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The Psychology Of Force

So, something that a recent poster was arguing made me reflect on something that I've been ruminating on.

For the past year, I've been studying Chinese boxing, both for conditioning and for self-defense. As part of the self-defense aspect, there's been discussion of the psychology of a self-defense situation, especially the mindset the defender needs to take to be effective. The main issue is that most people aren't conditioned mentally to cause harm, even if they may be physically capable of doing so.

There's an argument that is put forth that school shootings could be solved by arming the teachers, so they might "fight back". The problem with that, however, is that the gun is a very minor aspect of enabling someone to "fight back" - without the conditioning, the weapon is a tool which the wielder has no ability to use. The US military spends significant money and time to condition recruits to have the ability to pull the trigger psychologically, and even that is limited - the explosion in PTSD has been attributed in part to this conditioning failing to a degree, leaving the shooter unprepared for the mental trauma.

Too many people look only at physical capability in determining combat capability. What makes criminals dangerous is not their ability to use force, but their willingness.

XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
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Posts

  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    This is a strange post. I guess we're supposed to take your assumption without more that armed teachers wouldn't have the psychological mindset to defend themselves, in spite of the facts that 1) It's a self selecting group of teachers who would carry firearms, all of whom belive they do in fact possess the wherewithal you claim they lack - some of whom are ex military or police, as well, 2) those teachers are also possessed of natural self preservation instincts, and 3) the psuedo-parenting instinct to defend their students.

    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    Before this thread goes in twelve different directions, I think @AngelHedgie might want to clarify what is to be the focus of the discussion.

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  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Before this thread goes in twelve different directions, I think @AngelHedgie might want to clarify what is to be the focus of the discussion.

    Basically, I disagree with the assertion that a weapon, even with training, alone allows a person to fight. Much more important is the psychological state of the person. It's not enough to arm people, and even to train them - you have to condition them, make them able to consider the use of force mentally. And even then, it only works somewhat.

    In short, it's not the tool that makes someone dangerous - it's the will to use it.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • TastyfishTastyfish Registered User regular
    Assuming the direction is that if you are going to arm teachers to prevent school shootings, they need training - which I don't think the pro-arming teachers side is going to have a problem with at all (especially since that's the cornerstone of responsible gun ownership). Then the question is what level of training and conditioning do they need to have - we all know the famous factoid about less than 10% of shots fired during WW1 were actually aimed at the enemy, and that the army has specific training in order to get round this which is probably the main reason why the divide between professional military units and rebels/untrained conscripts is so significant.

    Far as I know not even the police receive this kind of training (though SWAT/Armed police in the UK might be an exception), and soldiers do not make good policemen. Getting teachers to 'other' their charges to the extent that they are confident they could kill one seems like a terrible idea. Not to mention the other cornerstone of good gun ownership is keeping your weapons secure so that others can't get to them - seems like that's a hell of a challenge in a school situation when by design the rational adults are in the vast minority, and legal action against the people who would steal and use them (for whatever reason) is complicated due to them being minors.

    If you are taking precautions to prevent misuse, then you're talking about having a school armoury (which to be fair, my school actually did for entirely different reasons). And then you're now talking about a case of response times - how significant is the extra period of time that it takes for the police to arrive on scene compared to the risks in teachers having to get to the armoury, arm themselves and then return to their classes in the case of an emergency?

  • SurfpossumSurfpossum A nonentity trying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
    This is a strange post. I guess we're supposed to take your assumption without more that armed teachers wouldn't have the psychological mindset to defend themselves, in spite of the facts that 1) It's a self selecting group of teachers who would carry firearms, all of whom belive they do in fact possess the wherewithal you claim they lack - some of whom are ex military or police, as well, 2) those teachers are also possessed of natural self preservation instincts, and 3) the psuedo-parenting instinct to defend their students.
    I'm not highlighting your typo, I'm highlighting a very important word that you seem to gloss over.

    Belief in a thing does not make that thing true.

  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    This is a strange post. I guess we're supposed to take your assumption without more that armed teachers wouldn't have the psychological mindset to defend themselves, in spite of the facts that 1) It's a self selecting group of teachers who would carry firearms, all of whom belive they do in fact possess the wherewithal you claim they lack - some of whom are ex military or police, as well, 2) those teachers are also possessed of natural self preservation instincts, and 3) the psuedo-parenting instinct to defend their students.
    I'm not highlighting your typo, I'm highlighting a very important word that you seem to gloss over.

    Belief in a thing does not make that thing true.

