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.
Probably from the recent hubbub over the LAUSD armory, which included military surplus armored vehicles and grenade launchers (which were returned. Not the armored vehicle, though.)
Seems like there are two models for "arming teachers".
1) Teachers who want to bring a gun onto campus for defense are allowed to do so in certain specific and highly-regulated situations.
I say "specific and highly-regulated" because I am generously assuming that nobody here is endorsing just anyone who wants to carry a gun around on campus gan sling one around on his hip, and rather teachers who so desired could keep a gun stored securely with the approval and knowledge of school administration. The problem with this is that we're probably talking an extreme minority of teachers choosing to carry, which means there are an exceptionally small number of situations in which this would be effectual. To make a difference, you need to hope the shooter happens to go into a classroom with a gun and the guy who has the key to that gun. And if the shooter is familiar with the school, there's a good chance they know which teachers have guns, even if it is technically not public knowledge.
Alternately, you could encourage the few armed teachers to roam the halls in hopes of taking out the shooter, but that seems to be highly unwise versus keeping the teachers with their students and locking the doors.
2) Every teacher gets a gun.
So now every classroom has a gun in it, which increases the likelihood that the shooter bumps into an armed teacher. It also increases the likelihood of potential shooters actually getting the guns to begin with, though, so... yay? (This ignores the part where the teacher who's already probably working 50-60 hour weeks gets to choose between mandatory gun training and prepping their lesson plans.)
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What's weird is that most LEO are pro gun. However they also know that every weapon involved in a disturbance of some kind makes it exponentially worse.
Guy with a gun? Bad.
Two guys with guns? Even worse!
Remember, when LEO arrives on scene they tend to have intel that is limited, conflicting or both. So when arriving at the scene of a call, especially a violent call, the base playing field is - LEO -- Not LEO. You don't want to be the hero teacher waving a gun around when the first officers get there after being told by dispatch that there is a kid/s/adult/s/terrorist/s shooting everyone.
Also, yeah. Statistically, that gun at school is more likely to be stolen or used accidentally than anything else.
Throw me on the side that opposes guns on schools grounds.
-As pointed out earlier our police, who are better trained than teachers (I'm being generous here, there are probably a few PDs in buttfuck nowhere, where the teachers might sadly have better training). Have issues where the wrong people get shot. Then of course there is the whole police brutality thing.
-Police abusing their authority, leads me to the next issue I have with arming teachers. We already have issues with some teachers abusing their authority to make their students do things they shouldn't. I can only see such scumbags using their new found guns to further coerce students into such things and feel even more afraid about getting help. I can also see multiple possible bad ending for such situations. Also keep in mind scumbags abusing their authority, only get away with in teaching because they haven't gotten caught yet, otherwise they wouldn't be teachers anymore.
-There's also the issue of teaching being a very stressful job, partly because many in this country don't respect the profession. Shit pay, high stress and firearms, seems like a combo asking for something bad to happen.
-If we did go this idiotic route, we'd have to train teachers to not be liability with their firearms. We already have problems getting many of the pro-gun crowd to agree to any sort of government funding and they tend not to like teachers. So good luck getting those funds and really those funds would be better spent on getting many under funded schools up to par, instead of turning them into a fucking prison.
-Even if you got the teachers properly trained, if they are looking out for the students, then they will say "nope, nope, nope. Confronting the armed gunman with a gun is a fucking stupid idea. Gonna gather up my students, lock door, then barricade and contact the cops." So the gun training seems like a huge waste of money, along with the money for the guns (gonna assume most of the people advocating this idea, would have no problems buying those guns). So just not arming the teachers would save us money and would pose less risk to the students. If we're gonna to spend money on preparing for nightmare scenarios, training them to keep a level head and get their students to safety, is a far better use of money. Also money would be well spent on spotting potential trouble individuals and doing positive outreach, to make sure they don't become a problem.
-If we need more security, we do have this thing called cops. Position more on the school premises (in theory they should be better trained). I mean best case scenario, they might minimizing the othering that many cops seem to go through; however, we're also including high school in this and interacting with some of "the in crowd," can lead to one becoming very cynical.
I think what we need to remember from this insane push. Yeah, some pushing for this are being short sighted, some are just flat out insane. This is something pushed by the likes of the NRA. The goal isn't to make schools safe, the goal is to push gun sales. What better way to do that than to push for armed teachers because you know some batshit crazy local government and/or their useless ass school board, are going to make carrying a gun a requirement to work for them, which means more gun sales.
