRA/GOP, carrying a gun is no longer a "right" it's an "obligation".
All clear now?
70
Are you suggesting confiscation? Forces in our population including police and military will resist tyranny of gun confiscations in the for of armed combat here in America to resist it. If you think these school shooting caused gun violence what will a 2nd civil war do to children let alone this country?
Chicago Guy, Thank you for your terrific comment. We need more citizens to support what you just wrote. Plus I do not agree with putting the onus on teachers to be armed. Teachers are there to TEACH!! Teachers do Not to be gun carriers & therapists. Schools classrooms are over crowded. Teachers have their hands full with 30 students. I feel the Snead's are in denial. Didn't they know why he was kicked out of the 1st house? I find it hard to believe they didn't know one thing about his dark past. Also, since when does a safe of any type only have 1 key???
1
Armed guards at schools? Time to simply target the families of all the politicians who sabotage sane gun policies.
11
As a public school teacher, I can only imagine what the in-services would be like after they issued us the guns.
19
If you start researching gun deaths in the USA, you will soon feel like bees live in your head. But let’s give this good teachers prepared to gun down a mass shooter in schools a try:
There are 3,172 public school districts in the USA.
These districts have approximately 5,000,000 teachers stuffed in there.
So.. how many do you want to train, arm, and prepare? And how would you do this? Do our armed defenders volunteer? Do they bare the costs of their own training and guns (like some teachers buy pencils for some students)? OR does the district cough up the money? does a teacher get extra pay packing?
Now school mass shooting is horrible. If you experience one and live, I am not sure you ever recover, mass shooting is a PTSD factory for survivors.
I am 100% sure that knowing the halls of school are being roamed by some teachers packing with concealed carry permits would make everybody feel safer even if realistically you were not. Flooding schools with guns will increase gun deaths by accident. Incidentally some mass shootings are carried out by men (yes, it’s almost always men) with legal permits. But OK, maybe it’s worth a try!
your odds of dying any mass shooting in your lifetime is 1 in 11,125. That is any mass shooting: school, church, college, concert, bar whatever. Your odds of dying by vehicle is 1 in 108. odds of heart disease is 1 in six, cancer 1 in 7.
I had a fringe friend who carried. An armed society is a polite society he said.
Maybe he is right.
An armed society is a self-censoring society, one where honest, productive conversations are impossible. If you fear that someone will blow you away if they don't like what you say, you keep your mouth shut. The cohort with the biggest guns effectively rules. And everyone else can seethe in private even if their point of view is actually more reasoned, helpful, and positive. Basically, just like America is today.
3
Banks have armed guards too. That's why they never get robbed.
Shootings never happen on military facilities either.
Policeman never get attacked.
This is the logic of the NRA-controlled GOP.
14
I haven't seen an armed guard in a bank in 50 years. Banks are more like McDonald's now.
Odd, but I read way too often of police officers getting shot, and killed. What is your preferred news source?
I'm surprised the Republicans haven't proposed building a wall around every school.
5
I am for the placement of trained security guards who act and not react during emergencies, but this Trump-like philosophy of if you have a gun, I will just get a bigger one and shoot you back' has to be backed by the NRA.
Get one federal gun control reform law in place making the requirements tougher for gun purchase and doing actual background checks, some states do not even do this now. Get rid of all military assault weapons, they are weapons to kill and are not used for personal protection or for the purposes of hunting wildlife. They are weapons of mass destruction and should not be in the hands of the general public. Banning bump sticks amounts to sticking a finger into a crack of a dam about to burst its seams.
Teens are marching all across Florida in protest of the lack of gun control, thanks to the GOP who have received funds from the NRA for decades, and I think teens all across America should join in their march to prove solidarity, and make a national statement. All lives matter but especially the lives of the young who should have decades of living stretched out in front of them and not a coffin.
Where is the GOP conscience or respect for the sanctity of life over donations from the NRA? Trump is hopeless, he is all about himself so essentially he is out of the equation despite a small effort to redeem himself politically on this subject.
8
We don't need more uneducated cops roamoing the school halls carrying weapons as a means of deterrence. Americans just need to get away from the gun culture altogether and create an American culture without guns. When will American men ever grow up?
26
They need to get away from the culture that believes that shooting a bunch of people is a solution to some kind of problem.
1
This isn't just about American men, and your assessment of cops as "uneducated" is downright insulting. And if you can think of a surefire way to create "an American culture without guns" then by all means, let's hear it. Congress isn't doing much of anything on that front but if you can, then get out there and start working on it.
My sister was a school teacher, and the mere thought of arming people like her gives me the willies. She'd be more likely to blast through the ceiling and kill someone upstairs than successfully neutralize a shooter, assuming she even remembered she had a gun available in a time of severe stress.
Most teachers are nurturers. They are not soldiers or security personnel. You can bet that the idiots who came up with the idea of arming these individuals are either seriously pro-gun or have their own kids safely stowed away in 'good' private schools.
I hope they listen to Mr. Myrick.
43
Are you saying nurturers cannot be defenders? Have you ever seen a mommy bear defend her young?
And if we do arm teachers, and one of them loses it due to the harassment they receive daily from unruly students. Who do you blame then; Obama?
15
Only if you are a Trumpster . . .
As Yogi once said, 'It's deja vu all over again!'
The stupidity of those who want armed teachers and 'concealed carry' on campus have learned nothing since those of their ilk were using the same illogic when they successfully advocated arming pilots of commercial aircraft. Shooting in a school? Arm the staff. Shooting in a church? 'Concealed carry' for parishoners. Their answer is always MORE GUNS!
Obviously Cruz was only exercising his 2nd Amendment right to to kill as many as possible with his AR-15. Thank you NRA. You are complicit.
24
Let's go a step further and arm the students. Oh wait...
16
I would not allow my children to be educated by a teacher pool that self selects based on a willingness to carry guns in school.
17
What happens when good teachers with guns shoot the good people nearby
the bad person with AR-14?
24
Oh, don't worry, Jahnay. They'll all be trained to the level of expert marksmen. There won't be any accidents. Forget lesson plans. Teachers will have to spend their days learning marksmanship.
What could possibly go wrong? It'll all be great. MAGA!
3
If we believe the NRA's self-serving propaganda that armed good guys are the only solution to armed bad guys and start arming everyone, including teachers, we'll just end up with extra dead collateral from friendly fire. And that's just a coverup for the awful truth that we now live in a country where we HAVE to have discussions about arming everyone in order for innocent people to stay alive. What kind of a society have we created? And it's all because some idiot got the insane notion that the Second Amendment was an excuse for letting weapons of war flood the country. Get rid of the assault-type guns or AT LEAST ban magazines loaded with masses of bullets so a gunman can't so easily be ready to murder masses of people without even reloading! We'd still have all the other kinds of guns that citizens of this country have always had the right to own. No one's talking about taking those away. I wouldn't support that.
9
So the bottom line here is that a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun
hmmmm
What lesson should I learn from this story...???
Is it better to sit in a conference room in San Bernardino CA, having lost my basic human right of self defense, thanks to Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the Gun Grabbing Left Wing Fringe and enjoy the holiday party
Or
Have the basic human right of self defense that was not taken away from Mr. Myrick
2
How have you lost your right to self defense? All things are regulated in this society. Guns are, too. Just ineffectively at present. Proper regulation would preserve your rights save lives.
2
@ Orange
You have a choice you can sit in that Conference room in San Bernardino and enjoy the holiday party and in a few minutes the lovely couple is going to show up... You're disarmed thanks Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the Gun Grabbers
OR
You can be at that school back in 1997 just walking in when you notice a guy pointing a gun at a kid with a deer rifle in his hands
Your choice where would you rather be?