    Fair enough, but it doesn't make it false, either. I've listed 3 other reasons that would militate towards those teachers' beliefs being valid - one of those, the fact that a number of the teachers are ex police or military - was given by Hedgie as satisfying his criteria in the OP. Would you or Hedgie care to tackle those?

    Hedgie (and you, apparently) posit they do not have the wherewithal (and perhaps cannot) without more, you're making the claim, now prove it.

    I agree with Hedgie' s broad conclusion that, in terms of self defense, the mental fortitude to use a weapon is a prerequisite of using it. Sure. Prove to me why teachers cannot be possessed of that.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    Military drill and training isn't so much about gathering the will to fire on people. It's about crafting the skills to fire at a target that you can see without seeing it as anything beyond what you see. Being able to identify a threat without identifying with the threat.

    If military experiences are going to be compared with civilian ones we need to excise the mental image of a firefight from the conversation. They're too chaotic for much outside of act and react. In that case your training is just there to fall back on.
    Instead consider the situation of a post being approached by an armed individual. You go through a Salute report to identify numbers, uniforms, armament, ect. You don't sit there thinking about what they had for breakfast or what they did yesterday when you saw them.

    However, a teacher, even when given the same training, would still be forced to consider that. The popular mental exercise for this kind of thing is to imagine what would happen if confronted with a gunman. It does not consider what would happen if you were confronted with Jimmy, the kid you talked to last week, who now has a gun and blood splatter on his shoes.

    You cannot be a functional human being and willingly stand in front of a class of kids while thinking "which child would I be willing to pull the trigger on if they confronted me?" Because, make no mistake, that's what we're talking about. Having teachers, even willingly, carrying firearms is going to force everyone to think about that. I'd much rather they got better funding to do their classes and to fund stress management and counciling programs.

  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    This is a strange post. I guess we're supposed to take your assumption without more that armed teachers wouldn't have the psychological mindset to defend themselves, in spite of the facts that 1) It's a self selecting group of teachers who would carry firearms, all of whom belive they do in fact possess the wherewithal you claim they lack - some of whom are ex military or police, as well, 2) those teachers are also possessed of natural self preservation instincts, and 3) the psuedo-parenting instinct to defend their students.
    I'm not highlighting your typo, I'm highlighting a very important word that you seem to gloss over.

    Belief in a thing does not make that thing true.

    Fair enough, but it doesn't make it false, either. I've listed 3 other reasons that would militate towards those teachers' beliefs being valid - one of those, the fact that a number of the teachers are ex police or military - was given by Hedgie as satisfying his criteria in the OP. Would you or Hedgie care to tackle those?

    Hedgie (and you, apparently) posit they do not have the wherewithal (and perhaps cannot) without more, you're making the claim, now prove it.

    I agree with Hedgie' s broad conclusion that, in terms of self defense, the mental fortitude to use a weapon is a prerequisite of using it. Sure. Prove to me why teachers cannot be possessed of that.

    Barring someone coming up with actual studies or stats on the issue, I don't think either claim is terribly uncontroversial on its face.

    I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    However, a teacher, even when given the same training, would still be forced to consider that. The popular mental exercise for this kind of thing is to imagine what would happen if confronted with a gunman. It does not consider what would happen if you were confronted with Jimmy, the kid you talked to last week, who now has a gun and blood splatter on his shoes.

    You cannot be a functional human being and willingly stand in front of a class of kids while thinking "which child would I be willing to pull the trigger on if they confronted me?" Because, make no mistake, that's what we're talking about. Having teachers, even willingly, carrying firearms is going to force everyone to think about that. I'd much rather they got better funding to do their classes and to fund stress management and counciling programs.

    I think this is important. We could train teachers to be security. But we'd run a huge risk of making them less effective teachers.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    A few things:

    1) all of the proposals I've seen involving arming teachers involve teachers who already have CPLs bringing their weapon to their classroom and securing it in their desk or cabinets with a special lockbox. Other faculty outside of certain administrators, and students would not know. There has been no suggestion for a school armory.

    2) there is no governmental check to see if someone apply for their CPL has the mental fortitude to using it in defense. Why should that even be required? You maybe might bring it up in a policy debate about the merits of guns for defense in schools in general, but that doesn't appear to be what were doing here. Assuming the policy passes for other reasons, you would deny it in the grounds that "some of you might not be able to, therefore none of you should be allowed to try?"

    3) the outside threat is not always a current student. See: Adam Lanza.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    However, a teacher, even when given the same training, would still be forced to consider that. The popular mental exercise for this kind of thing is to imagine what would happen if confronted with a gunman. It does not consider what would happen if you were confronted with Jimmy, the kid you talked to last week, who now has a gun and blood splatter on his shoes.