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.
I feel there's a fairly big difference between a contact martial art, or even melee weapons versus ranged projectiles in psychology and there are different factors at play in each.
For example, when someone gets stabbed, it's usually 1 wound or like, dozens. That's attributable to the fact that to stab someone, they fight back - and the situation that leads to it basically requires a frenzied attack.
My girlfriend is a licensed middle and high school english teacher, but she currently works as the admin assistant for an alternate high school charter school of roughly 120 kids (loves it and has a bigger and better positive influence over her kids than she ever would as a teacher). The idea that a teacher at her school (or any school, really) could be preparing themselves for the possibility that they may have to shoot and kill one of their own students makes her physically ill. To her, that idea is exactly like asking someone to be prepared, mentally and physically (by carrying the gun) to shoot their own child if the need should arise. We both believe any teacher who is willing, and maybe more importantly able, to make that decision should not be a teacher.
Society use the possibility of needing to kill your child as the basis for many brands of horror and thriller entertainment out there, and it works extremely well in scaring most of us shitless. To ask educators to live that idea every day of their career is just so many degrees of fucked up it's hard to really articulate.
Ignoring the psychological impact on them, there's no way you could possibly train a teacher adequately as security personnel while affording them the required amount of time to do things like grade papers or create lesson plans. Acquiring the level of conditioning to subvert the 80/20 rule of combat (ie 20% of people do 80% of killing*), and instilling a high degree competency requires a lot of constant training.
The training becomes absolutely necessary for when your Sympathetic Nervous System has taken over in response to mortal danger. Many physical tasks become difficult due to a wildly increased heart rate (which diminishes fine and eventually complex motor control) unless they're rehearsed. Highly involved mental tasks, such as assessing a tactical situation, constructing a plan of action, and carrying it out can become somewhat difficult if you haven't had ample training. There's a reason the military breaks down common tactics point-by-point into many discrete stages with constituent steps being as simple as possible -- at high levels of stress everything must be instinctive. Even still, all of this training is useless unless the trainees are sufficiently inoculated for high levels of stress to allow them to maintain 'low enough' stress levels to even function. The inoculation must be semi-regular, and highly relevant to combat (such as training with UTM or "sim" rounds), in order for it to be effective.
All of that, on top of regular marksmanship training.
Nothing about this sounds remotely feasible for teachers. Even regular cops demonstrably lack this sort of adequate training for whatever reason. When the majority cops, and all SWAT, can appropriately handle tactical situations then we could consider training teachers. There's no way we ought to accept anything less than perfectly prepared teachers if we're going to compound an already exceptionally horrific and complex situation.
*I can cite this if it's really necessary, but a cursory google search came up with nothing. The statistic is pulled from my prior reading of Dave Grossman's On Killing
This subject is a huge trigger for me, given that I go to school and active shooters are always in the news. Hope this post came out coherent.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
People suggesting that the we arm teachers to kill school shooters... Its such a stupid idea that it isn't worthy of respect or discussion. The practicalities of having guns in the school, the needed training to use it correctly and the dangers of abuse are so great and difficult that how anybody can think its a valid idea... boggles the mind.
ESPECIALLY when you consider the alternative currently in use: Stationing a police officer/security guard at the school. Multiple officers for larger schools. Have them do community outreach at the same time to deal with juvenile crime(which is a bigger problem then school shootings anyways). Better value for money and probably more effective in an actual shooting anyways.
More Police on campus(with all the trouble they cause)>>>>>>Arming teachers(with all the trouble that will cause)
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
Agreed, but we're talking about accidental shooting deaths versus intentional shooting deaths. An ND is far less likely to be fatal since the person firing the weapon probably isn't aiming to kill, and first aid and emergency medical services can arrive sooner.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
Agreed, but we're talking about accidental shooting deaths versus intentional shooting deaths. An ND is far less likely to be fatal since the person firing the weapon probably isn't aiming to kill, and first aid and emergency medical services can arrive sooner.
If the person hit is an adult. Gun shots are more dangerous to children. Less blood, body mass and space between vital organs and veins. A bullet wound that an adult would survive would kill a kid.
Plus more guns carried=more NDs by default. Remember there are over 2 million teachers in the US at the minimum. If all of them carried guns and even 1 out of a 100 has an accidental discharge and only 1 ND's out of a 100 hits a kid, you got 200 dead kids a year.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
Agreed, but we're talking about accidental shooting deaths versus intentional shooting deaths. An ND is far less likely to be fatal since the person firing the weapon probably isn't aiming to kill, and first aid and emergency medical services can arrive sooner.