You only have two you may not alter the choices
A) San Bernardino
B) Pearl High School
This is a ploy to sell more guns.... kill more people and ask for prayers and thoughts (repeat)... these people are sick and weak .... these guns are showing sign of an empty society that can't find its moral ground and values.
What do you care first? life, safety of your children ... it doesn't look like..
2nd amendment is a false excuse ... England won't invade...
should these school shootings be the norm ? NEVER PLEASE
5
How about way smaller schools and better pay for teachers, instead - lets start to make our schools look like quality. HS these days look like prisons, 4,000 students - horrible.
10
And exactly how do you arrive at this non-data driven conclusion?
From a Chicago suburban principal.
1
I agree - K-12 , 100 students per grade. Multiple schools.
Schools look like prisons, and inside are like factory farms. Depressing all around, for everyone.
Totally agree with this school principal. Teachers should not be asked to perform the duties of a security guard. We need now to have an armed security guard at every school during school hours. Even after school, when sports teams are practicing/playing in the gym.
23
Won't help. He'll be at the wrong place when needed. There was a policeman at the high school recently attacked, but too far away to help.
1
Not the same, Jonathan, as a security guard whose specific job it is to guard against such attacks. There perpetrators, though dangerous, are not so sophisticated as to outmaneuver a trained security guard.
1
What a great educator. He’s in a club no one wants to join, speaking common sense based on experience. I applaud his willingness to speak on this issue, revisiting that event must be tough. One thing about Mississippians, they speak speak their minds. On a side note, is he single?
43
What if certain classes of gun (e.g. AR-15s) were legal, but had to be kept locked up at gun clubs, where the owners could go to use them? They're not much use for hunting (as a midwestern hunter said, you shouldn't need multiple rounds to bag a deer), and for home protection a single-blast shotgun or a handgun is more than enough. If people want to use rapid-fire military style weapons for sport or recreation, they could get a license, then rent a locker at the club and go practice any time.
25
There are millions of semi-automatic rifles that resemble the rifles people are trained to use during military service in private ownership. The vast majority of those guns are secured in gun lockers. Most victims of gun shots will not have been shot with AR-15 but their wounds will still be horrible. The AR-15 is a symbol because it reminds people of war, and makes people think of the killers who make war on innocent strangers because of some kind of blood lust.
1
If I recall, Switzerland has a long libertarian-like government and plenty of guns, 3rd highest after usa, yemen. However, everyone who has one has to be trained, registered, and have their gun stow away at a central site.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/swiss-guns/553...
Not too long ago, shared a table at breakfast with a young German couple at a hotel I was staying at. Making light conversation, I asked them what were the biggest differences they had seen on their vacation between their country and the US. The young man's quick reply stunned me, as I was expecting something about food, music, tourist sites; instead he focused on the availability of guns and the multiple recent massacres.
It appears that the Russian supported NRA is advocating creating armed militias across the country - unregulated, unchecked and free to intimidate whomever they pick. This is a recipe for brownshirts and civil war. Vote for sane gun control, vote out anyone who has taken money from the NRA.
78
Where does the insanity stop when it comes to weapons of war being too readily available to anyone who touts 2nd amendment "rights"?
There is a distinct disconnect between every Americans' right to safety and a frequently misinterpreted, centuries' old "right" that totally ignores improvements in killing power, population growth and the roles law enforcement and our military took in that time span.
It's time for the Supreme Court to properly interpret this amendment to allow Congress to pass common sense laws to prevent further bloodshed.
22
“Mr. Woodham is serving a life sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary”
Other countries that send 16-year-olds to prison for the rest of our lives include North Korea, Sudan, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Just saying.
The chance that a citizen might not get as many guns, or guns quite as sophisticated and destructive, or not get them quite as soon as the Constitution could guarantee is too high a price to pay just to avoid the risk of another mass shooting of children.
But the public safety risk is simply too great to contemplate if we allow the possibility that a 16-year-old murderer could become a different person when they finish growing up.
3
Premeditated murder. He took a gun and willfully shot someone. However, he IS eligible for parole.
1
Release him as soon as his victims recover from their injuries.
1
This breaks my heart, as well. We know about the developmental stages of the child and adolescent brain. (Well, at least some of us do, those who aren't ashamed to align ourselves with science and evidence and progress.) How our society can hold children "accountable" in this way is a mark of our embrace of ignorance over understanding. And please don't infer that this in any way minimized the unspeakable loss of the other children (and adults, like the teacher profiled) who were killed, injured, and otherwise affected by this tragedy.
1
Schools need to be gun-free zones, and students and their families need to know they are safe while learning. Teachers need to know they are free to teach, and not be forced to live with the added responsibility of acting in lieu of law enforcement; if they are requested to do so, I sure hope their annual pay goes way up, because that becomes hazardous duty work.
26
FL Schools are "gun free" zones (Stoneman)
CT schools are "gun free" zones (Sandy Hook)
OR schools are "gun free" (Umpqua CC)
WA schools are "gun free" (Marysville)
CA schools are "gun free" (Oikos Univ)
Va Tech was a "gun free" zone
So I am unsure that making schools "gun free" zones (which 90% already are) is the answer to school shootings.
Nevertheless, I agree with the sentiment that teachers should not be armed. Rather, if we are convinced that these school shootings are a serious problem that must be addressed, perhaps we should adopt the Israeli model and fence our schools with a security checkpoint outside of the schools attended with armed security.
1
So we want to increase the already large job responsibility of teachers to risk their own lives, but at the same time can't seem to provide students with proper supplies and teachers with proper wages? This concept also increases the accessibility to guns in schools. Now an upset student can attempt get a hold of a firearm directly on school premises. Unfortunately, we are only seeking ways to prevent mass shootings in schools, when the threat exists everywhere. How can we best prevent it everywhere?
19
Can't wait to see a nun with an AR-15 slung across her shoulders.
The NRA creates a Twilight Zone reality, and republicans go along with it.
What's next? A hand held nuclear weapon available at Walmart?
29
Nuns do not need a gun. They come with a yardstick and the fear of God and have never had a problem establishing law and order on the school grounds:)
1
When I was young, we never, ever heard of gun shootings at schools. Now it's a common occurrence. One of the major changes during the last 50 years has been the proliferation of guns including assault, mass casualty weapons. Now the NRA and others are calling for teachers to be armed and other forms of school security measures. I can't help but think that if guns weren't so easy to obtain that we wouldn't be in such turmoil and danger.
Why should we need everyone and every gathering place to be armed and fortified if guns are a tool to keep us safe? Ans: They aren't.
Here's my thoughts on what can be done about this while protecting the 2nd amendment rights. The background check system needs to be much tighter, using computer systems instead of paper archives with longer waiting periods and with all the gun-sale loopholes closed. Surely, weapons of mass casualty should be limited to only those who have passed a comprehensive training and certification program. I'd also like to see laws that hold parents legally responsible for the use of guns by their children. In addition, anyone who has indicated an intention to inflict harm to others, as often is the case, should lose access to their weapons, temporarily, until a full evaluation is conducted by law enforcement & mental health personnel. Their guns can be returned pending the results of the assessment. These are all practical to do. I'd even make a donation to pay for the automation of the background check database.
6
When I was young, kids were not getting shot up in school as often. But there was no internet and people were not getting cyber-bullied and committing suicide like we have today either. We have become an even more vicious culture since I was a child if that is possible.