    You cannot be a functional human being and willingly stand in front of a class of kids while thinking "which child would I be willing to pull the trigger on if they confronted me?" Because, make no mistake, that's what we're talking about. Having teachers, even willingly, carrying firearms is going to force everyone to think about that. I'd much rather they got better funding to do their classes and to fund stress management and counciling programs.

    I think this is important. We could train teachers to be security. But we'd run a huge risk of making them less effective teachers.

    I'm not a teacher. I don't think you are either. Neither of us can speak to this, but you're making the claim. Do you have proof of this assertion? I don't see it the way you do.

    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • SurfpossumSurfpossum A nonentity trying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    This is a strange post. I guess we're supposed to take your assumption without more that armed teachers wouldn't have the psychological mindset to defend themselves, in spite of the facts that 1) It's a self selecting group of teachers who would carry firearms, all of whom belive they do in fact possess the wherewithal you claim they lack - some of whom are ex military or police, as well, 2) those teachers are also possessed of natural self preservation instincts, and 3) the psuedo-parenting instinct to defend their students.
    I'm not highlighting your typo, I'm highlighting a very important word that you seem to gloss over.

    Belief in a thing does not make that thing true.

    Fair enough, but it doesn't make it false, either. I've listed 3 other reasons that would militate towards those teachers' beliefs being valid
    Reasons 2 and 3 could well lead to a willingness to pull the trigger, but may not lead to maintaining accuracy, good judgment, dealing with the aftermath, etc.
    one of those, the fact that a number of the teachers are ex police or military - was given by Hedgie as satisfying his criteria in the OP. Would you or Hedgie care to tackle those?
    I'm not seeing this; in fact, I'm seeing a statement that the military has failed to adequately prepare people.
    Hedgie (and you, apparently) posit they do not have the wherewithal (and perhaps cannot) without more, you're making the claim, now prove it.
    I think it's far better to assume that people should not be trusted to use firearms around children in highly stressful situations until it's been shown that they can.
    I agree with Hedgie' s broad conclusion that, in terms of self defense, the mental fortitude to use a weapon is a prerequisite of using it. Sure. Prove to me why teachers cannot be possessed of that.
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    Which doesn't mean that I wouldn't oppose arming teachers for other reasons up to and including my gut reaction to the idea being wat.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Teachers are not soldiers, and they shouldn't be trained to be. What you end up in that scenario is the same training you are forcing or expecting of educators ending up as part of the curriculum for their children, which leads to a population of paranoid, risk-expecting youths. A better investment than militarizing yet another aspect of society would be having greater training for teachers to identify at risk populations and support early intervention with those populations.

    The other problem here is that, even if you have another guy with a gun, that doesn't mean the guy with the gun will be accurate in that scenario. Friendly fire is extremely likely in this scenario, especially as most school shootings are done by students and most people in a school are students. Schools are also typically crowded rooms with relatively thin walls (cheap construction) and strong design for economy of space, making the likelihood of a miss hitting someone pretty high.

    There is also the possibility that since there are multiple guns on campus that the likelihood grows that a student will take one of these guns to perform the shooting, as they will be available and typically most teachers will not be policing them as perfectly as police or other trained military or security professionals.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    edited September 2014
    A few things:

    1) all of the proposals I've seen involving arming teachers involve teachers who already have CPLs bringing their weapon to their classroom and securing it in their desk or cabinets with a special lockbox. Other faculty outside of certain administrators, and students would not know. There has been no suggestion for a school armory.


    You're beginning with the belief that I think the CPL system isn't a complete joke.

    It is.

    The CPL is, quite often, a weekend class. The judgement that someone is fit mentally, physically, or skillwise to carry a deadly weapon should never be considered something that you can figure out between mowing the lawn and hitting the bar.
    2) there is no governmental check to see if someone apply for their CPL has the mental fortitude to using it in defense. Why should that even be required?

    Because a gun is a deadly weapon. If you produce a deadly weapon that is legal grounds for an officer of the law to use lethal force to stop you. There's nothing a teacher should be allowed to do in a school that would allow an officer of the law to legally kill said teacher. Likewise there is no point where a teacher, in their duties as a teacher, should be allowed to legally take upon themselves the rights of an officer of the law.

    Why should a test for mental fortitude be required? Because we're talking about situations where if you fail to grasp or handle the situation correctly, someone innocent will die, but if you adequately prepare teachers to know how to escape and be able to escape, then they can save many more lives.

    They are the adults in the situation, and it is more important for them to provide direction and guidance for children than to leave them behind to try and play John McClane.

