Then put armed guards in the schools. Teachers are not guards. That isn't their purpose. Teachers should be concentrating on teaching. Guards should concentrate on protecting.

So a teacher volunteering to carry his own legal firearm in school after having additional training will make that teacher unable to concentrate on teaching?

Really trying to see the logic of many of these posts.

Absolutely No no no no. I am from Newtown -- Sandy Hook. No guns for teachers and no military weapons for anyone else. Change the law!! We are not fighting England anymore. Besides even the police in England do not carry guns.

Guns in Schools
 

You need to get the 'Gun Free Zone' removed from schools. They are sitting targets for these people that want to do great harm. If it's not known how many armed people are in the school, these evil people will think twice before entering. (A retired teacher)

so many posters who have never taught or managed a classroom and who seem to be very "macho" with situations that they will never find them selves in are advocating for arming teachers.

It is also interesting to note that most school districts oppose the new law, and it is they, the school districts who will make the final call on whether it happens in their district.

Florida school districts push back against bill to arm teachers | Fox News

I keep thinking back to the most recent mass shooting. ONE man engaged in a gun fight with 4 armed and trained officers and those officers used all of their ammo before finally taking him down. AFTER 12 DIED

If you translate the same event to a school and a classroom, there seem to be a lot of reasons not to have teachers involved in a gun battle.

I totally understand the sentiment about protecting our children, but common sense seems to be less considered than macho talk among those who will never ever be involved, and the simply "pooh poohing" the ease of being armed, the watered down approval for gun toting takes precedence over any consideration of anything else except arm and shoot.

Yes, protect self and your kids, also expect a large pay raise from school. You might just save the lives of many.

I'm a gun owner but I'm not smart enough to know the answer to that question. If they do carry guns I think the librarians should also carry and have to use silencers. LOL

I believe there would be considerable less school shootings if the shooter knew there was a possibility the every teacher he encounters may be armed.

Ok pretty funny, but there is No such thing as a silencer.

Of course. Very common sense.

Agreed... if you are well trained concealed carrying a weapon is as natural as carrying your wallet or cell phone. However if you are afraid of a gun than for heavens sake leave it in your safe..

The 12 people were shot BEFORE the police got there, what does that tell you? And at this point it's not even known until the autopsy is completed if the shooter took his own life or was killed by a cops fire.
Steve

What you say may be true BUT... There are only two things that will stop a madman with a gun...he runs out of bullets OR another gun. being unarmed makes us a victim being armed at least you have a chance..

Actually you can get the insurance through the NRA and it's quite inexpensive.. If a person needs to pull the trigger to save their or a loved ones life me thinks a lawsuit is the least of their problem at the time..

I agree trained teacher should allowed to have a gun. Key word trained. Plus there has to be a safe and secure place for the firearm at all times

"Four officers entered the building after the call of shots fired was made to police shortly after 4 p.m., Friday. Police Chief Jim Cervera said that the officers arrived within minutes after the first call to dispatch, and were able to find the suspect after hearing gunfire. They then engaged in a long-term gun battle with the suspect, the chief said."

Police engaged in ‘long-term gun battle’ during Virginia Beach fatal mass shooting | WTKR.com

So, its not clear how many were killed and when, nor how much was related to getting into a gun battle.

Make no mistake....I am for security and perhaps this is an answer.

My entire point was that on this forum we are talking MACHO television stuff as if that were the real world, and the discussion is among those who can easily speak so mach as they will never
be in the situation and oh man is that easy to talk about.

How many lives would have been saved if a) the officers came early or b) came later or c) never faced gunfire from officers which was returned

I dont know....you dont know....hopefully once the investigation is over, we all know.

Just jumping to gunfight mode seems wrong to me, especially when young children are involved. My wife taught elementary school for over 30 years, albeit in a different time, but I would suggest resigning if she worked for a school district allowed this to occur.

If you have been in combat, you know that your reaction is much much different than you imagined it would be. Having a teacher to confront an armed person, hell bent on killing everyone including himself and without knowledge of his weaponary is a scary thought, to me anyway

The depressed and probably bullied student who is bent upon killing but knows they will be shot, will go to school with a suicide vest, you can bet on it.
I still think the way to reduce school shootings is to teach empathy, social skills, and conflict resolution. Those skills work everywhere and last a lifetime.

Boy, hate to be pessimistic but in this world there is a fat chance of anyone caring about empathy, etc.

An elementary student seeing his teacher gunned down will leave very serious emotional scars, AND by the way this nation has simply pushed aside the survivors of other school shooting, little in the way of nation empathy should be expected.

It is possible to teach empathy, especially if you start at a young age and also resilience. Dr. Seligman has started to work on resilience training before deployment to reduce PTSD. It is our amygdala, our reptilian brain, that reacts in a primitive mode but we can calm it and over ride it.
Oh, and I don’t believe in giving up. I would not have become an educator if I though people were incapable of learning and change.

Everyone in the know is keenly aware as to why the parkland school shooting was not easily avoided.

No Guns
 

Teachers have an awesome task of instilling in their students the desire to learn and teaching them how to put to use the knowledge they acquire. That, in itself, is a very stressful full-time job. To burden these qualified people with the added responsibility of looking out for their students if a lock-down should occur and having the task of keeping a gun secure until they felt they needed it is enough of a stressful situation even for law enforcement officials who have been fully trained to do their job. They cannot be expected to have two full-time jobs at one time. Many teachers have helped keep children safe in a very precarious situation just by directing them properly where to hide from a deranged gunman. The responsibility is too great to be given the extra burden of training to have them using a gun in a hostile environment under such stressful circumstances. Hire more school guards and take appropriate measures to alert everyone of a hostile situation with modern tech devices that can be used instantaneously. No Guns

You have not been over for a while.
Whilst the normal bobby is unarmed, there are now a lot of armed response units.
Our nutters prefer to stab people anyway!

