Guns in the Classroom

[Daedalus]

In the wake of the shootings in Connecticut, the lawmakers in the state of Oklahoma (my home state) are working towards legislature that would allow CLEET-certified teachers and principals to carry firearms at school and school events.

 

http://kfor.com/2012/12/17/rep-wants-teachers-to-carry-guns-at-school/

I am aware of our other thread concerning gun control, but I would like to hear what other members and parents here at SFN feel about this type of action being taken by our lawmakers. Sure, you may not live in Oklahoma, but if our lawmakers here can pass this type of legislation, then governments can pass the same sort of measures regardless where you live.

 

Personally, I believe that this is a bad idea. Who's to say a teacher won't flip out and pull their gun on a student, or worse a student takes the weapon from the teacher and uses it?

Edited December 18, 2012 by Daedalus

[Moontanman]

Yeah, there is a lot of alarms going off with that one.

 

I can see some problems

 

A teacher who is not comfortable with guns feels she is compelled to get and and carry it to protect her students. Guns aren't the toy things we see on TV, most people cannot just pick up a gun and use it effectively much less safely. It genuinely does take training and dedication to use a hand gun. You need to shoot it regularly, train regularly and then hope you don't freeze or get the shakes if a real danger crops up.

 

I don't see teachers and professional grade shootists exactly being a region that intersects often on a graph...

 

Now obviously most hand gun owners are not professional grade but they do go through training and most people i know who do conceal carry train with at least some regularity with their weapons because they simply love to shoot. I know everyone seems to like to think of gun owners as wild eyed crazies looking for a reason to kill someone but the reality is that most are sane rational people who felt the need for protection. In the training you are taught to understand "with great power comes responsibility" I know I couldn't help myself...

 

I quit because it was just more responsibility than I could deal with. (and my hands shake pretty bad now days) Killing someone is not something you do lightly, killing someone by accident would be life shattering to any sane person. Most people that conceal carry understand the responsibility, take it seriously, and most of the time you never know who they are.

 

But it does take some dedication that just anyone might not have... That might make a teacher who was carrying the gun because she felt she had to, not quite as dangerous as someone who thinks a gun is a toy but still not the best person to have a gun out in public...

 

And hand guns are not something that everyone can use, it's a skill set that some people just can't get right. I can't play soccer, requiring me to do so would be a farce no matter how hard i tried... guns would be similar i think.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, there is a lot of alarms going off with that one.

 

I can see some problems

 

A teacher who is not comfortable with guns feels she is compelled to get and and carry it to protect her students. Guns aren't the toy things we see on TV, most people cannot just pick up a gun and use it effectively much less safely. It genuinely does take training and dedication to use a hand gun. You need to shoot it regularly, train regularly and then hope you don't freeze or get the shakes if a real danger crops up.

I guess my concern is that a student could gain access to the weapon(s) either by a teacher being careless or through other means to obtain access to the weapon(s). So instead of having to find a way to obtain a gun outside the school grounds, a student or students working together could obtain them at the school and use them on the faculty and student body. A worse case scenario would be a group of students that take down a few teachers that carried weapons in order to enact their diabolical plan.

 

For most of you that do not know, I am a parent of two boys ages 5 and 9. So, this is something that concerns me directly.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Daedalus

[john5746]

I can understand the desire to have an armed guard at schools, maybe we are so screwed up it is necessary.

 

 

If something like this is done, I think it should be separated from educators. I agree that this would be a big mistake, their primary job is not killing perps.

 

Provide a trained officer for each school.

 

Where do we get the money? We tax guns and ammunition. We tax it to hell and back and we use those funds for any safety improvements and to provide for victims of gun violence. If people feel the true cost in their wallets, maybe the demand will be adjusted.

[Moontanman]

I guess my concern is that a student could gain access to the weapon(s) either by a teacher being careless or through other means to obtain access to the weapon(s). So instead of having to find a way to obtain a gun outside the school grounds, a student or students working together could obtain them at the school and use them on the faculty and student body. A worse case scenario would be a group of students that take down a few teachers that carried weapons in order to enact their diabolical plan.

 

For most of you that do not know, I am a parent of two boys ages 5 and 9. So, this is something that concerns me directly.

 

 

I often wonder what is it about modern society that triggers these events... 50 years ago guns were much easier to get but I don't know of any thing like that happening back then.

[Daedalus]

I often wonder what is it about modern society that triggers these events... 50 years ago guns were much easier to get but I don't know of any thing like that happening back then.