1
I believe if you did a survey of teacher's you would find the vast majority of them would not feel comfortable carrying and handling a firearm. I mean that broadly - K-12 across the entire nation. We ask an awful lot of our teachers - to teach, to continue learning, to vindicate their effectiveness and deserving of a salary, to care for their students as their own, to be a role model, to administer CPR, to handle bleeding students without contracting a disease themselves, to get to an epipen or defibrillator fast enough to save a life, to go into a hallway to lock a door and get the kids on the floor and hit the lights. Heck in some cases to raise them. On a day to day basis during the school year students spend a lot more time with their teacher's than their parents. It seems in modern times it is now necessary for them to take a bullet for their students, and as you can see - there are plenty that would do that without thinking in the moment, despite the fact they would be leaving their spouses and own children without a parent.
You can't expect teachers to also be competent with a firearm and use one under the stress of a live shooter situation. They do not train for this, this is not something you learn in a 2 hour workshop. Leave the firearms to police officers and the military that have years of experience in this work. Give teachers guns and I guarantee you the next headline will be accidental deaths at the hands of teachers.
32
Additionally, this mean teachers have to have frequent retraining, keep their weapon SAFELY at hand but not armed and have to remind themselves frequentlly where it is and how to load it quickly and where to place themselves. They would have to have this on their minds all the time to be effective, if that is even possible. Every time they heard an unusual sound they would have to go to the gun storage place and be prepared. How could they then be a good teacher too?
3
Thank you. What I would have said only you did it better!
Security officers in schools? Fine with me. There is one in my sons' middle school and it does make everybody feel safer.
The being said:
- take mental health issues seriously and improve funding and insurance
coverage of mental health issues
- restore funding for gun violence research
- ban semi-automatic weapons
- limit bullet capacity of guns
- institute universal background checks
- institute a waiting period to purchase a gun
- raise the age of gun ownership
- require all gun owners to carry liability insurance
- institute Red Flag laws
These, to me, are sensible steps to take.
24
I am in no way a 2nd amendment person, but in order to find politically-viable and expedient solutions to the maddening status quo, and in the spirit of bi-partisan compromise, what if the left "gave" the right their armed teachers. The right can then "give" the left improved/enhanced background checks and common sense gun laws. Instead of just one solution, you get multiple solutions to solve the problem. Armed teachers for the right and common sense gun control for the left. If a teacher wants to volunteer to carry a gun in a school, they should be as firearm trained and tested as a police officer.
23
Its not a question of giving - I don't want armed teachers around my kids - am not willing to compromise on this.
4
We are experiencing a national teacher shortage. If you allow teachers to carry, I'm sure many teachers will quit. Many qualified teachers. Myself included.
5
Have you asked teachers? Because I'm one and I will not accept being armed or working in a place where everyone else is armed.
There have been mass shootings in all kinds of places, including office buildings. So by that logic, we should all be armed. But that's madness.
5
Mr. Myricks actions during the incident and his feelings about the situation afterwards are entirely appropriate. We should listen to him - he knows what he's talking about. He is also the voice of calm reason that applies to many gun owners (myself included) - but unfortunately no where near the majority of gun owners out there I'm afraid.
His story as portrayed here is what is representative of responsible gun ownership - indeed he may be one of the best examples of it. Most of the gun/2nd Amendment arguments swing wildly to the perimeters of the argument - Mr. Myrick represents the reasoned middle ground - a region that has been abandoned by far too many these days.
And incidentally - the 30-30 lever action is a considerably more lethal round than most AR-style guns, but it is somewhat slower in use - however perhaps more critically - it is a weapon that doesn't use pre-loaded high capacity magazines - it's laborious to re-load.
120
Mr. Myrick provides a dose of common sense on a topic that generally goes in the other directions. More guns on school campuses don't solve the problem, in fact, they may exacerbate it. Mr. Myrick was very lucky - he pointed his guns, the shooter ran off. What if the shooter had shot back and Mr. Myrick had returned fire? Or if other staff had been armed and started shooting. Police in gunfights rarely hit their intended targets and spray bullets indiscriminately - its the adrenaline rush. When the police show up how do they identify the good guys from the bad guys? Several years ago on Long Island an undercover policeman, responding to a robbery, was shot and killed by a retired police officer who happened on the scene and mistook the policeman for the perp. Thoughts and prayers.
8
I speak as a retired teacher. The idea of having guns in a school is totally against my idea of what a school is supposed to be which is a warm and welcoming environment where students are free to learn. Arming teachers is admitting that society is out of control and that the inmates now control the asylum. Get the guns off the streets. The second amendment was intended to protect a youthful nation in it’s early stages of growth. Look after the children who are lost and need help but can’t afford to go to a doctor. American gun culture is destroying the freedom that children should be enjoying, the freedom to go to school without fear.
17
The gun is a superlative offensive weapon. Given the element of surprise on their side, gunmen have an enormous advantage over anyone playing defense -- even professionally trained security people.
As a defensive weapon it has many limitations, notably the reasonable calculations made by Mr. Myrick who decided not to shoot at Mr. Woodman because any retaliation might have struck students.
A crazed shooter wants peripheral damage, and with an automatic weapon tremendous harm can be done in the first few minutes of an attack.
Let's face it: Even though the vast majority of gun owners are responsible people and only a tiny percent of guns are used in mass murders, a single gun is a veritable wild card able to create extreme injury. We have no trump card to put an end to it.
Let's try a free market solution that might slow the proliferation of unsecured guns and give victims of gun violence and their dependents some -- albeit incomplete -- solace.
Lawmakers should require all gun manufacturers, retailers and gun owners to buy insurance. Just as it is with car and home insurance, discounts would be available for training, proper storage, age and mental stability.
In Massachusetts, families of school employees will receive 2/3 of the deceased’s yearly salary and $4K for funeral expenses -- neither which is sufficient.
Insurance claims paid out by policyholders would provide some consolation and might encourage gun owners to take steps to reduce financial exposure.
3
A sliver of sanity from someone who's been there and still suffers the effects.
In what other civilized (or not-so-civilized) country are teachers trained and armed, like police or soldiers of war?
The rest of the world is aghast at our insistence to perpetuate this gun-culture insanity. Where is that 'well-organized militia' requirement for gun ownership?
5
"In what other civilized (or not-so-civilized) country are teachers trained and armed, like police or soldiers of war? "
In Israel -- which has had no school shootings.
Years ago, when I was in Tel Aviv, I witnessed armed teenagers shopping at the mall. They all had automatic weapons swung over their shoulders (they were doing their required military service after graduating from high school).
The thought that went through my mind was, "Can you imagine armed teenagers walking the malls in the US?"
We would have shootouts... there is something going on in American society besides the availability of guns.
Look at the armed Swiss... I haven't heard of any massacres in Switzerland.
Nobody becomes a teacher because they want to carry a gun and protect students. They want to teach. It is hard enough to recruit new teachers in to the profession, add the responsibility of carrying a gun and there won't be anybody willing to teach our children. We don't show teachers that we think they are valuable part of society because we pay them so little, and now we are asking them to be armed guards as well. That is not the way to inspire a generation to teach and we are in desperate need of dedicated teachers.
4
I am a fifth grade teacher of kids with special needs. They are great individuals but they come with varying issues: adhd, anger issues, trauma, fatherless (broken) homes, depression, and more. The one thing NONE of them have is coping skills. I spend many of my working hours soothing over spontaneous meltdowns and outbursts of anger and stand by my classroom phone, ready to call security at a moment's notice. We've had threats of gun violence in my classroom as well as a stabbing with a pencil.
I have to watch these kids like a hawk, all day. Adding the duty of babysitting a live, loaded weapon in an already volatile environment? The person who came up with that idea has never taught in today's classroom.