    You maybe might bring it up in a policy debate about the merits of guns for defense in schools in general, but that doesn't appear to be what we're doing here. Assuming the policy passes for other reasons, you would deny it in the grounds that "some of you might not be able to, therefore none of you can?"

    Yes. I would deny it based on the fact that none of them are required to prove that they are capable of handling the situation the law is intended to counter. You do not get a weapon in the military if you cannot qualify for it.
    3) the outside threat is not always a current student. See: Adam Lanza.
    Doesn't matter. The major source of the threat is within the student body and the faculty. The outliers do not negate this fact.

    Dedwrekka on
  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    ="Surfpossum;30818922"
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    That's pretty disingenuous. OP takes teachers as some kind of homogenous group who would be issued guns together, as opposed to individual teachers already in possession of CPLs who don't want to be stripped of their right to self defense or defense of others at the schoolhouse gate.


    Edit: back after 5:00.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    However, a teacher, even when given the same training, would still be forced to consider that. The popular mental exercise for this kind of thing is to imagine what would happen if confronted with a gunman. It does not consider what would happen if you were confronted with Jimmy, the kid you talked to last week, who now has a gun and blood splatter on his shoes.

    You cannot be a functional human being and willingly stand in front of a class of kids while thinking "which child would I be willing to pull the trigger on if they confronted me?" Because, make no mistake, that's what we're talking about. Having teachers, even willingly, carrying firearms is going to force everyone to think about that. I'd much rather they got better funding to do their classes and to fund stress management and counciling programs.

    I think this is important. We could train teachers to be security. But we'd run a huge risk of making them less effective teachers.

    I'm not a teacher. I don't think you are either. Neither of us can speak to this, but you're making the claim. Do you have proof of this assertion? I don't see it the way you do.

    I am a teacher. My purpose is to educate and support my students. Not defend them. Expecting that as part of my meager US educator salary is not only ridiculous as a matter of principle but doing so with any degree of success in the modern school environment would be next to impossible without rebuilding every school for defense.

    Teaching is a highly stressful job, and it isn't uncommon for teachers to go off on students physically (and then be fired for it) when the stress gets too high. Look at any high school or college in the country, you will find someone terminated from employment for physical altercations with students within the last five years. A teacher with a gun in this scenario would be increasing the risk to students, not lowering it.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Specifically, almost every school in the US (be it college, High school, Junior High, or Elementary) looks something like this on the inside:
    sophomore%20hallway%20health%20room%20copy.jpg

    You have these long, straight hallways with small classrooms that hold about 20-50 students (depending on the school and grade level). Classrooms typically has a semi-fortified door with a small access window, but no other exits. They also tend to have large numbers of un-openable windows where possible for natural light. Teachers are almost always assigned a room and stay there in the US classroom (this changes at the University level, but K-12 where most of these discussions are occurring tend to have teacher-specific rooms in the US). Students mill about for 10-15 minutes from class to class throughout the day in the long hallways. This is where most shootings start.

    Imagine a teacher stepping out into that hallway with his gun, aiming at a student with another gun, shooting, and somehow hitting ONLY that student and not the hundreds of chaotically fleeing people throughout the school.

    The myth of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is rooted in some sort of western dual mentality. Reality is the teacher would likely shoot at that student, miss several times, kill a bystander, and maybe (if lucky) hit the right student with a considerable amount of collateral damage.

    To prove this otherwise: find me a case of a good average guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun through a gunfire exchange in a crowded area that didn't result in collateral damage. Even with the police this is extremely rare.

  • SurfpossumSurfpossum A nonentity trying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
    ="Surfpossum;30818922"
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    That's pretty disingenuous. OP takes teachers as some kind of homogenous group who would be issued guns together, as opposed to individual teachers already in possession of CPLs who don't want to be stripped of their right to self defense or defense of others at the schoolhouse gate.


    Edit: back after 5:00.
    That's because the OP was about the idea some people have put forth that teachers should be armed.

    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited September 2014
    And that isn't going into the false reporting situation for the actual police in this case. Police arrive on scene and have reports from some students that kids are shooting, others that teachers have gone mad and started shooting, and now there are multiple groups police will have to contain or take down with no degree of certainty on who is supposed to be this mythical "good guy" in the scenario.

    Enc on
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    What confuses me is that the political Right tends to argue both
    1. Teachers are Greedy, Selfish freeloaders who impart dangerous, radical ideologies on our children.
    2. Teachers should carry guns, to protect our children.