I suppose, unlike you, I am simply unaware as you say.

BUT, I was also under the impression this thread was not about any specific shooting but general.

But again, I am not "in the know"

Are you saying that if Nicolas Cruz, the shooter, had started in elementary school where there were lessons in empathy, resilience, conflict resolution, how to deal with bullying etc that it could not have made a difference? He was expelled, sort of like the Virginia mass shooter who was fired. Is there a common theme here?

I do not know the psychology of it all, but one common thing is they all feel "put upon" or a "victim".

A concept shared by most I think....will take adjustments to that, but seems to me, feeling a victim and needing a way to "show" everybody and blame everyone else is common.

Yes! The school broke it "promise" to the school, the community and especially the families of the dead.

Most likely nothing has changed. Parkland is just one example, one of the most obvious.

Sad.


Promises broken ...

Guidance / Promise Program

"A specific set of code of conduct violations has been identified by a cross-community collaborative workgroup, as being appropriate infractions for which participation in PROMISE [misdemeanors that do not raise to the level of serious challenges to public safety, bullying and harassment] would be an appropriate intervention."

They are begging for more shootings. Serious changes of administration is needed.

In our schools, from kindergarten on, there is a series of ways of identifying students who need special help, and these students are often placed in appropriate settings to get it. By the time they get to high school the teachers would know what to expect and what may work with these students. The teens are a very difficult time for most students. Their adult brain has not developed until age 25. The “misfits” need extra help, and guidance and direction to get through the ‘teen angst” years and beyond.

Why is this thread still going? It is clearly political. And for the record, I've played golf with many retired teachers, and they all scoff at the idea of guns in schools. We need better gun laws, universal background checks, better gun safety training, and we need to outlaw military type guns. Who really needs to own an AK-47? Require mental health professionals to report people who might be dangerous. Enforce laws that restrict gun access for people under domestic violence restraining orders. Ban large capacity ammunition magazines. And as Velvet mentioned above, give training to teachers to identify the problem kids who might have a propensity for gun violence, and work with the kids to possibly prevent a mass killing.

Maybe those same retired teachers say the opposite in a different setting.

ALL the retired and current teachers I know are in favor of guns in schools and in trained teachers hands.

Unless there are metal detectors at the doors, it is already possible that every teacher he encounters may be armed. Even then it's possible. Unless you think teachers aren't capable of breaking the law and carrying even if it is a gun-free zone?

I personally don't feel there should be any "gun-free" or "gun-allowed" zones in schools. These terms shouldn't even come up in conversation.

If the killer has reason to think the teachers might be armed, it'll just make the killer shoot the teachers first. Problem solved, and now he can proceed to killing everyone else.

If he thinks the teachers aren't armed, then it won't matter who he goes after first.

In either situation, both teachers and students are at risk of death. In the first situation though, it's pretty much a guarantee that the teachers will die first. That is the ONLY thing that arming teachers will accomplish.

Guns
 

I completely agree with this poster. Guns in the class room is a horrid idea. I taught for 13 years and many chances for a child to get to a gun arose in the classroom. Kids, particularly boys, will be drawn toward "just Holding" the gun. Even if it is put in the back waistband of the teacher they would have to stop going up and down the isles to keep a child from reaching for it. This is just too dangerous a situation for the classroom no matter how much training a teacher gets. The entrances need to be monitored more so the shooters can't get in. The kids will NOT be trained. :thumbup:

Teaching these things is a great idea. But that takes time. While you're waiting for everyone to learn what you're teaching them, SOMEONE has to protect the kids. I think people whose primary job is to protect them, should protect them. Teachers should not be those people, because their primary job is to teach.

I think you give the shooters more credit than they deserve. They are some dumb assed kids that don't know how to use a gun or prioritize targets. I do believe that there is a deterrent affect if they didn't know the school was gun free but as far as taking the teachers first or the order of targets is well beyond the scope. They are not too smart and scared spitless. Thank god they are so poor at what they do or the death tole would be much higher. I think they for the most part have some experience with weapons from video games which desensitize them but can give them some simulator skills.

I believe that trained personnel in schools is an effective measure to stop armed violence, as I mentioned before about the incident we had at my school. But not the teacher. Our librarian was very trained, but by accident, can’t have a Mossad trained individual in every school. We were lucky to have her.

When I advocate for the students, even the misfits, I am looking at the long run, the future generation, how we can give them better tools to cope with.
Look at the telephone and how far it has come, we can do the same thing in education.

And no, the ship has not sailed, IMHO. We are capable of evolving.

Crime Prevention Research Center report- Food for thought
 

Just read an article on a Crime Prevention Research Center study in which they analyzed nearly 20 years of comprehensive data from reliable, respected sources including the National School Safety Centers (NSSC) report, “School Associated Violent Deaths” and the Washington Post’s database of school shootings. The report indicates that as far back as January 2000, there has not been a single mass public shooting between 6 AM and midnight in any school that allows teachers and staff to carry guns legally. Here is a link to the abstract. There are links to the paper and the data on the abstract webpage.

A depressed and suicidal student is not going to be worried about who is armed. They have already given up on people and themselves. They will only be figuring out how to overcome the obstacles.

This is my view from my life experiences. I understand if other people have different views. But as Bucco said, we will do best if we listen to each other and consider the various points. We have the same goal of keeping our children and students safe. We need to look at what is feasible and cost effective and educational.

Do you not believe that would apply to any of those who attempt mass shootings ?

Yes, they have given up.