What will happen when one of these (big, strong) kids decides to reach for my theoretical gun? Or my co-teacher's gun? Will I really be able to "protect" myself, my co-teacher, and the other students? Get real.
595
And, when a gun battle breaks out in the crowded lunch room, who do you think will be hurt?
2
You should just carry two guns, in case one of them gets taken. See? A simple solution of a gun to every problem.
1
I teach high school special needs students. Same problems, bigger kids. I am right there with you.
1
Teachers will resign by the thousands if districts move to arm educators. Parents will not welcome guns in the classroom. Students will rightfully protest such an extreme idea. This will never happen.
11
I'm not so sure. Here we all are talking about it.
Hooray for Mr. Myrick, the grown-up in the room.
7
If multiple people have guns drawn, I image it could be difficult for law enforcement to determine who the the real shooter is. So many ways this could go wrong.
5
People talk about arming more people to fight possible active shooters without considering what that would mean. When one carries a gun, one must remain alert and ready to use it and to prevent others from taking it. If you get into a gunfight you are likely to be shot. When individuals confront each other with guns they usually trade fire without cover. When you shoot a gun the bullet goes where it goes, once it leaves the barrel you have no more control of it. If an innocent person is in the path of a projectile, an innocent person will be shot. When you are afraid and trying to fight you probably will not shoot as accurately as you have on the range. You may develop tunnel vision and your thinking becomes affected by the desperation you are experiencing. In many combat situations where many bullets are fired, fewer hit the mark than one expects.
That’s a lot to take on with little warning and one’s actions will remain in one’s mind indefinitely.
3
Dealing with facts. Guns are not going to be banned. Increased background checks would have stopped almost none of the recent mass shootings. And at some point, extensive background checks become unconstitutional. What most people do not realize is that the meaning of "assault rifle" is ambiguous. There is no easy way to ban "assault rifles". The 1994 federal ban was a hodgepodge of regulations including specific bans on certain models. What is needed is the political will to go back to the 1994 ban and reconstruct it so that is more effective. Although the tide may be turning, we currently don't see that political will in Congress. Will the Democrats have that will if they regain control? That is the question. Personally, I hope so.
4
On NPR's Morning Edition, David Deroches reported that some schools are ordering Trauma Bags like those used in combat to treat gunshot victims.
What is it about banning high-powered rifles, especially the AR-15 which as the capacity to maim a victum unimaginably. I'm at a loss at the inability of authorities who are unable to offer real solutions rather than first aid kits.
7
I retired early from teaching high school after faculty meetings started becoming discussions about just such a crazy idea. The drills that were supposed to protect us in case of an incident had already depressed me. All we were doing was training a potential shooter. Everything we have been doing has been a smoke screen to obscure what we aren't doing, which is removing guns from as many hands as possible. We need all guns inaccessible for certain people and certain guns inaccessible for everyone. No excuses.
449
Excellent points. The chilling evidence is that the Florida shooter pulled the fire alarm forcing students and teachers into the halls. What also needs to be emphasized is that he shot at least 30 students and teachers. As we mourn the 17 murdered students--we need to take in his choice of weapon and bullet capacity could have led to 30 or more deaths!!
2
I did not become a teacher in order to do sniper training between grading papers. If I wanted to do that I would have joined the military. And what should my daughter, a third grade teacher say to her students, many of whom give her hugs during the school day? Should she tell them, sorry, I can't get anywhere near you because I'm locked and loaded in order to protect you from a massacre?
Thank you for this article--and thank you to the Parkland high school students and to this Principal for speaking out. This has got to stop.
12
Imagine the grief and guilt an armed teacher might feel if he/she accidentally killed an innocent student in a hail of gunfire while responding to a school shooter. And the police shootings of unarmed civilians because the police "reasonably feared for their lives" would also happen in schools with armed teachers. Even though virtually all of nationally reported school shooters have been white, African-Americans will likely bear the brunt of accidental shootings.
Due to our guns everywhere culture, so much taxpayer money that could be used to educate our children is instead going to school security.
9
Missing the point. The Second Amendment is a mandate requiring everyone to be armed at all times. The amendment starts with: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" which means it is necessary for all of us to abide. Preachers, deacons and deaconesses, organists, choristers, doctors of all kinds, particularly those involved in mental health and all teachers and librarians. Yes! football coaches and cheerleaders, members of marching bands. Barbers and hairdressers can get by with razors and scissors. Judges; particularly judges because their robes give them room to keep multiple firearms, hand grenades and small bombs. Soon we will all be safe basking in the security of the free State.
9
It starts "A well regulated Militia" not "a rabble of anyone that wants to pack heat." I could be wrong but I think the framers thought "a well regulated Militia" was enough, not that everyone should go about armed at all times. But, I'm really bad at telepathy, especially of dead people, so I could be wrong.
1
We cannot legislate away anger or mental illness, but we *can* legislate away assault weapons.
6
This idea of arming teachers and staff as a solution is ridiculous. First, the amount of training - both initial and ongoing - is significant. Even assuming that only teachers with firearms experience would choose to be armed. Will those armed teachers and staff commit to the ongoing training required? In fact, the training required might be more akin to a SWAT team member than a "regular" police officer.
Second, even when trained police officers shoot, they miss their target more than half of the time. In a school, where do those other shots go? Further, there is likely a huge mismatch in firepower between the assailant with an assault-style high capacity rifle and the teacher with a concealable handgun.
Third, how will the weapons be stored? Here in Minnesota, a School Resource Officers handgun was fired - while in it's holster - by a curious child during an assembly (luckily no one was hurt).
So would I want an armed teacher in my granddaughter's classroom if attacked? Sure. But do I want a poorly trained teacher will a loaded pistol in the class day in and day out? No.
Relying on armed teachers and staff as a solution - in most cases - is ridiculous.
17
Mr. Myrick is a thoughtful man. People want gun control not seizure of everyone’s guns. People want common sense, not a gun carried by every teacher and person on the street. Why is it that we can sensibly regulate automobiles without people claiming hysterically that the next step will be seizure of all individual’s cars? You need to register your car and get a license. If watching young people be killed is the price of ‘freedom’, what freedom is it that we’re buying?
13
Teachers in El-Hi are among the lowest paid professionals in our country, and frequently overtasked, by the board of education, by parental demands, and often having to supply classrooms with materials for which they pay. The recent tax bill passed by congress and signed by Trump would even, for a moment, denied them a deductibility for these out of pocket expenses, and still caps such deductions at $200, while engineering vast tax breaks for the wealthiest 1%. And now teachers are being asked to behave like professional soldiers, to lay down their lives to protect students from assaults that our current laws enable and our internet culture stokes. And let's not forget that the governor of my state (and perhaps others), when confronted with pension obligations that were part of a negotiated contract with public school teachers, who traded salary increases for pension security, raided the pension funds to finance business deals, and then called the teachers parasites for insisting on that the state honor its contract. Teachers are there to teach, not to protect the security of the gun lobby
13
Deliberately putting guns in the schools is absurd. It is like bringing infected mosquitos into a hospital.
Our schools should NOT be prison camps with armed guards everywhere. This is a systemic societal problem. We do not only have mass shootings in schools. We have them ALSO in schools.
The problem is obvious. We should never allow untrained, unvetted civilians to own the tools of war. Period.
12
The last thing I want to do is be armed, and the second to last thing I want to do is participate in another active shooter drill at my school. I am assuming that there are more American school children and teachers than there are owners of assault rifles. So why are we being the ones inconvenienced (and sacrificed) to protect their “right” to own a completely unnecessary gun?