If the person hit is an adult. Gun shots are more dangerous to children. Less blood, body mass and space between vital organs and veins. A bullet wound that an adult would survive would kill a kid.
Plus more guns carried=more NDs by default. Remember there are over 2 million teachers in the US at the minimum. If all of them carried guns and even 1 out of a 100 has an accidental discharge and only 1 ND's out of a 100 hits a kid, you got 200 dead kids a year.
I didn't say anything about either some or all teachers walking around carrying weapons when an active shooter isn't present.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
Forget having every teacher with a gun / every school with a gun.
Even if you simply allowed teachers to bring guns with them to school, and I'm pretty sure only a small minority will choose to - you'll still probably have more accidental deaths than intentional shooting deaths each year.
Let's also look at it this way...if we're requiring all teachers (or a designated teacher / teachers) at each school be trained and armed, you're talking a huge investment of money - salaries, training costs, regular retraining / certification costs, equipment (cause, we can't just expect teachers to fork over $300 for a mandated weapon), etc. I'm betting by the time you have everything in place, you're looking at $1000 per teacher, per year which is definitely not an insignificant cost.
If we're only allowing teachers to carry, to not be utterly negligent you still need to make sure there is some training and certification as well as some sort of monitoring. You've got to make sure there are SOPs in place about how guns need to be stored / maintained and what disciplinary action is necessary if a teacher fails to meet those requirements. Who is allowed to carry and who isn't. All things that have a cost.
Not that the cost argument is an airtight argument against arming teachers, but you'll probably save more lives by putting the money into better locks or panic buttons or even something not school shooting related like defibrillators / crosswalks / better First Aid training.
zagdrob on
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I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
Agreed, but we're talking about accidental shooting deaths versus intentional shooting deaths. An ND is far less likely to be fatal since the person firing the weapon probably isn't aiming to kill, and first aid and emergency medical services can arrive sooner.
If the person hit is an adult. Gun shots are more dangerous to children. Less blood, body mass and space between vital organs and veins. A bullet wound that an adult would survive would kill a kid.
Plus more guns carried=more NDs by default. Remember there are over 2 million teachers in the US at the minimum. If all of them carried guns and even 1 out of a 100 has an accidental discharge and only 1 ND's out of a 100 hits a kid, you got 200 dead kids a year.
I didn't say anything about either some or all teachers walking around carrying weapons when an active shooter isn't present.
As mentioned on the last page, if the weapon is stored it means that the time taken to get it would be better used in following existing lockdown policy to prevent child deaths, rather than breaking lockdown to confront after obtaining the firearm. If the teacher has the firearm on their person, the issues with accidental discharge become apparent.
If the weapons are stored on campus, students will find a way into them. There are usually 50-60 students per teacher in most public schools. It's nearly impossible to keep report cards sealed away from a determined student, a gun would be no different. Students have snuck bolt-cutters onto campus to get into a home-economics cubbard for cookies, god help us if there were guns frequently stored on campus for security.
And for any degree of usability they would need to be plentiful, as in several per hallway per building. Otherwise there would be no added value than existing campus/school police officers which are already issued during each school day in the majority of states.
I'm pretty sure even if the teachers are well trained, armed teachers in every school in America would lead to more accidental deaths than intentional school shooting deaths each year
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
Agreed, but we're talking about accidental shooting deaths versus intentional shooting deaths. An ND is far less likely to be fatal since the person firing the weapon probably isn't aiming to kill, and first aid and emergency medical services can arrive sooner.
If the person hit is an adult. Gun shots are more dangerous to children. Less blood, body mass and space between vital organs and veins. A bullet wound that an adult would survive would kill a kid.
Plus more guns carried=more NDs by default. Remember there are over 2 million teachers in the US at the minimum. If all of them carried guns and even 1 out of a 100 has an accidental discharge and only 1 ND's out of a 100 hits a kid, you got 200 dead kids a year.
I didn't say anything about either some or all teachers walking around carrying weapons when an active shooter isn't present.
As mentioned on the last page, if the weapon is stored it means that the time taken to get it would be better used in following existing lockdown policy to prevent child deaths, rather than breaking lockdown to confront after obtaining the firearm. If the teacher has the firearm on their person, the issues with accidental discharge become apparent.