    It seems strange that you would trust someone to carry a gun around your child, but not trust them to teach science to your child.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    _J_ wrote: »
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    What confuses me is that the political Right tends to argue both
    1. Teachers are Greedy, Selfish freeloaders who impart dangerous, radical ideologies on our children.
    2. Teachers should carry guns, to protect our children.

    It seems strange that you would trust someone to carry a gun around your child, but not trust them to teach science to your child.

    There's two kinds of teachers, in that narrative. There are The Right Kind of Teachers, who are God-fearing, good-hearted folk who teach "the right things" to kids and would defend the childrens with their lives and don't teach them there dang ole "evolution" as an exclusive fact. Then there's The Other Kind of Teachers, them there corrupting sort who are filling our innocent children with those ideas that they shouldn't be learning and not focusing on the fundamentals like when I was a boy.

    The kind of people pushing armed teachers as an idea believe in the former being armed, but not the latter. Of course, they also see the latter as gun-hating pansies anyway, so that's of minimal concern to them.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    _J_ wrote: »
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    What confuses me is that the political Right tends to argue both
    1. Teachers are Greedy, Selfish freeloaders who impart dangerous, radical ideologies on our children.
    2. Teachers should carry guns, to protect our children.

    It seems strange that you would trust someone to carry a gun around your child, but not trust them to teach science to your child.

    It might be worth noting that the groups expressing these two concepts may have overlap but not so much as you would expect from Fox News.

  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    ="Surfpossum;30818922"
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    That's pretty disingenuous. OP takes teachers as some kind of homogenous group who would be issued guns together, as opposed to individual teachers already in possession of CPLs who don't want to be stripped of their right to self defense or defense of others at the schoolhouse gate.


    Edit: back after 5:00.
    That's because the OP was about the idea some people have put forth that teachers should be armed.

    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    Do me a favor then and steer the conversation whike I finish out the workday from what some trolled spammed on these boards today before he got banned to the actual policy considerations that are being considered and enacted.

    It's frustrating playing bad guy on this liberal board, but that's okay. However, I'm not inclined to participate if I'm defending the strawman you're intent on knocking over.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    _J_ wrote: »
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    What confuses me is that the political Right tends to argue both
    1. Teachers are Greedy, Selfish freeloaders who impart dangerous, radical ideologies on our children.
    2. Teachers should carry guns, to protect our children.

    It seems strange that you would trust someone to carry a gun around your child, but not trust them to teach science to your child.

    Incredibly, I voted for Obama both terms and yet I'm advocating for teachers being able to defend their classrooms.

    My god, it's like it's it's not just a group of blandly evil, homogeneous Republican Others who want "guns in them schools."

    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    Enc wrote: »
    Specifically, almost every school in the US (be it college, High school, Junior High, or Elementary) looks something like this on the inside:
    sophomore%20hallway%20health%20room%20copy.jpg

    You have these long, straight hallways with small classrooms that hold about 20-50 students (depending on the school and grade level). Classrooms typically has a semi-fortified door with a small access window, but no other exits. They also tend to have large numbers of un-openable windows where possible for natural light. Teachers are almost always assigned a room and stay there in the US classroom (this changes at the University level, but K-12 where most of these discussions are occurring tend to have teacher-specific rooms in the US). Students mill about for 10-15 minutes from class to class throughout the day in the long hallways. This is where most shootings start.

    Imagine a teacher stepping out into that hallway with his gun, aiming at a student with another gun, shooting, and somehow hitting ONLY that student and not the hundreds of chaotically fleeing people throughout the school.

    The myth of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is rooted in some sort of western dual mentality. Reality is the teacher would likely shoot at that student, miss several times, kill a bystander, and maybe (if lucky) hit the right student with a considerable amount of collateral damage.

    To prove this otherwise: find me a case of a good average guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun through a gunfire exchange in a crowded area that didn't result in collateral damage. Even with the police this is extremely rare.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting

    Depending on which account you believe. Regardless, the possibility exists, and somehow they managed not to shoot a crowd of students in friendly fire like I keep hearing posited.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    ="Surfpossum;30818922"
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    That's pretty disingenuous. OP takes teachers as some kind of homogenous group who would be issued guns together, as opposed to individual teachers already in possession of CPLs who don't want to be stripped of their right to self defense or defense of others at the schoolhouse gate.


    Edit: back after 5:00.
    That's because the OP was about the idea some people have put forth that teachers should be armed.

    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    Do me a favor then and steer the conversation whike I finish out the workday from what some trolled spammed on these boards today before he got banned to the actual policy considerations that are being considered and enacted.