11
There are 22,000 public high schools in the US. This type of incident, while tragic, heinous, and reprehensible happens so infrequently that putting more firearms in the hands of teachers that probably should not have them is insane. Focus should be on perfecting the ability to geographically find within minutes any person posting on social media and use that capability to stop this from happening again.
48
The military won't use an AR15. It's a civilian weapon. The more appropriate issue to address is why school children want to kill so many. Where and how did they become so devoid of humanity that they want to kill as many as possible?
2
One point that Mr. Myrick makes that many of the yahoos of the NRA miss is that an exchange of gunfire on a school campus is likely going to kill and injure a lot of innocent bystanders. This is not TV, where cops and criminals can exchange gunfire on crowded streets without worrying about hitting innocent bystanders. In real life, it does not work that way. Consider, for example, the Batman shooting in the cinema from several years back. If other people in that cinema audience were armed, who would have ended up shot? Would they have shot at each other, not knowing who the shooter was? Would they have slaughtered panicked filmgoers in their seats and in the aisles, as people rushed to escape? More guns are always the problem. Always. The only solution is to reduce the number and availability of guns. There is simply no alternative. It is time for the US to join the civilized world and realize that no one needs guns, let alone a right to them.
5
I'm faculty at a Texas public university. After the so-called "Campus Carry" law passed in Texas, I put myself through the grind of learning more about firearms. So, I called a friend of mine who owns several firearms and asked him to please teach me more about them.
After going over the mechanics and visiting the local range, I then decided to take a License to Carry (LTC) class to learn more about the law and the process of getting a license (only LTC holders can legally carry a concealed handgun on specific areas of campus.) It was a short half-day class ending with a visit to the range for "qualification."
I learned a lot. I learned, in a nutshell, that handguns are fairly inaccurate, even at short distances. That adrenaline increases inaccuracy exponentially, which can be expected in an active shooter situation. That backstops are critical and, my friends, believe me, sheetrock ain't going to stop that bullet for a while, which is very dangerous... who knows what is on the other side of the wall(s). I can keep going on, but I'll stop here.
I decided to go ahead and finish my "learning process" by applying for an LTC in Texas, which costs $40, down from $140 (That changed a year ago.) I did my fingerprints, filed forms, proof of this and that, and in less than four weeks it arrived by snail mail.
You might want to ask me: So, do you carry? The answer is an absolute NO. I did all of this because I love my students. I felt I needed to know more to better serve them.
407
How much money and time does our military spend to successfully train soldiers and Marines to properly make split-second decisions with firearms and to kill enemy combatants? A lot. It takes much training and much indoctrination to overcome the strong reluctance to shoot another human being even in combat.
Some think that a few hours on a shooting range can turn teachers into John McClain in Die Hard. This is absurd.
1
Loved reading this - thank you for your input. So many fail to take the time to research and learn- so kudos to you for acting on this. The concept of arming even supposedly well trained teachers has too much potential to exacerbate the problem.
1
If you have teachers that believe in guns, they will create students that believe in guns. So the students will want guns and they will pass it down to their children and perhaps they become teachers. No wonder the gun industry is so successful.
2
Arming teachers so that what? When they don't stop a shooter they can be blamed? We already underpay them then blame them for not teaching.
Appalling twisted thinking pushing a needless debate when the answer is crystal clear: No one needs automatic weapons, everyone undergoes rigorous background clearance.
13
Arming teachers will bring fresh tragedy - it would only be a matter of time before a massacre is executed by school staff. There's no gun violence on the senate floor because guns aren't allowed on the senate floor, and security is professionally enforced just like in airports - probably the safest place in the U.S. for ordinary citizens. 100 senators can't be wrong: let's bring the level of security they enjoy to schools for starters.
3
The NRA lobbies on behalf of gun manufacturers; follow the money. They use the second amendment as their argument, but their real goal is not security or safety, but rather profit. American capitalism is out of control, and the NRA has led the charge in this regard, for decades now. They have brought the profiteering by war from afar and overseas to American land, and now their clients who make and distribute machines of death are not only allowed to let children die so they can reap more profits, but they are protected by the NRA from anyone who would take issue with that setup. The "love of money" is the root of all evil, and putting profits over life is the very definition of evil.
6
America has more guns than people. Counting guns owned by teachers, I'll bet not one in ten teachers own or have access to a gun (at home). Primary and secondary teachers are fundamentally nurturers, trying to help young people grow into ethical, critical thinking, self-aware, confident, and safe/healthy adults. Gun ownership and use of guns is antithesis to teaching. I would rather leave the US and teach in another country than be teaching at a school where guns are carried by anyone other than uniformed police officers.
11
I was trained to teach English. Not carry a gun. The very idea of being asked to "tote" a gun to my classes is , well, just crazy.
I have a gun at home, and would use it if I thought my life was being threatened. But to have my doc cam in class pick up the outline of a gun on my hip, while I am teaching iambic pentameter?
Arming teachers is not logical, nor practical, nor anything except crazy.
338
no one is asking you to carry a gun, but what is your solution?
1
What kind of crazy is it when the NAR proposes putting teachers and other staff responsible for shooting shooters? How about not allowing any gun in the hands of kids? How about doing away with assault weapons and bump stocks.
How about background checks and having to wait a week before you are allowed to buy a legal fire arm? How about not allowing anyone to carry a concealed weapon? How about the Congress taking responsibility for these murders?
I am for sensible gun control and it sounds that we should be listening to Mr. Myrick.
9
A more armed society is a more primitive society. We are marching towards the breakdown of civil society when transgressions are settled by armed showdowns. Why wait for law enforcement or the slow pace of a civil lawsuit when the velocity of a piece of lead can settle disputes. Laws, moral, and ethical behavior govern conflict resolution in an advanced society; those principles are not needed when you have a 45 strapped to your side.
7
Anyone who advocates for "Arming Teachers" is being ridiculous. Teachers in this country are having to dip into their own wallets to buy school supplies for their underfunded classrooms, and people are now saying they should be spending money on firearms/training/ammo?
Anyone saying in print or own Cable News saying that teachers need to be armed, should be branded as a fool and never taken seriously about anything again.
13
Teacher here. If being armed ever became a requirement, I would have to leave the field. This is insanity to the nth degree.
14
After every school shooting I review again my own personal plan for how to best survive an active shooter on campus. I worry about whether all of the students could fit in the small conference room between my classroom and the one next door if we needed to hide. I awake at night and wonder how I would help the students stay quiet and what would happen if the diabetic student in my class needed food or insulin during a lack down. I never think about purchasing a gun. Too many guns are what got us to this discussion in the first place. The idea of our faculty spending time at a shooting range sickens me.
235
No one is asking you or any teacher to carry a gun, but do you have a deadbolt lock on your classroom door so that you can lock yourself and your students in from an intruder? If not, why isn't something so simple not implemented?
1
Some people believe that teachers with guns is a good idea. I do have a lock but it takes time to go to lock the door. Now I feel that I need to keep the door locked at all times and also perhaps I need to keep the blinds closed on all of the widows. What a shame.
Arming teachers or putting multiple cops in a school building will do nothing to keep kids safe. What it will do is make parents and teachers "feel" safe without actually experiencing true safety.
No matter how many guards are in the schools a mentally ill person will find a way to do harm one way or another.