If the weapons are stored on campus, students will find a way into them. There are usually 50-60 students per teacher in most public schools. It's nearly impossible to keep report cards sealed away from a determined student, a gun would be no different. Students have snuck bolt-cutters onto campus to get into a home-economics cubbard for cookies, god help us if there were guns frequently stored on campus for security.
And for any degree of usability they would need to be plentiful, as in several per hallway per building. Otherwise there would be no added value than existing campus/school police officers which are already issued during each school day in the majority of states.
My argument was adressing why it wouldn't work from psychological standpoint.
I'm completely open to the possibility that having weapons for teachers' use on campus is a bad idea.
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.
I feel there's a fairly big difference between a contact martial art, or even melee weapons versus ranged projectiles in psychology and there are different factors at play in each.
For example, when someone gets stabbed, it's usually 1 wound or like, dozens. That's attributable to the fact that to stab someone, they fight back - and the situation that leads to it basically requires a frenzied attack.
It's more attributable to the fact that most people who use a weapon aren't trained in using it. It's just that firearms make even a rank amateur lethal.
I would argue that the psychology is not nearly as different, in large part because a decent style will teach that for an actual live combat situation, the goal is to maximize the damage inflicted - that is, to strike so that your opponent not only goes down, but stays down.
Number of accidental gun deaths per gun-owning household*: 1.2 per 100,000
Number of teachers in the US: 3.7 million in 2012
Number of accidental gun deaths if every teacher had a gun, assuming 1.2 accidental deaths per 100,000: 44
Number of school shooting deaths in 2013, based on the FBI link above: 39
All of these are estimates, so the actual accidental death numbers could be well under or over what I figured. But it seems to suggest that having that many new guns floating around would have to virtually eradicate school shooting deaths in order to make the balance favorable.
*I waffled a lot on what this stat should be. Total number of guns? Number of handguns? Number of gun owners? I went with gun-owning households, because each household with a gun would basically be a unique environment in which people were around guns. The number of guns is around 300M and the number of handguns is about 100M, so feel free to do your own math if you want to. This thing was meant more as an order-of-magnitude ballparking; are we talking 5 deaths, or 50, or 5000?
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Probably from the recent hubbub over the LAUSD armory, which included military surplus armored vehicles and grenade launchers (which were returned. Not the armored vehicle, though.)
1) Teachers who want to bring a gun onto campus for defense are allowed to do so in certain specific and highly-regulated situations.
I say "specific and highly-regulated" because I am generously assuming that nobody here is endorsing just anyone who wants to carry a gun around on campus gan sling one around on his hip, and rather teachers who so desired could keep a gun stored securely with the approval and knowledge of school administration. The problem with this is that we're probably talking an extreme minority of teachers choosing to carry, which means there are an exceptionally small number of situations in which this would be effectual. To make a difference, you need to hope the shooter happens to go into a classroom with a gun and the guy who has the key to that gun. And if the shooter is familiar with the school, there's a good chance they know which teachers have guns, even if it is technically not public knowledge.
Alternately, you could encourage the few armed teachers to roam the halls in hopes of taking out the shooter, but that seems to be highly unwise versus keeping the teachers with their students and locking the doors.
2) Every teacher gets a gun.
So now every classroom has a gun in it, which increases the likelihood that the shooter bumps into an armed teacher. It also increases the likelihood of potential shooters actually getting the guns to begin with, though, so... yay? (This ignores the part where the teacher who's already probably working 50-60 hour weeks gets to choose between mandatory gun training and prepping their lesson plans.)
What's weird is that most LEO are pro gun. However they also know that every weapon involved in a disturbance of some kind makes it exponentially worse.
Guy with a gun? Bad.
Two guys with guns? Even worse!
Remember, when LEO arrives on scene they tend to have intel that is limited, conflicting or both. So when arriving at the scene of a call, especially a violent call, the base playing field is - LEO -- Not LEO. You don't want to be the hero teacher waving a gun around when the first officers get there after being told by dispatch that there is a kid/s/adult/s/terrorist/s shooting everyone.
Also, yeah. Statistically, that gun at school is more likely to be stolen or used accidentally than anything else.
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-As pointed out earlier our police, who are better trained than teachers (I'm being generous here, there are probably a few PDs in buttfuck nowhere, where the teachers might sadly have better training). Have issues where the wrong people get shot. Then of course there is the whole police brutality thing.