You have to remember Moontanman, back then, guns were part of every day living. As with most things as time progresses, they get phased out or used very little as newer technologies simplifies our daily lives. So knowledge of how to use and defend against such things also dwindles. As for the increase in violence, I wrap that up to people having to live in tighter spaces as the population grows. Of course this can't account for every situation, but I do know that we as a society have to deal with more idiots than what was in the past. Edited December 18, 2012 by Daedalus

[iNow]

"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."

~Dwight Eisenhower

[Moontanman]

You have to remember Moontanman, back then, guns were part of every day living. As with most things as time progresses, they get phased out or used very little as newer technologies simplifies our daily lives. So knowledge of how to use and defend against such things also dwindles. As for the increase in violence, I wrap that up to people having to live in tighter spaces as the population grows. Of course this can't account for every situation, but I do know that we as a society have to deal with more idiots than what was in the past.

 

Are you saying the effect of idiots is compounded as their numbers increase?

[Daedalus]

 

Are you saying the effect of idiots is compounded as their numbers increase?

I would say so considering my experience of driving on the interstate lol : )

[ParanoiA]

First, remember that handgun licenses require classes. While I merely have to attend an 8 hour class to obtain an open concealed carry (Oklahoma is open carry now) for my personal protection, I doubt very seriously that's all that police get. I would say that any government agent, such as a teacher or custodian, would need to demonstrate a more thorough understanding of firearms and combat before carrying a weapon in the course of duty. Something more intense, like the kind of training police get.

 

I live in Oklahoma, and I like the idea. I like the idea of more people armed. It increases the ratio of good to bad armed citizens. Remember, guns tend to equalize power.

 

We know that teachers and a principal physically intercepted the shooter at Sandy Hook. If they were armed, there may be less death - a lot less.

 

Yes, a teacher could go off on a classroom in a murder-suicide. And more armed teachers suggests an armed teacher nearby will attempt to stop them.

 

A police officer is not good enough - there is only one of them, and they typically are nowhere near as armed as a mass murderer.

 

How about making it mandatory for all government school staff to carry weapons? Part of the interest here is that we are forced to send our children to government schools, assigned typically by geographic location as opposed to informed choice. We are forced to relinquish all protective power over our children and surrender them to strangers, as a matter of course, approx 8 hours a day from the time they are 6 to about 18.

 

In that vein, I think I have a right - as a parent - to insist my child is protected at least as well as I would have protected them if I were not forced to drive to a government building and surrender them to the care of strangers.

 

Of course, there's the flip side to that for parents that don't like guns and don't want their kids surrounded by them. I understand that too.

 

Here, a little school "choice" goes a long way. Change to a voucher system where the money follows the kiddos, and let parental choice be the market force that brings about various solutions to school security.

[iNow]

Adam Lanza's mother was a well trained gun owner... hell... that's where he obtained them.

Despite her ready access to guns and years of training, she still got killed.

 

IMO, the logic above doesn't hold up to even cursory scrutiny.

 

What really winds up happening is you get cross fire and bullets flying from multiple directions instead of just one.

[Moontanman]

Adam Lanza's mother was a well trained gun owner... hell... that's where he obtained them.

Despite her ready access to guns and years of training, she still got killed.

 

IMO, the logic above doesn't hold up to even cursory scrutiny.

 

What really winds up happening is you get cross fire and bullets flying from multiple directions instead of just one.

 

What is the deal with Adam Lanza's mother? Was she really a gun enthusiast? Or did she just buy guns for her son to keep him happy?

[ParanoiA]

Adam Lanza's mother was a well trained gun owner... hell... that's where he obtained them.

Despite her ready access to guns and years of training, she still got killed.

 

IMO, the logic above doesn't hold up to even cursory scrutiny.

 

What really winds up happening is you get cross fire and bullets flying from multiple directions instead of just one.

I will refer to Swansont's point about strawman arguments. The proposal isn't that no armed person will be killed, or that anyone around being armed will stop all murder.

 

The above logic works very well in combat. Try explaining cross fire and bullets flying to combat veterans that used that very method to neutralize the enemy and save themselves.

 

The greater the ratio of armed "good" people to "bad" people, the greater the chance for those good people to survive and neutralize their enemy.

 

Also, your argument fails because we don't know how he achieved a firearm in his hand to kill her with. He was likely not a masked intruder, or busy shooting others, to therefore initiate a counter attack from her.

 

 

What is the deal with Adam Lanza's mother? Was she really a gun enthusiast? Or did she just buy guns for her son to keep him happy?

I've heard reports from mild gun ethusiast that discovered the joy of shooting to all out claims she and her family were/are doomsday preppers. I think we'll just have to wait and see. It's truly stunning the lack of credible information reported.