1
The second amendment has been so cannibalized it’s original context is completely ignored, especially by the so called “originalists” on the Supreme Court. Certain laws and rights are rightly accepted as universal in this day and age, even though many were considered radical when first written. The second amendment is not one of them, it is an anachronism from the 18th century which had little if any revelence in today’s world. That so many site it as a foundational amendment shows only how little these people understand the basic concept behind it. This country has no army of occupation, we already have a “militia “, the national guard, and this country is not a wild, frontier state. Aside from hunting, and maybe skeet shooting, why are guns still integral to the American psyche? Why is my right and my children’s right to live free from fear overshadowed by this law of the jungle?
277
The 2nd amendment was forced through by deep South plantation class slaveowners after the constitutional convention. They insisted on constitutional protection for their South Carolina and Georgia slave catching posses to bear arms. So, our 21st century gun laws are today restrained by 18th century concerns that slave catching posses be allowed to pack as they hunted down escaped slaves!
1
Think of how class discipline will improve when teachers have guns.
2
Notice the shooter, in 1997, had a single-shot, bolt-action rifle, not an AR-15 semi-auto with a 30-round magazine. That fact gave the vice principle a chance to go to his truck and get his revolver and scare away the kid, who was between rounds in his rifle and had to pause. The kid still managed to kill 2 people and wound 5.
7
If schools don't have the budget for copier paper and books, where are they going to suddenly find the money to provide guns, ammunition, range time, and training? If they expect teachers to dip into their own pockets for those things (like they expect us to dip into them for most other things that we need to run our classrooms) then they shouldn't hold their breath. Because this teacher is not going to run out and buy a Glock.
Also - spoiler alert here - this teacher is not going to throw herself between your kids and a shooter. Nope. Not gonna do it. I am being paid to teach, not bodyguard. I love my students, but not enough to die for them. I have family that I love more and want to live for.
So... parents and lawmakers... if your only plans for handling the next school massacre (and there will be one) involve only armed and/or martyr teachers, then you had best think again, and make different plans!
7
By all means, let's put armed guards in schools and arm teachers and administrators as well.
Then let's see the reaction when the first "well-trained" guard or teacher goes nuts and starts shooting at his students and colleagues.
2
All 18 year olds must vote in the next midterm. They should be registering as soon as possible. It is as simple as this-- vote against anyone of any party that has voted down gun control legislation or accepts money from the NRA.
For the most part this breaks down to the fact that the Republicans support the NRA and Democrats generally support more control. An easy choice.
All voters must vote out these clowns. I am a teacher and I can tell you that there is no way that I will handle a gun or train to shoot anyone.
5
This.
As a teacher, at a high school with roughly 2,000 students...this is madness. I'm also an avid waterfowl hunter. We are already the most armed nation in the world...so, the suggestion to throw more guns into the mix seems ridiculous. And, as teachers we are not supposed to put our hands on students for any reason and then people want to supply us with guns to possible shoot a student. This doesn't make any sense to me.
302
Exactly. Thanks you...from another teacher and gun owner. This proposal is utter madness.
Call elected officials in Washington and tell them that semi and automatic weapons should be banned. Period. CONTINIOUS calls and protests are the only thing that will make change happen
2
The first time an unattended loaded gun in an elementary school falls into the hands of a 6-yr-old who kills a 5-yr-old by accident, we'll know arming teachers is a deadly mistake.
7
Truly, and kids that age get into everything. Anyone who thinks they wouldn't find the classroom gun is not functioning in reality, but then again anyone who thinks arming teachers is the solution to this problem isn't functioning in reality.
Insane to think arming further is any help. The trouble in America is too many guns, too easily purchased, always at hand to act on grievances.
4
It's hard to imagine that anyone thinks "arming teachers" is the answer. Just about as dumb as saying, "every student should have a gun so they can protect themselves." This goes along with the "cowboy" concept that the esteemed secretary of state, The Con Don and their Robber Baron brethren are so proud of.
They are trying to tell us that everything can be determined by shootouts at the O.K. Corral - or inside schools. Think about it. How dumb is that? There are no "good guys with a gun" to save us. Just guns to kill us and our loved ones.
These "cowboys" who have taken over OUR governments should all be deported to their lands of origin. They can shoot it out there. The Con Don says he's Russian. Great place to send him and his family.
WE THE PEOPLE are going to pass meaningful national gun control that keep us and our loved ones safe from this carnage. NOW is the time.
3
I think there are few people around with Mr Myrick's courage, but very many of us with his sane view of guns. We never hear from people who own guns but who understand the pure stupidity of most cowboy fantasies about what happens in a shootout. We never hear from people who hunt but who think there should be sane restrictions on what you can buy. You don't read a lot of interviews with people who enjoy shooting sports but can't stomach the current NRA. There are a lot of us out there, but we get drowned out by the all-or-nothing, slippery-slope, absolute-right-of-anyone-to-own-any-weapon narrative that the NRA likes to push.
318
99% of actual educators agree with this man.
It is a very twisted logic to think that the rest of America has to scrape, bend, pay and change how we do everything in order to ensure a small percentage of gun addicts can have their bang-bang toys.
How about we change the culture and get the guns out? Everyone would be happier and safer.
24
In economic terms, gun violence is a negative externality imposed on the public by the gun industry and their lobbyists. They want to be free to sell deadly weapons with minimal restrictions. When those weapons are used in problematic ways they then expect us to pay for the security to protect ourselves from their products. Or, even better, we buy their products too!
Let’s hold the NRA accountable for offering solutions. Why is this always the victims’ responsibility? Does the NRA have anything to offer at all, aside from the self-interested answer that everyone buy more of their guns?
I don't know about any of you.. But I'll say this. I wouldn't want my former teachers: Mrs. Brown, Ms. Fletcher, Mr. Hansen [and the endless list of substitute teachers] anywhere near a firearm in the classroom. It's dangerous out there enough - no need to pour gas on fire by arming the incompetent.
4
Well, we made an incompetent President.
I cannot believe these are actually points up for discussion. Arming teachers? It's already hard enough being a teacher in this country with the pay being what it is. Now people want to add arms training and having to learn how to ward off a mass murderer as part of the job description??
7
No one can be forced to carry a gun.
2
Indeed this is misguided. Why not just put the marine battalion in charge of teaching and protecting students and armed to the teeth!! Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it
6
Sure......and to make everybody safe, why not arm all teachers, all staff and all students? If one armed teacher can make a difference, arm them all...........
1
Before we give teachers guns, why don't we try giving them mace, tear gas or tasers?
2
So, with every other hat I have had to accept as a teacher, now I'm a gunman?
This is the GOP answer to this serious problem?
319
I'm a former speech-language pathologist. I did not spend my years training and loving my first profession so that I could carry a loaded weapon. I agree: it's madness to put that burden on teachers, who are overloaded with their emotional responsibilities as it is.
4
You have my sympathy. Does this come before or after being a part time social worker, and should you be spending your own money on ammo or classroom supplies now?
Half trained and panicking teacher with a gun could easily be as dangerous as a crazy shooter. Now well have the OK corral in schools, fastest gun wins. Sheeesh, picture this before you propose it.
Maybe turn our cities into Dodge City and then fill boothill.
America surely is a dumb country.
5
Arming teachers was the "idea" of the ignorant immature moral degenerate corrupt cowardly dishonorable unpatriotic bigot Newt Gingrich.
The myth of the cowboy gunfight and the armed civilian cop vigilante is mostly fantasy and fiction. Last Tuesday afternoon in the heart of Chicago's downtown Loop an armed badged uniformed experienced police commander was shot to death by a suspect he tried to assist in apprehending.
Besides since public schools are poorly funded and teachers are underpaid wasting money on guns could be better spent on cheap metal detectors and dual duty security teacher staff.
4
The idea of arming teachers is dumber than a bag of rocks.