    It's frustrating playing bad guy on this liberal board, but that's okay. However, I'm not inclined to participate if I'm defending the strawman you're intent on knocking over.

    If you didn't want to take part in the debate, no one was forcing you. You keep asking for a level of evidence you are not yourself providing to back your own claims.

    If you want to play wounded hero, this probably isn't the place.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    _J_ wrote: »
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    What confuses me is that the political Right tends to argue both
    1. Teachers are Greedy, Selfish freeloaders who impart dangerous, radical ideologies on our children.
    2. Teachers should carry guns, to protect our children.

    It seems strange that you would trust someone to carry a gun around your child, but not trust them to teach science to your child.

    Incredibly, I voted for Obama both terms and yet I'm advocating for teachers being able to defend their classrooms.

    My god, it's like it's it's not just a group of blandly evil, homogeneous Republican Others who want "guns in them schools."

    Here's the point you're missing - the advantage a school shooter (or any criminal willing to go far enough) has is not the weapon they wield.

    It's that they are willing to kill. And in some cases, that they are willing to kill with little thought. And that is a massive difference. That is an edge that you can't make go away, at least in a manner that is at all healthy.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • SummaryJudgmentSummaryJudgment Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front door Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    ="Surfpossum;30818922"
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    That's pretty disingenuous. OP takes teachers as some kind of homogenous group who would be issued guns together, as opposed to individual teachers already in possession of CPLs who don't want to be stripped of their right to self defense or defense of others at the schoolhouse gate.


    Edit: back after 5:00.
    That's because the OP was about the idea some people have put forth that teachers should be armed.

    Regardless, even if we change the discussion from should all teachers be armed to should individual teachers be allowed to be armed, claiming that we should assume the answer to be yes until proven otherwise seems... dangerous.

    Do me a favor then and steer the conversation whike I finish out the workday from what some trolled spammed on these boards today before he got banned to the actual policy considerations that are being considered and enacted.

    It's frustrating playing bad guy on this liberal board, but that's okay. However, I'm not inclined to participate if I'm defending the strawman you're intent on knocking over.

    If you didn't want to take part in the debate, no one was forcing you. You keep asking for a level of evidence you are not yourself providing to back your own claims.

    If you want to play wounded hero, this probably isn't the place.

    I'm not bringing the initial claims, and Hedgie and others aren't shy about asking for that level of evidence when people opposed to thejr position are positing claims in different threads.

    Edit: I'll exit the thread, I can't spend this amount of time replying to half a dozen people when I'm the only dissenting voice.

    SummaryJudgment on
    Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    Being super-generous to the pro-armed-teacher crowd and assuming that every school shooting was stopped immediately with no loss of life beyond the attacker...we're still talking, what? Ten lives saved per year?

    Pragmatically, out of the 80,000,000 primary, secondary, and post-secondary students in the United States and the four million teachers, I find it almost certain there will be more students killed in accidental shootings, suicides, and intentional homicides that wouldn't have died except for the presence of a gun than the ten or so lives saved per year.

    You're talking .0125:100,000 deaths from school shootings...the general homicide rate is roughly 5:100,000 and suicide is 10:100,000, and that's assuming students are at normal risk (they are above average).

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited September 2014
    Enc wrote: »
    Specifically, almost every school in the US (be it college, High school, Junior High, or Elementary) looks something like this on the inside:
    sophomore%20hallway%20health%20room%20copy.jpg

    You have these long, straight hallways with small classrooms that hold about 20-50 students (depending on the school and grade level). Classrooms typically has a semi-fortified door with a small access window, but no other exits. They also tend to have large numbers of un-openable windows where possible for natural light. Teachers are almost always assigned a room and stay there in the US classroom (this changes at the University level, but K-12 where most of these discussions are occurring tend to have teacher-specific rooms in the US). Students mill about for 10-15 minutes from class to class throughout the day in the long hallways. This is where most shootings start.

    Imagine a teacher stepping out into that hallway with his gun, aiming at a student with another gun, shooting, and somehow hitting ONLY that student and not the hundreds of chaotically fleeing people throughout the school.

    The myth of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is rooted in some sort of western dual mentality. Reality is the teacher would likely shoot at that student, miss several times, kill a bystander, and maybe (if lucky) hit the right student with a considerable amount of collateral damage.

    To prove this otherwise: find me a case of a good average guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun through a gunfire exchange in a crowded area that didn't result in collateral damage. Even with the police this is extremely rare.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting

    Depending on which account you believe. Regardless, the possibility exists, and somehow they managed not to shoot a crowd of students in friendly fire like I keep hearing posited.