 

Either way, I think it's a safer bet that he attained a firearm and shot her without an announcement of his true intentions.

[proximity1]

There is much in detail I'll have missed concerning the shooting incident; I heard that Lanza drove his mother's car to the school; assuming he parked it as close as possible to an entrance, how far should he have had to walk to break in to the building without being seen approaching, armed and dangerous?

 

This I ask for practical reasons. Let's imagine the proposed law had been in effect and even further, (hard to imagine, but) some of the staff or teachers had easy access to a firearm--where, exactly, would that easy-access be? To be effective, it would have not only to be in the classroom, but in easy reach of the teacher since, in any realistic scenario, either a gunman gains entry to the classroom or he's seen and stopped prior to that--but how and by whom using what means?

 

I don't see how the proposed law would be or could be made feasible. Elementary school teachers, wearing side-arms throughout their day--in the classrooms, in the halls, in the lunchrooms? Have the legislators considered the daily effect of all this on the children? And, then, suppose that few or no teachers elect to keep a firearm, despite (assuming passage) their right to do so?

 

It strikes me as a truly bad 'good idea', allowing school teachers/staff to carry arms in and around the school.

 

This measure "moves the problematics" to another venue. What then about school buses? Wouldn't there have to be an armed guard on-board each of those? The driver? A separate guard?

 

My view of the moment is that there exists no good practical solution to the vulnerability of public schools. They may be made safer but not entirely safe. This kind of incident cannot be completely prevented short of taking measures which are themselves so extreme that "the cure" is overall untenable, unacceptably severe--even in a nation where such events can be expected to occur somewhere every few years or every year, though with fewer and varying losses of life. Remember that the objective was from the first suicidal. With that as a factor, preventive measures are hard-pressed to cover every potentiality.

[ParanoiA]

There is much in detail I'll have missed concerning the shooting incident; I heard that Lanza drove his mother's car to the school; assuming he parked it as close as possible to an entrance, how far should he have had to walk to break in to the building without being seen approaching, armed and dangerous?

 

This I ask for practical reasons. Let's imagine the proposed law had been in effect and even further, (hard to imagine, but) some of the staff or teachers had easy access to a firearm--where, exactly, would that easy-access be? To be effective, it would have not only to be in the classroom, but in easy reach of the teacher since, in any realistic scenario, either a gunman gains entry to the classroom or he's seen and stopped prior to that--but how and by whom using what means?

 

I don't see how the proposed law would be or could be made feasible. Elementary school teachers, wearing side-arms throughout their day--in the classrooms, in the halls, in the lunchrooms? Have the legislators considered the daily effect of all this on the children? And, then, suppose that few or no teachers elect to keep a firearm, despite (assuming passage) their right to do so?

 

It strikes me as a truly bad 'good idea', allowing school teachers/staff to carry arms in and around the school.

 

This measure "moves the problematics" to another venue. What then about school buses? Wouldn't there have to be an armed guard on-board each of those? The driver? A separate guard?

 

My view of the moment is that there exists no good practical solution to the vulnerability of public schools. They may be made safer but not entirely safe. This kind of incident cannot be completely prevented short of taking measures which are themselves so extreme that "the cure" is overall untenable, unacceptably severe--even in a nation where such events can be expected to occur somewhere every few years or every year, though with fewer and varying losses of life. Remember that the objective was from the first suicidal. With that as a factor, preventive measures are hard-pressed to cover every potentiality.

I'm not sure how far Adam Lanza had to walk to the door, but it is being reported that he shot his way in since they would not buzz him in.

 

For a gun to be effective it would have to be reachable fairly quickly, like in the classroom. I'm thinking teachers keep them in a thumb print safe in the room. Other administrators, especially with more authoritative roles carry them right on their waist. Just like an officer.

 

In this shooting, you would most certainly have a couple of dead innocent people. If the principal - who did physically engage Adam - drew a gun instead of a fist, would she have achieved a fatal shot first? A shot good enough to wound him, such that when other administrators close in on the shooter he is easier to trap and wait for better trained personnel?

 

It seems silly to run through these scenarios like this. You can't really accurately foresee how bad or how good these events can turn out. People are capable of amazing things, sometimes, and sometimes not.

 

Then there's always the chance a child gets shot and killed, and because we didn't know that the future could have given us 20 dead kids, we think the event failed. If there were any armed counter attack against Adam Lanza that resulted in a single person's death, we might be talking about how dangerous it is to have guns in schools even for trained personnel - not realizing they had just averted a massacre.