My sister is a school teacher. One day when a police officer came to talk to the kids, one of my sister's students tried to grab the officer's gun from his holster. Fortunately, it was secured and the effort failed. That said, there is zero way she will be responsible for having a firearm at school.
The NRA's enablers and apologists are truly desperate if this is their idiotic solution.
10
What decent and intelligent human being.
3
Too many fools watching too many movies. They'd soil their pants if they were confronted by a gunman. Target shooting and people shooting ain't the same thing.
4
Arm school staff so that gun lovers are able to tote around weapons of mass destruction without feeling guilty'? Do we look that stupid? It is the government’s responsibility to serve and protect its citizens. Do your job or retire now.
8
I can just see the headlines now: "Officers Kill Armed Teacher They Thought Was The Gunman"
19
How about hiring an armed escort for every Child ? That's the NEXT
NRA " solution ". Thanks, NRA/ GOP. We're coming for you.
November.
3
How can a small minority (NRA) sway a nation with their terrorist tactics? Politicians are public servants. They keep forgetting this basic tenet of governance. They perform for their constituents at the same time they suck on the NRA money teat. The over through of NRA power and influence should be what is is our scope sights. Yes, have your sights on them in November!
1
This is obvious to anyone who isn't a politician bought by the nra or a twitter bot from a kremlin farm.
6
Does anyone else think that getting more guns as a solution to too many guns can not end well?
53
Teachers should teach and not be commandoes. If we turn our schools into war zones, then we are no better than Afghanistan. Guns rule over there.
The whole idea of teachers packing guns sickens me. The problem is that there are far too many guns, they are far too powerful, and far too many crazy people.
There is no test that conclusively predicts future behavior. Many people are at the margins and can flip out at at any time. The problem is the lethality of the assault rifle. The problem is the detachable, high capacity magazine. The problem is the high velocity projectile that turns organs into mush.
Only the military needs weapons with that kind of destructive power. They should banned from civilian ownership.
Schools are sacred places. Not shooting zones.
We don't pay teachers enough. We don't provide them with the materials they need. We force them to babysit kids with behavioral problems that their parents dump on them. And now they are supposed to Navy Seals and shoot it out against heavily armed crazy people with assault rifles. No way. Leave the teachers out of this and get rid of the guns.
183
The boy killed two and wounded four with a lever action rifle that holds seven bullets in the tube below the barrel. In what universe does that demand the removal of some semi-automatic rifle to prevent? A deer rifle was used to murder people with aimed shots.
Most deer rifles shoot bigger bullets with greater range and higher velocities than the AR-15. Look at the ammunition. Feel the recoil. Your imagination is working with incomplete information.
Unless one has happened upon the breeding ground of big bears, one probably do not require a banana clip for one’s big game rifle. However, you probably would not use the same gun to hunt deer. The gun with which you hunt deer may need to have a magazine big enough to deal with competing predators, and a powerful hand gun pretty soon, you’ve got a dozen guns.
This whole debate is driven by strong emotions and no good legislation can be expected as a result. It will end with something as extreme as the Patriot Act or nothing at all.
1
Arming teachers is not necessary or a good idea. But having armed guards at our schools is. We arm guards at banks to protect our money. Aren't our children a more valuable treasure?
9
You know that there were armed guards at the Parkland high school, right?
How about dealing with the number of guns, the type of guns (guns that have no purpose except to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time) and doing solid background checks on people who want to purchase guns.
2
Many high schools, including the one where I teach, have a police officer assigned to work at the school. One problem is that most campuses are open, so a shooter can access classrooms from any location, do their damage in a matter of seconds with a high power assault rifle, and in the case of the Parkland shooter, leave campus undetected. So is the solution to close campuses and make sure EVERY school has a police officer? How about we just ban assault rifles and call it a day. Seems like it would be a cheaper solution.
2
There was an armed guard at Columbine.
The shooter picks the time, place and with an whole range of semi-automatics not just AR-15s, the rate of fire. With several extended capacity ammunition clips, they have yet to run out of bullets before running out of life.
It is only a matter of time now before an armed teacher, or that teacher's gun, kills an innocent student. That will at a minimum make an interesting case and lawsuits.
2
“If Luke Woodham had an AR-15, he probably would have killed 20 people instead of two,” he said. “There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
It's a difficult point to make, but gun control works. Leaving aside the Florida shooting: if Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook) or Stephen Paddock (Las Vegas) had been able to get hold of a fully automatic weapon, they would have done so. Clearly their purpose was to kill as many as possible; and they did this with the available weaponry. Had they been limited to hunting rifles - yes; people would have died, no less tragically for their families, but probably many fewer. Gun control worked to save lives, so let's only improve a system which is demonstrably effective.
94
This whole thing is of course fundamentally crazy from a non-American perspective. But realistically, training (volunteering) teachers to conceal-carry is the best available option. Even if there would be meaningful gun control, which is not gonna happen, there are already hundreds of millions of firearms in circulation. They will not go away. They will be there for generations. Having several armed teachers in most schools is the only way to inprove the odds that a shooter will be stopped quickly, so the average body count per shooting goes down. And it's not as crazy as letting students come to school loaded - presumably, teachers are far less likely to use their guns irresponsibly, like for playing around, intimidation or accidental shootings.
5
Those who can will be emigrating to countries with far more sensible laws. You live in Germany. Expat or German citizen? I can name an amazing number of young (and old) people who have left the US and love living in foreign countries, from the Czech Republic to Australia, New Zealand, England, Argentina and even Africa. Those of us who can't leave the US can at least move to states with more sensible citizens and laws. Been there, done that.
1
I'm German but I would like to emigrate myself. Islamic mass immigration is already transforming this country in ways that do not appeal to me, and it's just beginning. I wouldn't want to emigrate to America though, the gun craziness being one of the reasons.
So if a shooter shows up, and a teacher or administrator kills or wounds them, or anyone else in the vicinity, even in the name of protecting others, who is liable for injuries, costs, etc? What happens if a so-called protector cannot or is not able to act to prevent shootings from going on? Are they going to be accused of not doing everything they could to stop the killer? Are we really asking educators to make the kinds of decisions that highly trained police and military people make - and take the consequences of their actions should they result in the death of young people or other school adults? Who will treat their PTSD, as described by Mr. Myrick? Why is the answer more guns in schools and not preventing anyone from using them in schools?
143
Thank you Mr. Myrick for your insight and courage. Once again, you are taking on the role of hero!
43
"Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and a former teacher, disagreed. “I think it masks what the real problem is,” she said. “It places an unfair burden on teachers. Let’s talk about what type of guns should not be available to people.”
Sorry Mrs. Cropper but talk will not solve the problem, and neither will some feel good but ineffective legislation. Training people how to defend themselves and others and giving them the tools to do so may not "solve" the problem but would help minimize casualties.
The truth is as on so many other issues the democrats don't want a solution, they want an issue they think they can exploit.
1
You know what else will help minimize casualties?? Stricter access to guns.
1
She does not imply that talk is all she advocates. And maybe leave out the word "Democrats" as a sweeping label. All people have the ability to think rationally, including Republicans (witness the donor who is now withholding donations to Republican candidates who won't support assault rifle bans.) The only people exploiting this situation are those who refuse to admit that adding more guns in the hands of basically inexperienced people is the height of absurdity. My child huddles in a classroom closet as a drill in anticipation of an active shooter. That is the most pathetic thing I have ever heard of and angers me to distraction just typing about it. The last thing those huddling children need is a teacher pretending to be a member of a SWAT team running around. And another thing, what if law enforcement accidentally shoots that teacher?