    Do note that the students were also trained sworn law enforcement officers and military personnel.

    AngelHedgie on
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  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    Specifically, almost every school in the US (be it college, High school, Junior High, or Elementary) looks something like this on the inside:
    sophomore%20hallway%20health%20room%20copy.jpg

    You have these long, straight hallways with small classrooms that hold about 20-50 students (depending on the school and grade level). Classrooms typically has a semi-fortified door with a small access window, but no other exits. They also tend to have large numbers of un-openable windows where possible for natural light. Teachers are almost always assigned a room and stay there in the US classroom (this changes at the University level, but K-12 where most of these discussions are occurring tend to have teacher-specific rooms in the US). Students mill about for 10-15 minutes from class to class throughout the day in the long hallways. This is where most shootings start.

    Imagine a teacher stepping out into that hallway with his gun, aiming at a student with another gun, shooting, and somehow hitting ONLY that student and not the hundreds of chaotically fleeing people throughout the school.

    The myth of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is rooted in some sort of western dual mentality. Reality is the teacher would likely shoot at that student, miss several times, kill a bystander, and maybe (if lucky) hit the right student with a considerable amount of collateral damage.

    To prove this otherwise: find me a case of a good average guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun through a gunfire exchange in a crowded area that didn't result in collateral damage. Even with the police this is extremely rare.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting

    This seems like a poor example; ya got eyewitnesses to the second account, which goes that the bad guy put his gun down and then brawled an unarmed guy, before the other 2 with guns showed up. Said 2 guys are the only ones who seem to push the version where guns helped alleviate the situation. The article notes media bias against defensive use of guns, but it seems more like. Y'know. It happened the other way. :P

    Oh brilliant
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    I'm personally not big on arming teachers when we can't even get our police to know when it's acceptable to shoot.

  • DiannaoChongDiannaoChong Registered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    Specifically, almost every school in the US (be it college, High school, Junior High, or Elementary) looks something like this on the inside:
    sophomore%20hallway%20health%20room%20copy.jpg

    You have these long, straight hallways with small classrooms that hold about 20-50 students (depending on the school and grade level). Classrooms typically has a semi-fortified door with a small access window, but no other exits. They also tend to have large numbers of un-openable windows where possible for natural light. Teachers are almost always assigned a room and stay there in the US classroom (this changes at the University level, but K-12 where most of these discussions are occurring tend to have teacher-specific rooms in the US). Students mill about for 10-15 minutes from class to class throughout the day in the long hallways. This is where most shootings start.

    Imagine a teacher stepping out into that hallway with his gun, aiming at a student with another gun, shooting, and somehow hitting ONLY that student and not the hundreds of chaotically fleeing people throughout the school.

    The myth of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is rooted in some sort of western dual mentality. Reality is the teacher would likely shoot at that student, miss several times, kill a bystander, and maybe (if lucky) hit the right student with a considerable amount of collateral damage.

    To prove this otherwise: find me a case of a good average guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun through a gunfire exchange in a crowded area that didn't result in collateral damage. Even with the police this is extremely rare.

    Theres another case here, which actually happens and I feel is ignored: an armed trained individual decides he can not take a clean shot, and instead fosters evacuation instead. An armed person doesnt mean reckless action taken. I don't think you were specifically proposing this will always be the action of someone with a firearm, and I am not trying to straw man, but this is an argument that actually comes up.

    At one of the recent mall shootings, a bystander came forward later as armed, but stated there was no way to shoot the assailant without risking hitting anyone else, so he didnt and left instead.

    I would state that in reality a teacher wouldnt fire at all(part of training to assess, part of not wanting the responsibility of shooting a child). Through different pressures and expectations they could be given training or step up for training anyways without ever wanting to use it.

    I honestly don't see a realistic situation where a teacher would have the ability to have a situation where it would be advisable to fire on an assailant.

    steam_sig.png
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited September 2014
    Feral wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    However, a teacher, even when given the same training, would still be forced to consider that. The popular mental exercise for this kind of thing is to imagine what would happen if confronted with a gunman. It does not consider what would happen if you were confronted with Jimmy, the kid you talked to last week, who now has a gun and blood splatter on his shoes.

    You cannot be a functional human being and willingly stand in front of a class of kids while thinking "which child would I be willing to pull the trigger on if they confronted me?" Because, make no mistake, that's what we're talking about. Having teachers, even willingly, carrying firearms is going to force everyone to think about that. I'd much rather they got better funding to do their classes and to fund stress management and counciling programs.

    I think this is important. We could train teachers to be security. But we'd run a huge risk of making them less effective teachers.