-Police abusing their authority, leads me to the next issue I have with arming teachers. We already have issues with some teachers abusing their authority to make their students do things they shouldn't. I can only see such scumbags using their new found guns to further coerce students into such things and feel even more afraid about getting help. I can also see multiple possible bad ending for such situations. Also keep in mind scumbags abusing their authority, only get away with in teaching because they haven't gotten caught yet, otherwise they wouldn't be teachers anymore.
-There's also the issue of teaching being a very stressful job, partly because many in this country don't respect the profession. Shit pay, high stress and firearms, seems like a combo asking for something bad to happen.
-If we did go this idiotic route, we'd have to train teachers to not be liability with their firearms. We already have problems getting many of the pro-gun crowd to agree to any sort of government funding and they tend not to like teachers. So good luck getting those funds and really those funds would be better spent on getting many under funded schools up to par, instead of turning them into a fucking prison.
-Even if you got the teachers properly trained, if they are looking out for the students, then they will say "nope, nope, nope. Confronting the armed gunman with a gun is a fucking stupid idea. Gonna gather up my students, lock door, then barricade and contact the cops." So the gun training seems like a huge waste of money, along with the money for the guns (gonna assume most of the people advocating this idea, would have no problems buying those guns). So just not arming the teachers would save us money and would pose less risk to the students. If we're gonna to spend money on preparing for nightmare scenarios, training them to keep a level head and get their students to safety, is a far better use of money. Also money would be well spent on spotting potential trouble individuals and doing positive outreach, to make sure they don't become a problem.
-If we need more security, we do have this thing called cops. Position more on the school premises (in theory they should be better trained). I mean best case scenario, they might minimizing the othering that many cops seem to go through; however, we're also including high school in this and interacting with some of "the in crowd," can lead to one becoming very cynical.
I think what we need to remember from this insane push. Yeah, some pushing for this are being short sighted, some are just flat out insane. This is something pushed by the likes of the NRA. The goal isn't to make schools safe, the goal is to push gun sales. What better way to do that than to push for armed teachers because you know some batshit crazy local government and/or their useless ass school board, are going to make carrying a gun a requirement to work for them, which means more gun sales.
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Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I feel there's a fairly big difference between a contact martial art, or even melee weapons versus ranged projectiles in psychology and there are different factors at play in each.
For example, when someone gets stabbed, it's usually 1 wound or like, dozens. That's attributable to the fact that to stab someone, they fight back - and the situation that leads to it basically requires a frenzied attack.
Society use the possibility of needing to kill your child as the basis for many brands of horror and thriller entertainment out there, and it works extremely well in scaring most of us shitless. To ask educators to live that idea every day of their career is just so many degrees of fucked up it's hard to really articulate.
The training becomes absolutely necessary for when your Sympathetic Nervous System has taken over in response to mortal danger. Many physical tasks become difficult due to a wildly increased heart rate (which diminishes fine and eventually complex motor control) unless they're rehearsed. Highly involved mental tasks, such as assessing a tactical situation, constructing a plan of action, and carrying it out can become somewhat difficult if you haven't had ample training. There's a reason the military breaks down common tactics point-by-point into many discrete stages with constituent steps being as simple as possible -- at high levels of stress everything must be instinctive. Even still, all of this training is useless unless the trainees are sufficiently inoculated for high levels of stress to allow them to maintain 'low enough' stress levels to even function. The inoculation must be semi-regular, and highly relevant to combat (such as training with UTM or "sim" rounds), in order for it to be effective.
All of that, on top of regular marksmanship training.
Nothing about this sounds remotely feasible for teachers. Even regular cops demonstrably lack this sort of adequate training for whatever reason. When the majority cops, and all SWAT, can appropriately handle tactical situations then we could consider training teachers. There's no way we ought to accept anything less than perfectly prepared teachers if we're going to compound an already exceptionally horrific and complex situation.
*I can cite this if it's really necessary, but a cursory google search came up with nothing. The statistic is pulled from my prior reading of Dave Grossman's On Killing
This subject is a huge trigger for me, given that I go to school and active shooters are always in the news. Hope this post came out coherent.
ESPECIALLY when you consider the alternative currently in use: Stationing a police officer/security guard at the school. Multiple officers for larger schools. Have them do community outreach at the same time to deal with juvenile crime(which is a bigger problem then school shootings anyways). Better value for money and probably more effective in an actual shooting anyways.
More Police on campus(with all the trouble they cause)>>>>>>Arming teachers(with all the trouble that will cause)
If they were well trained then, no, that oughtn't be the case. Though as I said, well trained teachers are so unrealistic it's absurd.