 

I think it's more important to give them all the tools they can use in an emergency, and accept that we aren't perfect. Unless we are ready to put an armed officer in every school room, I'm not sure what choice we have besides "hoping" that no one goes to our kid's school to do something like this.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Hang on a moment. We're discussing the practical issues in arming teachers to prevent school shootings. Now, some statistics:

 

In 2009, 31,347 persons died from firearm injuries in the United States (Tables 18 and 19), accounting for 17.7% of all injury deaths that year. The two major component causes of all firearm injury deaths in 2009 were suicide (59.8%) and homicide (36.7%).

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf

Shootings in schools are a tiny fraction of all homicides (less than 1%), and yet we're talking about arming all school staff. We have something like seven million teachers. Arming them all with a $500 weapon would cost $3.5 billion; training classes and ammunition for all of them would probably cause just as much.

On the other hand, you could buy a cheap gun lock for every handgun in America for maybe $1 billion, and give them to every handgun owner there is, preventing dozens of small children and pissed-off teenagers from finding guns and doing something stupid with them.

Before we panic over the latest news item and demand action, we should consider whether it will be worth the effort.

[proximity1]

 

Hang on a moment. We're discussing the practical issues in arming teachers to prevent school shootings. Now, some statistics:

 

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf

Shootings in schools are a tiny fraction of all homicides (less than 1%), and yet we're talking about arming all school staff. We have something like seven million teachers. Arming them all with a $500 weapon would cost $3.5 billion; training classes and ammunition for all of them would probably cause just as much.

On the other hand, you could buy a cheap gun lock for every handgun in America for maybe $1 billion, and give them to every handgun owner there is, preventing dozens of small children and pissed-off teenagers from finding guns and doing something stupid with them.

Before we panic over the latest news item and demand action, we should consider whether it will be worth the effort.

 

 

I agree with most of your observations, but in fact the current matter here is related to a proposed Oklahoma law--so far fewer than the totality of the nation's public school teachers are involved.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Sure, but there's a correspondingly smaller number of in-school gun deaths in Oklahoma. It's a matter of proportions, not absolute numbers.

[proximity1]

I'm not sure how far Adam Lanza had to walk to the door, but it is being reported that he shot his way in since they would not buzz him in.

 

For a gun to be effective it would have to be reachable fairly quickly, like in the classroom. I'm thinking teachers keep them in a thumb print safe in the room. Other administrators, especially with more authoritative roles carry them right on their waist. Just like an officer.

 

In this shooting, you would most certainly have a couple of dead innocent people. If the principal - who did physically engage Adam - drew a gun instead of a fist, would she have achieved a fatal shot first? A shot good enough to wound him, such that when other administrators close in on the shooter he is easier to trap and wait for better trained personnel?

 

It seems silly to run through these scenarios like this. You can't really accurately foresee how bad or how good these events can turn out. People are capable of amazing things, sometimes, and sometimes not.

 

Then there's always the chance a child gets shot and killed, and because we didn't know that the future could have given us 20 dead kids, we think the event failed. If there were any armed counter attack against Adam Lanza that resulted in a single person's death, we might be talking about how dangerous it is to have guns in schools even for trained personnel - not realizing they had just averted a massacre.

 

I think it's more important to give them all the tools they can use in an emergency, and accept that we aren't perfect. Unless we are ready to put an armed officer in every school room, I'm not sure what choice we have besides "hoping" that no one goes to our kid's school to do something like this.

 

To give your point its due, in fact, we do "know" that things in this case could have been worse; so, on that, you're right. If one or two people were killed in the next similar instance, it's entirely proprer to consider that, "if the assailant hadn't been stopped," at whatever point he was stopped, that, indeed, things could very reasonably be thought to have had a potential to have been much worse.

 

In this case, by the time the police got to the assailant, he'd already killed himself. So, the working hypothesis is that in something less than the time which elapsed in this case, a teacher or staff with a firearm might have intervened and saved more lives. That's of course a possibility.

 

Using C Reffsmat's statistics above, in post N° 16, the homicide deaths by firearms (which is 36.7% of the total) comes to 11 505. 1% of that figure supposedly gives us the total school incidents of deaths by firearms (for the year 2009), which then amounts to: about 116 deaths. (This assumes homicides only--that is, no school shooting incidents are assumed in that figure in which a firearm was used in a suicide in which no other life was taken than the suicide's.)

 

Then, reducing the scale to Oklahoma, alone, really puts the proposed law into perspective: this proposition to allow any CLEET trained teacher or staff of a public school to carry or keep a firearm--that is in response to how many actual school shootings in Oklahoma itself?, I wonder.

[John Cuthber]

I'm waiting for someone to suggest arming the children.

[iNow]

 

What is the deal with Adam Lanza's mother? Was she really a gun enthusiast? Or did she just buy guns for her son to keep him happy?