    I'm not a teacher. I don't think you are either. Neither of us can speak to this, but you're making the claim. Do you have proof of this assertion? I don't see it the way you do.

    Preparing people to commit acts of violence requires creating in-group and out-group identification that reduces inter-group empathy and altruism. The diligence required to identify individuals as threats and swiftly respond to them with violence is poorly-compatible with the empathy required to relate to students. There's a reason police and military tend to be less empathetic, and it's not just because of self-selection.

    Surfpossum wrote: »
    I don't think anyone has said that they cannot be possessed of that and/or trained properly.

    That's pretty disingenuous. OP takes teachers as some kind of homogenous group who would be issued guns together, as opposed to individual teachers already in possession of CPLs who don't want to be stripped of their right to self defense or defense of others at the schoolhouse gate.

    In much the same way that teachers aren't homogenous, not all of the pro- positions are homogenous.

    Yes, some individuals are simply CCW-holders who want to carry their permitted weapon onto campus.

    In other cases, the school district is sending teachers to private firearms training, in some cases the companies who profit off of this training are the same people agitating for these programs.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Exactly, and if that situation is so unlikely the risk of the gun being used in alternative means (student stealing it, teacher going crazy and using it, in class coercion, etc) becomes more of a risk than a benefit. The coercion bit is extremely alarming to me. There are a lot of cases a year about bad teachers using anything in their power to bully or influence students into bad decisions (usually coerced sex with young women), adding guns to that mix only increases odds of things getting messy to me.

    Most schools of any size (at least in my state) have a campus-assigned police officer. This should be sufficient for any degree of armament that the school needs and (in my opinion) is a more reasonable line of inquiry on expanding defense of a school. If the goal is to keep the peace, having more police officers assigned to school locations would likely do that job better than untrained civilians.

  • TheBigEasyTheBigEasy Registered User regular
    I am baffled that arming teachers is actually a thing that is discussed.

    This is, to me, an incredibly insane idea.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    TheBigEasy wrote: »
    I am baffled that arming teachers is actually a thing that is discussed.

    This is, to me, an incredibly insane idea.

    That's sort of the point of this thread. The US has a bit of a problem with how we've mythologized firearms (the "lone sharpshooter", all the stuff around the Peacemaker, etc.) This tends to blind us to what a weapon truly is - a tool.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • EvigilantEvigilant VARegistered User regular
    I personally don't believe arming teachers is the solution to active shooters on a campus. Teachers are not pseudo law-enforcement members, it's not their role as educators. If a teacher is actively engaging an active shooter on campus, then they should be removed from teaching duties indefinitely.

    In my opinion, once they cross that line, once they've shown the willingness to engage and kill (you always aim to kill, aiming to maim is even more dangerous) a student or any individual that hasn't development completely mentally or physically at a school campus, they're value as an educator has gone to 0. It's an attribution of 'suspect' or 'threat' identifier to a child that forever slants and jades their judgment when engaging with students and as an educator, they should not have that responsibility or purview. It's student first and only, and a teachers responsibility is to those students under their watch. Suspect or threat identification should come from law enforcement members, not teachers.

    It's completely out of the realm of education and their role as educators.

    I also believe schools should be a gun free zone. If there is an active shooter on the campus, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to identify whom the individual is if it's only that person(s). Also, it's incredibly safer, as we wouldn't have a shoot out between educators and shooters while law enforcement are either enroute, arrriving, or on the scene. All an armed teacher does is get in the way of the process. Unless you're incredibly lucky and only kill/hurt the bad guy every single time with 100% guarantee, get out of the way and fulfill your role as an educator and help facilitate the orderly evacuation of all the students from the campus and let the law enforcement deal with it. More lives will be saved and many more will be at less risk.

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  • rockrngerrockrnger Registered User regular
    A quick note that I can back up with stats later if anyone cares (the gun thread may have broken my spirit for looking stuff up).

    Most police are about as likely to have a accidental discharge as shoot at a criminal and about as likely to shoot themselves as be shot by a criminal.

    So add being less trained and much less likely to use a firearm and that's what you get arming teachers.

  • MortiousMortious The Nightmare Begins Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    A few things:

    1) all of the proposals I've seen involving arming teachers involve teachers who already have CPLs bringing their weapon to their classroom and securing it in their desk or cabinets with a special lockbox. Other faculty outside of certain administrators, and students would not know. There has been no suggestion for a school armory.

    snip

    I swear I've read an article about school armories, i.e. m16s/body armour.

    Move to New Zealand
    It’s not a very important country most of the time
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