Training isn't magic. There's plenty of accidental shootings with trained police officers, and negligent discharges with military personnel. Just because you have training, doesn't make accidents not happen.
Agreed, but we're talking about accidental shooting deaths versus intentional shooting deaths. An ND is far less likely to be fatal since the person firing the weapon probably isn't aiming to kill, and first aid and emergency medical services can arrive sooner.
If the person hit is an adult. Gun shots are more dangerous to children. Less blood, body mass and space between vital organs and veins. A bullet wound that an adult would survive would kill a kid.
Plus more guns carried=more NDs by default. Remember there are over 2 million teachers in the US at the minimum. If all of them carried guns and even 1 out of a 100 has an accidental discharge and only 1 ND's out of a 100 hits a kid, you got 200 dead kids a year.
I didn't say anything about either some or all teachers walking around carrying weapons when an active shooter isn't present.
Just entertaining the idea of having a gun in a classroom full of children indicates a school that's too negligent / incompetent to care for my kid.
Forget having every teacher with a gun / every school with a gun.
Even if you simply allowed teachers to bring guns with them to school, and I'm pretty sure only a small minority will choose to - you'll still probably have more accidental deaths than intentional shooting deaths each year.
Let's also look at it this way...if we're requiring all teachers (or a designated teacher / teachers) at each school be trained and armed, you're talking a huge investment of money - salaries, training costs, regular retraining / certification costs, equipment (cause, we can't just expect teachers to fork over $300 for a mandated weapon), etc. I'm betting by the time you have everything in place, you're looking at $1000 per teacher, per year which is definitely not an insignificant cost.
If we're only allowing teachers to carry, to not be utterly negligent you still need to make sure there is some training and certification as well as some sort of monitoring. You've got to make sure there are SOPs in place about how guns need to be stored / maintained and what disciplinary action is necessary if a teacher fails to meet those requirements. Who is allowed to carry and who isn't. All things that have a cost.
Not that the cost argument is an airtight argument against arming teachers, but you'll probably save more lives by putting the money into better locks or panic buttons or even something not school shooting related like defibrillators / crosswalks / better First Aid training.
As mentioned on the last page, if the weapon is stored it means that the time taken to get it would be better used in following existing lockdown policy to prevent child deaths, rather than breaking lockdown to confront after obtaining the firearm. If the teacher has the firearm on their person, the issues with accidental discharge become apparent.
If the weapons are stored on campus, students will find a way into them. There are usually 50-60 students per teacher in most public schools. It's nearly impossible to keep report cards sealed away from a determined student, a gun would be no different. Students have snuck bolt-cutters onto campus to get into a home-economics cubbard for cookies, god help us if there were guns frequently stored on campus for security.
And for any degree of usability they would need to be plentiful, as in several per hallway per building. Otherwise there would be no added value than existing campus/school police officers which are already issued during each school day in the majority of states.
My argument was adressing why it wouldn't work from psychological standpoint.
I'm completely open to the possibility that having weapons for teachers' use on campus is a bad idea.
http://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012
It's more attributable to the fact that most people who use a weapon aren't trained in using it. It's just that firearms make even a rank amateur lethal.
I would argue that the psychology is not nearly as different, in large part because a decent style will teach that for an actual live combat situation, the goal is to maximize the damage inflicted - that is, to strike so that your opponent not only goes down, but stays down.
Number of unintentional gun injury deaths per year: 606 in 2010.
Number of households with a firearm in the US: 50 million (est)
Number of accidental gun deaths per gun-owning household*: 1.2 per 100,000
Number of teachers in the US: 3.7 million in 2012
Number of accidental gun deaths if every teacher had a gun, assuming 1.2 accidental deaths per 100,000: 44
Number of school shooting deaths in 2013, based on the FBI link above: 39
All of these are estimates, so the actual accidental death numbers could be well under or over what I figured. But it seems to suggest that having that many new guns floating around would have to virtually eradicate school shooting deaths in order to make the balance favorable.
*I waffled a lot on what this stat should be. Total number of guns? Number of handguns? Number of gun owners? I went with gun-owning households, because each household with a gun would basically be a unique environment in which people were around guns. The number of guns is around 300M and the number of handguns is about 100M, so feel free to do your own math if you want to. This thing was meant more as an order-of-magnitude ballparking; are we talking 5 deaths, or 50, or 5000?