With all the debates going on about how schools can prevent school shootings, or rather take down the shooter faster, if they were armed, what is your stance on the issue? Should teachers be armed to help take down shooters and better protect the kids they are teacher, or should they just hire security guards in hopes that will help deter shooters?
Should teachers be armed?
- Thread starter Thomasss
- Start date
I think they should be allowed to be armed, if they so choose to, assuming they can do it legally. However, I don’t think they should be required to carry a gun, teachers are not trained security guards, and they shouldn't be treated as such. Teachers, however, should be allowed to protect themselves as regular American citizens are, assuming they meet legal requirements.
Joshua Farrell
FP's Housekeeper
Well, it really depends on if the school district can afford security. In the schools here, the Police Department has a officer in each school.
In case something like Sandy Hook or Columbine were to happen again....yes. I think teachers should be armed to protect students and fire in self defense. I wouldn't want some gun totting nut to come to my kid's school and murder them in cold blood. I'd feel better if a teacher had a gun as well as have police or body guards stationed at the school.
At the least they should have security, and where I live they do, at least, now they do.
I know allot of schools in the high city's and USA has them. Yet I don't see much around my location
The acid splashing in England is worrisome, very much so.
No, I don't think they should be allowed to just carry a gun just because they bought one. However, if they want to go through training to carry one on duty (like any armed guard or security guard) then absolutely they can.
Handguns are really not good weapons. (They are weapons of convenience. It's way easier to carry a handgun for duty than a rifle... even though the rifle is considerably more accurate due to the longer barrel making it less prone to sway.) Their effective combat range is about 12 yards (36 feet), anything over that and the slightest twitch will send the bullet quite a bit off target. And in high stress situations higher level functions shut down. (Once your heart rate hits roughly 175 you've lost virtually all your motor skills and are relying on pure animal instinct. At 200+ you're in full panic and likely won't even remember what you did for hours or even days later.) So you couple lack of training with high stress and it means a greater danger to everyone.
What I mean by that is in New York City (2005) around 18% of bullets fired hit their target. That means 82% missed the intended target. (In California, 40% hit but do so at less than 6 feet... which if they are that close when the attack begins, you've been stabbed or injured already.) And that comes from police statistics... a group of people who are trained to shoot in high stress. Civilians under similar circumstances will not fair as well. But these bullets that miss still have to go somewhere. They don't stop being deadly just because they didn't hit their intended targets. No, they go on and hit other people or things. (People may not realise this but bullets do go through things like walls and can still be deadly.) And any bullet you fire you are still responsible for. So if you shoot at an attacker and hit another person... guess what? You can be held criminally or civilly liable for injuring that person.
Finally, when emergency personnel do show up they're going to see you with a gun out. And given that they don't know you or what you're doing there, what do you think will happen? (Remember they only know there's a person with a gun inside...)
Handguns are really not good weapons. (They are weapons of convenience. It's way easier to carry a handgun for duty than a rifle... even though the rifle is considerably more accurate due to the longer barrel making it less prone to sway.) Their effective combat range is about 12 yards (36 feet), anything over that and the slightest twitch will send the bullet quite a bit off target. And in high stress situations higher level functions shut down. (Once your heart rate hits roughly 175 you've lost virtually all your motor skills and are relying on pure animal instinct. At 200+ you're in full panic and likely won't even remember what you did for hours or even days later.) So you couple lack of training with high stress and it means a greater danger to everyone.
What I mean by that is in New York City (2005) around 18% of bullets fired hit their target. That means 82% missed the intended target. (In California, 40% hit but do so at less than 6 feet... which if they are that close when the attack begins, you've been stabbed or injured already.) And that comes from police statistics... a group of people who are trained to shoot in high stress. Civilians under similar circumstances will not fair as well. But these bullets that miss still have to go somewhere. They don't stop being deadly just because they didn't hit their intended targets. No, they go on and hit other people or things. (People may not realise this but bullets do go through things like walls and can still be deadly.) And any bullet you fire you are still responsible for. So if you shoot at an attacker and hit another person... guess what? You can be held criminally or civilly liable for injuring that person.
Finally, when emergency personnel do show up they're going to see you with a gun out. And given that they don't know you or what you're doing there, what do you think will happen? (Remember they only know there's a person with a gun inside...)
That's good news for criminals but doesn't mean people shouldn't carry guns, especially teachers.
They janitors should be armed, they are the ones there late into the night all by themselves.
One got beat up pretty bad and robbed while on the job in my area. It happened in the evening after all the kids and staff were gone.
One got beat up pretty bad and robbed while on the job in my area. It happened in the evening after all the kids and staff were gone.
I'd say that's a pretty good reason actually. If a trained person has only a 18% hit rate, an untrained person's hit rate is going to be much lower. (Half that at best.) Which means they're a greater danger to everyone around them from them simply missing their target. There is also the risk that they're more likely to panic and act irrationally, get shot by emergency responders and/or aggravate the attacker(s). All that them having a gun does is increase the risk for every party involved.
Now it's a bit different if they're the only one around... but in a school shooting scenario then they wouldn't be.
Now it's a bit different if they're the only one around... but in a school shooting scenario then they wouldn't be.
School should hire profession security guards, Teachers be armed is bad ideal, They were not trained.
Gracee Tuazon
New Arrival
Nah, if teachers should be armed so should all. The security of schools should be levelled up. No firearms should be allowed inside the school grounds.
magicmuggle
Acquaintance
As Viruszero said, the police will not know who's friend or foe if people are walking about with guns out.
If there's a shooting going on anywhere and the police see someone with a gun and they don't know who that person is there might be repercussions involved. Though so saying that, police are trained to order a person to drop the gun and if the person holding the gun is a friend, they'll drop the gun their holding and put their hands up, identities can be sorted out later.
But to arm teachers in schools I think might be a bad idea. I think that there should be more than one police officer stationed in schools or several security guards doing round the clock checks during the day of all areas such as the places where students would hang out to try and skip class. And instead of the caretaker/janitor locking up at night, I think that this should fall to the security officers who would be able to do a final walk around to check that everything is fine. They should also be responsible for opening up the school/s in the morning.
Below is a link which lists details of shootings where not only students killed students but also teachers killed students and students killed teachers and other adults killing teachers etc the earliest being July 26, 1764. This of course doesn't cover the rest of the world.
Where I come from this is probably the most infamous school killing The Dunblane Massacre (link below). Andy Murray (the tennis player) and his brother attended this school at the same time as the massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
If there's a shooting going on anywhere and the police see someone with a gun and they don't know who that person is there might be repercussions involved. Though so saying that, police are trained to order a person to drop the gun and if the person holding the gun is a friend, they'll drop the gun their holding and put their hands up, identities can be sorted out later.
But to arm teachers in schools I think might be a bad idea. I think that there should be more than one police officer stationed in schools or several security guards doing round the clock checks during the day of all areas such as the places where students would hang out to try and skip class. And instead of the caretaker/janitor locking up at night, I think that this should fall to the security officers who would be able to do a final walk around to check that everything is fine. They should also be responsible for opening up the school/s in the morning.
Below is a link which lists details of shootings where not only students killed students but also teachers killed students and students killed teachers and other adults killing teachers etc the earliest being July 26, 1764. This of course doesn't cover the rest of the world.
Where I come from this is probably the most infamous school killing The Dunblane Massacre (link below). Andy Murray (the tennis player) and his brother attended this school at the same time as the massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
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