 

AFAIK, she was a recreational shooter. She was a member of local shooting clubs and did target practice activities as a hobby fairly regularly on the weekends and things like that. She enjoyed the sport. They were her guns, not bought for her son.

 

That's peripheral to my point, though. Arming more people doesn't necessarily prevent those armed people from being victimized. Looking at the numbers, and doing a true cost to benefit analysis, the risks of gun ownership appear very much more relevant than the benefits gained from them. If having a gun is all it took to prevent this kind of thing, then the mother would still be alive. I say this as a gun owner, shooter, and occasional hunter myself.

 

 

John - Ann Coulter (a right wing hag who publishes propaganda books about the evils of liberalism every other week) came close to saying "arm the children." He argument is that every citizen should have a gun for these reasons, which carried to its logical extension includes the kids.

 

I say let's go all out and really make the world safer by getting little infant uzis to be given out by nurses at hospitals along with the wristbands on newborns. They'd be cute next a pair of pink booties and skull cap, and we'd select for the safer and more defensive shooters because the unsafe ones would all be weeded out by the cross fire!

 

 

 

Problem solved!

[ParanoiA]

 

To give your point its due, in fact, we do "know" that things in this case could have been worse; so, on that, you're right. If one or two people were killed in the next similar instance, it's entirely proprer to consider that, "if the assailant hadn't been stopped," at whatever point he was stopped, that, indeed, things could very reasonably be thought to have had a potential to have been much worse.

 

In this case, by the time the police got to the assailant, he'd already killed himself. So, the working hypothesis is that in something less than the time which elapsed in this case, a teacher or staff with a firearm might have intervened and saved more lives. That's of course a possibility.

 

 

More than a possibility since we know he encountered 6 adults. 6 adults were face to face with him, all of which *did* intervene as we know they were protecting the children. It's a strong possibility that if they were armed, they would have inflicted damage. But of course, I can't know that, and maybe all 6 fail to make a good shot and it does nothing.

 

 

 

Using C Reffsmat's statistics above, in post N° 16, the homicide deaths by firearms (which is 36.7% of the total) comes to 11 505. 1% of that figure supposedly gives us the total school incidents of deaths by firearms (for the year 2009), which then amounts to: about 116 deaths. (This assumes homicides only--that is, no school shooting incidents are assumed in that figure in which a firearm was used in a suicide in which no other life was taken than the suicide's.)

 

Then, reducing the scale to Oklahoma, alone, really puts the proposed law into perspective: this proposition to allow any CLEET trained teacher or staff of a public school to carry or keep a firearm--that is in response to how many actual school shootings in Oklahoma itself?, I wonder.

 

 

Statistics are great for analyzing the past. You're doing here exactly what I was demonstrating. If someone intercepts Adam at the door, and a couple of people die, none of us ever know that 26 people were going to die. That effects the statistics too. Later, someone says "well only 2 people ever died from school shootings in Newtown, so spending all this money on preventative psychiatric interception, a police officer on duty, reinforced security is just a waste of resoures that could be used in educating our children instead of entertaining our fears".

 

We don't give enough concern for the unknown. Maybe we can't, I don't know. But this is a problem...

 

 

By the way, I think Cap'ns post on the statistics is still a very good point that has to be considered. This goes along with the fleeting nature of emotionally charged legislation that the constitution tries to avert.

 

Also, iNow's point about psychiatric care has to be the number one solution to me. I don't think any of these other silly things make us much safer at all in comparison to that. It's right at the core.

 

[tomgwyther]

If assault is a criminal act; then why are assault weapons legal?

 

In other words, why would one allow the sale/ownership of apparatus, who's sole function is to commit an act contrary to law?

You can't buy software specifically for hacking/identity theft from Wal-mart, nor can you buy a device specifically for breaking into cars, or stealing money from an ATM, or counterfeiting banknotes.

 

While it's true that a great number of things can be used as a weapon to commit assault (Knife, baseball bat, various hunting weapons) using such items to assault a person would be secondary to their primary function.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Most "assault weapons" are used by people having fun, rather than people assaulting people. Most weapons used to assault people are handguns.

 

(at least for civilian-owned weapons)

[Moontanman]

Most "assault weapons" are used by people having fun, rather than people assaulting people. Most weapons used to assault people are handguns.

 

(at least for civilian-owned weapons)

 

 

Agreed, it is just a name, doesn't mean they have to used that way, mostly it refers to the gun being designed for use in close combat which makes them "ideal" for use indoors... all except for that pesky killing someone next door due to bullets going through walls thingy.

 

They are fun to shoot I have to admit that...