2
Banning assault weapons is a solution. Denying that fact--or saying it won't work despite plenty of evidence it does--is the go-to position of the right, the people who really don't want a solution because ooh! ooh! Guns!
Why do conservatives believe the Second Amendment trumps the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of others? I don't think living in constant fear of being shot is what the Founders had in mind when they wrote the constitution.
1
I suggest those that think AR 15's are needed volunteer your family members to be part of the next mass shooting. Go on social media and tell the would be shooter where your family will be during the week, their schools and work places. Since you seem to think having a killing machine is just fine, let your family become it's next victims, and there will be a next time. Plus until all legislators vote to allow guns where you work, then don't go telling other people, schools or teachers they should have guns. If you don't want guns in the legislature because you're afraid you'll get shot then don't ask other people to live in fear where they work or go to school.
41
A lonely voice for reason from a hero who has defended children. It is time to shield our children with tougher gun laws. I praise the idea of using retired law enforcement officers in the schools. Also custodians and other staffers should be trained to detect and report any possible threats they hear in the hallways and cafeterias.
12
I heard a great interview on NPR with an ex cop who now does high school security. He pointed out that when police arrive at a school there is no way for them to distinguish between an armed teacher and a school shooter.
Teachers already have it hard enough without expecting them to do double duty as police officers.
331
Why not? Teachers are there; no one else is, in numbers. A single police officer will probably be in the wrong place, unable to respond, as recently happened in Florida.
Not every teacher is willing, or able. But for those who are, this should be encouraged.
Teachers are responsible adults, unlikely to misuse a weapon they carry; the rate of crime among those who qualify for concealed carry is very low.
12
"Teachers are responsible adults, unlikely to misuse a weapon they carry." Being a teacher is an admirable profession. But I wouldn't feel comfortable arming teachers on the assumption that because they are teachers, we can just assume they won't be misused. There are more than a few teachers I've had through the years I would not want with a gun.
5
Arm all the students also.....they will know who to shoot. But give guns to only the willing and able students.
2
It is amusing to me (and not in a good way) to read that teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons in school when they are no more allowed to paddle unruly students. It's as if society has thrown up its collective hands with regard to school discipline.
1
Bravo to "no souls on the planet" needing an AR-15 except military! School teachers already act as mentors, off-site-parents, career advisors on top of just conveying the facts they teach. They can't be police, security guards, judge, jury and executioners also. People want that, let them home-school!
123
Putting thousands of guns into the hands of teachers and administrators at schools is the kind of policy that has "disaster in the making" stamped all over it. As most armed people in schools will never face an armed shooter on the job, instead they will be tasked with carrying, for years and years, loaded firearms on their persons. Over those years, inevitably, mistakes will be made, accidents will happen, good people will turn out to not be quite so good, and innocents will be harmed and killed by bullets fired from guns put into the schools to protect them.
86
What is wrong with America? I can tell you. It's money.
Instead of receiving financial support from constituents, candidates for public office now receive vast sums from the NRA, the Koch brothers, outside donors. And so, we can't be surprised that our public servants give their loyalty to those sources. As long as money rules, America will be its victim - not its savior.
52
So Mr. Myrick had a gun and used it effectively to end a school shooting, but he doesn't think other people should? Seems pretty egotistical to me.
As the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan killings in France show us, you can't eliminate mass murder with tough gun laws. If we truly want to keep our children safe at school, schools need to have the same level of security as airports do. Expensive? Yes. But do we care more about money or our children?
6
Evidently the politicians who accept money from NRA care more about money than children.
2
The answer always is money.
1
Airport "security" is not real, it's a show with a fail rate of between 70 and 80%.
The U.S. “doesn't have a system to provide air security. It has a system to bother people.”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-schindler-tsa-20150605-story....
1
How about training and arming all school children? That's a solution that would gain the support of the NRA and the "right to carry" contingent. A bonus to shooting shooters: a "faster" resolution for settling playground disputes.
Of course, gun shops would have to lower counters to accommodate the younger customers. A small price to pay for an increase in gun sales.
Why does this comment not sound as ludicrous as it is?
218
Yeah, it reminds me of Archie Bunker's editorial on gun control: in order to prevent skyjacking, just arm all the passengers on the plane. Problem solved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lDb0Dn8OXE
The idea of arming teachers and school children is, sadly enough, not much more ludicrous.
2
Only because you didn't mention arming the kids with automatic rapid-fire weapons. Maybe they can be plastic casings so the tots can lug them too.
5
At first I chuckled at this, but then realized this is actually already happening to some extent. Some states allow concealed carry on public university campuses. So unfortunately, it's really not as ludicrous a suggestion as it should be.
10
After Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in Arizona, a bystander in the crowd wrestled the gun away from him and was almost shot dead by another armed man who ran onto the scene. Merely having a gun does not automatically give a person perfect situational awareness, or even decent aim. Plus, we live in a country where schoolteachers have to dip into their own pockets for basic supplies. Are we really going to turn them into bodyguards now as well? It sounds like an opportunity to blame a teacher for not adequately "protecting their students" if they can't stop the next maniac with an assault rifle.
428
Or accidentally killing an innocent in the midst of the chaos. We're having a tough time getting competent teachers in our schools now; this is sure to drive more people away from the profession. Hmmm...would you rather be a bench chemist in a nice clean, well-equipped pharmaceutical company lab (with a high 5-figure or low 6-figure income) or would you rather be teaching high school juniors (earning mid 5-figures), with an ear to the door for gunfire and taking continuing education classes in how to shoot your pistol to protect your students against an armed intruder with an automatic weapon?
10
I completely agree with him. The day I have to carry a gun to school is the day I stop teaching.
374
Me too.
1
No one is asking YOU to carry a gun - but what solutions do you offer to protect your students TODAY. Not a year from now , two years from now, maybe never. Waht would you suggest can be done TODAY.
1
“If Luke Woodham had an AR-15, he probably would have killed 20 people instead of two,” said Joel Myrick. “There’s not a soul on the planet who needs an AR-15 except military.”
Thank you, Joel Myrick, for your American common sense.
Time for America to reject the gun insanity of the National Terrorist Association and their Congressional Republican sponsors of the AR-15 slaughter weapons.
School is school....not a military war zone.
507
Is it semi-auto rifles chambered in 5.56 x 45mm you want to ban? Semi-auto rifles no matter what caliber they're chambered in? Are the rifles themselves okay but you want to ban magazines with a capacity greater than 10?
"School is school....not a military war zone"
The VA Tech spree shooter used a 9mm and .22 caliber handgun to murder 32 and would 17. A narrow focus on the type of rifle in style at the moment will divert too many resources away from closing the loophole on private firearms sales, enacting more "red flag" legislation, safety training and licensing laws, public health funding, changing age limits for purchases, focusing on magazine capacity, etc.
I think we should also focus on increasing school security, like the hero in this article recommends.
Arming school staff? Is this the best idea the GOP can come up with?
Sure, let's just turn all of our nation's schools into pseudo prisons, where rather than feel safe and secure, our children would have to fear being in a wild wild west shootout nearly every single day.
The American people should be more motivated than EVER to go to the polls this November and vote out every single candidate who has ever accepted donations from or has supported the NRA. It's time to take our country back from the far right.
723
An unarmed teacher, and his/her students, are at the mercy of a school shooter, who is, by definition, armed.
Since so many teachers have commented about not wanting to carry guns in class, how about making it optional; i.e., let those who wish to carry guns, and who have the appropriate training, carry guns according to an established protocol. I predict that the second or third time an armed teacher stops a shooter there will be a mad rush for teachers to get guns.