Arming teachers to protect students isn’t the disaster waiting to happen that Liberals would have you believe. And the media doesn’t want you to know this is already happening in schools without deadly results.
I was reading this article Cody School Board Exposed about the Cody, Wyoming school board secretly trying to derail legislation repealing gun free zones. At least that’s what I think it was about. The article wasn’t well written and a little confusing. But about a third of the way through the article, I find this:
“The above mentioned politicians were on the record and against legislation that would ONLY allow permit holders to conceal carry in Schools – the same way Utah has been doing for over 16 years.”
WHAT? Utah has allowed teachers with concealed carry licenses to carry a firearm, in the school, while they are working, for 16 years? I thought it was too dangerous to allow teachers to have firearms in the classroom. That teachers weren’t smart enough to carry a gun without shooting themselves or a student. Or students would steal their firearms and shoot other students or their teachers. Is this true?
So I took a quick side trip to Google where I found these two articles:
- Teachers treated to free concealed weapons class on UEA break
- Utah schools prohibited from asking which teachers carry concealed
In a nutshell, what I found out from the above:
- State law allows teachers with a concealed carry license can carry a firearm in class.
- Local school districts cannot prohibit teachers from carrying concealed.
- Local school districts cannot ask teachers if they are carrying.
- The firearm must remain concealed on the teacher’s person.
- The firearm cannot be concealed in a desk, locker or purse.
What I didn’t find was a massive list of accidental shootings caused by inept armed teachers. In the 16 years the law has been on the books, there has been only one accidental discharge.
Teacher who accidentally shot gun at school resigns
Not accidental shooting, an accidental discharge or negligent discharge. A teacher was re-holstering her gun (a Glock) in the bathroom when it went off. She evidently had her finger on the trigger as she pushed the gun into the holster or the trigger caught on the edge of the holster. This seems to happen a lot to police officers. The round hit the toilet shattering it with the pieces injuring her leg.
The teacher was charged with a misdemeanor, discharging a firearm within the city limits. She resigned her teaching position with the school.
One accidental discharge in 16 years is a better record than my unit had when deployed to Afghanistan. And these guys were professionals.
Further research has turned up that Ohio also allows individual school districts to decide if they want to allow teachers to carry if the have a concealed carry license. Apparently 40 districts have.
Ohio Teachers Pack Heat on the Job
Teachers Carrying Guns In 40 Ohio School Districts
Updated: 17 Feb 2018
The Broward County Florida school shooting happened last week. I personally believe that the chances of an armed school employee stopping a school shooting are slim. But in this case, if either of the two coaches who found themselves in the kill zone had been armed, the outcome of the shooting may have been very different.
Still, I am for arming school employees. Not so much because they can stop a shooting in progress, but because a shooter may think twice about walking into a school if it is an armed camp, not a gun-free zone. I’m for not only for arming school employees, but for implying that EVERY school employee may be armed and that they are all expert shots. It’s called propaganda. Liberals use it every day to forward theit agenda. Why shouldn’t we use it for good?
Propaganda works. It worked for Hitler. Before Hitler occupied the Rhineland in 1936, he flooded the airways with stories of the invincibility of the new German Army. When his troops marched in to occupy the Rhineland, no one tried to stop him. In reality, the German Army was far from invincible. If fact, Hitler gave orders to his commanders that if there was any resistance to the occupation, retreat immediately. No one resisted, the occupation was successful.
School boards or the State should pass laws/rules allowing teachers and administrators to be armed. Videos and newspaper articles can be made showing dozens of teachers from the same school going through firearms training and Active Shooter Defense training. Signs are placed on school property and at every entrance to the school stating, “Teachers and administrators of this school are armed for student protection”.
In reality, only the principal, assistant principal or other key administrators whose job allows them to “roam the school grounds” are trained and armed. And maybe some teachers that have previous firearms training like in the military. The perception to the public, the students and any would-be attacker (usually a student) is that every school employee is or could be armed. Give the impression that attacking a school would be like attacking a pistol range or gun club.
Publicize the program on a regular basis. Invite the news media to watch training and range qualifications. Have an expert combat pistol shooter (in teacher-like clothes) run a course hitting every target. Use metal targets for effect, giving the impression they never miss and going up against them would be suicide. Publicity is important, but teacher identities would have to be concealed to protect them and keep them from becoming a target.
Start and publicize a program to recruit former military members into the teaching profession to further boost the number of trained personnel on site.
The news media is a necessary part of the plan but could also be the flaw in the plan. There are news reporters that if they found out the true way the plan operates, would publish it on the front page for the sake of getting a story over student safety. These would probably be the same reporters that were originally against having guns in schools and now proclaiming that there aren’t as many guns in schools as the plan stated, therefore, your child isn’t really protected.
One way to beat the media problem would be to allow each school principal to control the program in their school. The principal would decide, based on the threat level, how many employees need to be armed at any one time. Employees would be trained and tasked on a weekly basis by the principal to be armed. So, the scale of protection could go from just the principal being armed to every trained person to be armed. Only the principal would know.