Stop the violence! Arm the teachers! Wait…what?
I saw this great story today about how a North Texas school district may start allowing teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons in the school when classes start later this month. The policy was devised to help prevent school shootings, and those who wish to carry will need to meet the following requirements:
- have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun,
- be authorized to carry by the district,
- receive training in crisis management and hostile situations, and
- use ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricochet.
I think this is a fantastic idea, and it sounds as if the school district is giving it the careful thought and consideration that it deserves. Logically, anytime you tell law-abiding citizens that they can’t carry guns in a certain area, you increase the risk of an unchecked shooting spree in that area by someone who obviously has no regard for the law. As David Thweatt, the school district superintendent says:
“When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that’s when all of these shootings started. Why would you put it out there that a group of people can’t defend themselves? That’s like saying ’sic ‘em’ to a dog,”
I wish that more schools would allow law-abiding, well-trained, responsible teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons if they choose to. And on college campuses, those same rights should extend to students who meet the same criteria. I grew up in a family that uses firearms for hunting, self-defense, and recreational shooting. I also carried a gun daily while I was in the US Navy. If I could carry a concealed weapon legally here in San Francisco, I would. I’m 99% sure that I would never have to use it, but if I did, it would be because I was protecting my life or someone else’s. Alas, I am prevented by law from doing so, which makes no sense to me. Now the only people carrying concealed weapons in San Francisco are criminals. Excellent.
Am I crazy? Should we find another solution to mass shootings at schools and elsewhere? Post your thoughts in the comments.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I’m not sure what the best solution to gun violence is, but I feel like more guns is just more problem. It doesn’t matter how trained the carrier is, it’s still another gun around that untrained people (including children) can get a hold of.
I guess I would be more in favor of an outright gun ban. And the “then only outlaws will have guns” argument is just silly in my opinion. I may be just ignorant but I’d like to see the statistics that prove that a gun-wielding average citizen makes for a safer situation. How many times has having a gun really saved someone in a scrape?
Since the US doesn’t have a gun ban though I don’t know of a good solution. Guns have just run rampant in this country.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Before schools can allow law-abiding, well-trained, responsible teachers to carry concealed weapons, they’ll need to find law-abiding, well-trained, responsible teachers. One of my teachers back in high school was arrested in front of a bar on a school night. I assume his co-workers partied elsewhere. The few that were responsible and smart were known for just that; not for having particularly good reflexes or for being able to think quickly in life-threatening situations.
Many people don’t even feel police officers are sufficiently good at their jobs. If that’s true, getting teachers up to an appropriate skill level will be impossible.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
@n0s0ap
If there was a way to successfully ban guns outright or un-invent them, that would be one thing. But a complete ban on guns is just unrealistic, especially in this country. As far as statistics on average citizens using guns responsibly, some studies (albeit not without controversy) have shown that private citizens use guns to defend themselves or others more than 2 million times per year. In fact, there in your hometown of Colorado Springs, the shooting at New Life church was only stopped because a private citizen carrying a gun shot and killed the shooter. Had she not been so equipped and trained, the situation might have been far worse. This kind of thing is more common than you might think.
And how is the argument that if guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns a silly one? Do you seriously expect criminals to respect the law and not carry guns, especially if they know that their victims (who are law-abiding) are prohibited by law from doing so, and thus are likely to be unarmed and easy targets? How is it silly to assume that a criminal with an illegal gun poses less of a threat than a lawful, well-trained citizen carrying a gun?
@Jon
The fact that you had one teacher who was arrested hardly nullifies the argument in the article. These teachers will only be allowed to carry if they have met certain criteria. You might be surprised what an ordinary, well-trained, armed citizen can do when necessary.
While we’re at it, perhaps we should not allow police or the military to carry guns either. After all, I heard about a cop who was arrested for being drunk, and I’m betting a military guy or two have been as well. Let’s give police those little sticks to carry and some pepper spray, and let the military have sword fights like medieval times.
August 15th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Here’s a bunch of interesting facts about gun control. Be advised that these have been compiled by a pro-gun organization, so you should take them with a grain of salt and check their cited sources, just as you should from anti-gun organizations:
http://www.gunowners.org/fs0404.htm
August 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I think the only outlaws will have guns argument is thin because most of the shootings that pro gunners use involve shooters who are not outlaws. They had access to guns. If guns were not legal then they would be much harder to get, leaving a lot of people’s “worst day ever” gun free.
I think the scariest thing to me about guns in society is that if more and more people have guns the more people will get used to them being around, as we have already seen in our culture. Even if every gun carrier is properly trained how do you protect against mental instability, really really bad days, or just malicious intent? Just because someone is trained doesn’t mean they won’t want to shoot someone for the fun of it someday.
August 16th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
most of the shootings that pro gunners use involve shooters who are not outlaws.
I don’t even understand what you are saying there. But I’ll go out on a limb and assume that you are opining that most people who criminally misuse guns had no prior criminal record. That is simply not supported by the facts.
“THE FACTUAL FOUNDATION FOR CERTAIN KEY ASSUMPTIONS OF GUN CONTROL”
Even if every gun carrier is properly trained how do you protect against mental instability, really really bad days, or just malicious intent?
You can’t. But it doesn’t have anything to do with guns. Just a couple of weeks ago in Canada a crazed man cut the head off of a fellow bus traveler with a knife. Recently in Japan, a man killed (IIRC) 7 people and injured several others by driving a car into them.
Violence happens because there are violent people out there. Guns don’t cause the violence and the availability of them to the common citizen actually has the effect of damping some of it because potential perpetrators know that their potential victims may be armed.
Following the gun bans culminating in 1997 in the UK, knife crimes have gone through the roof. Deaths by stabbing have skyrocketed and they are considering it a national crisis. In fact, even GUN crime has increased since the enactment of their bans and their overall violent crime rate has actually exceeded that of the US for the first time in history.
Just because someone is trained doesn’t mean they won’t want to shoot someone for the fun of it someday.
That sounds like a bit of projection to me. Just because someone is trained doesn’t mean they won’t run someone over with their car for the fun of it someday. We’d better ban them.
There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 violent crimes committed with guns in this country every year. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 million lawful gun owners. Even assuming that each and every violent crime is committed by a single, lawful gun owner, that is a rate of .19 percent.
So, you believe that it is perfectly acceptable to infringe upon the rights of 99.81 percent of the gun owning population as a result of the misdeeds of the remaining less than two tenths of one percent? What kind of sense does that make?
Liberty involves certain risks. I personally believe that those risks are well worth the alternative.
August 16th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Oops…sorry, gotta throw out a correction. My memory was VERY fautly on the number of gun crimes in this country. Hindsight is 20/20…I should have checked before posting the comment…but upon re-reading my entry, I questioned my memory so I checked on the DOJ website. The number of violent crimes committed with guns is closer to 500,000 per year.
Continuing to assume that each of these crimes was committed with by a single lawful gun owner…which, by the way, is a ridiculous assumption…most criminals commit multiple crimes each year and most criminals are not lawful gun owners. I’d say the number of lawful gun owners who commit crimes approaches zero percent, but for the sake of discussion, I’m using worst case and assuming that each crime represents a single gun owner and that every crime is committed by a previously lawful gun owner.
With the correct numbers, it still works out to .63 percent of gun owners committing crimes with guns.
So, I re-iterate: Does it make sense to infringe upon the rights of 99.38 percent of the citizens for misdeeds of less than seven tenths of one percent?
And that doesn’t even address the number of times that crimes are averted through the lawful use of self-defensive arms. That’s pertinent, but I didn’t want to go off on a tangent.