The media has had a feeding frenzy focusing on school shootings over the last several years, and this focus has generated a number of different proposed solutions to school shootings in order to keep kids safe.
One of the more controversial proposals out there is to either allow or to mandate teachers to get trained with a firearm and to carry on campus. Naturally, this causes sheer panic in many anti-gunners.
So, now that some school systems are allowing school teachers to carry on campus, is there any evidence that this is an effective method to protect our children? Well, we have an answer to that question (hat tip to here for the lead). In fact, John Lott gives us a summary of the information in the abstract of a paper that he wrote on this exact topic:
After the Columbine school shooting 20 years ago, one of the more significant changes in how we protect students has been the advance of legislation that allows teachers to carry guns at schools. There are two obvious questions: Does letting teachers carry create dangers? Might they deter attackers? Twenty states currently allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property, so we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed. While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018.
The data is clear: Armed teachers save students’ lives. You simply cannot contest what the data says. The only thing that you can do is choose whether you want to accept the reality that arming teachers works or whether you want to act like an anti-gunner and stick your head in the sand.
As for me, I’ll take arming teachers and keeping kids safe every time over the alternative.
It is so obvious that, if everybody were armed and carrying, as the Second Amendment states, would be shooters would have a hard time getting off one shot and staying alive!
I saw this demonstrated in a video where two robbers entered a bar and pulled guns to hold up the barkeep. At that moment every man in the bar had a gun out and pointing at the robbers who immediately dropped their guns and raised their hands. These robbers did not realize that this pub was a favorite meeting place for off-duty police officers! 😃
Good! Now all we have to do is not let the socialist democrats control the house and senate.😃
AMEND TO THAT!!!! Watching the DEMs debate is making me sick. I WAS ONE OF THEM ONCE (many MANY years ago) when I was YOUNG & CRAZY. That PARTY IS WORSE NOW AND IS TRYING TO KILL OUR COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mel you are forgiven
remember the old saying
“If you are young a not a liberal you don’t have a heart, if you are older and are not a conservative than you don’t have a brain”
I was young and stupid too, no longer
Harry excellent point
Good! I am glad to read this information.
I personally have a gun and a concealed carry license / I don’t see an issue with teachers carrying guns – just be sure they are trained
Correction whether trained or not having a weapon is always the better option
I know that if our school district would allow teachers to carry it would be one more layer of safety for the school building. All of our school buildings have an SRO, but since I was the Network Engineer for our district before I retired, I could see where in some of the buildings like the High School and Junior High School since they are so large with multi stories and buildings, just having One SRO they could not cover everything and if a shooter knew about the school and where the SRO’s office was they could take them out First and have free rein. The buildings have many many outer doors that are not locked so the students can easily change classes and buildings during the day making them not easy to secure a campus.
Important aspects of having armed Teachers/Instructors.
Number one:
The Teacher/Instructor MUST be willing to carry and IF NECESSARY, USE the weapon in DEFENSE.
Number two: The Teacher/Instructor MUST have the training in the following TWO areas;
One: LAWFUL use of a weapon.
Two: Training for being comfortable with the weapon and thus in the use of that weapon.
Better to have one and not need it, than to not have one and need it.
Teachers having them makes the schools safer due to the fact that the bad guy is aware the school is not a gun free zone!
all schools should post signs contrary to the “no guns allowed”
the signs should read ” Guns are allowed” even if no one inside has a gun
I recall story of a bad guy that tried to rob a gun store that had several customers in it at the time. The coroners report that the bad guy had seven holes in him from six different calibers.
“THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE KILLED AT OTHER SCHOOLS HAS INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY – DOUBLING BETWEEN 2001 AND 2008 VERSUS 2009 AND 2018.“
Guessing that line is reversed? Otherwise it makes no sense.
It would be interesting if this article actually contained more facts and numbers. ‘Schools in 20 states’ is too vague to draw much of a definitive conclusion. How many schools total? How long of a time period (it doesn’t say how SOON after Columbine this became a practice)?
The other missing information is total number of schools where shootings have happened as a percentage of all schools. Saying something doubled is meaningless until you have specifics. Instead of a dramatic effect (as I assume is intended) it creates doubt about how significant this all really is. I’m fully supportive of school staff carrying, IF they choose to. And if they choose to, I believe they should be required to undergo the same level of training as police officers do, with annual refresher courses at the range.
Most women are not marksmen or knowlegeable in using fireaerms. But northwestern women who live in less populated areas are quite capable. Rural area women can be very deadly. They are hunters.
I am a pretty old person, 80 in a couple of months. I carry and I have a license. I have no compunctions about shooting a thief doing harm to innocent people. I think those teachers love, really love, their students and would protect them with their lives if they could. Good for them and I hope their local gendarmes feel likewise.
It is thrilling that we have enough people in the US bright enough and courageous enough to initiate and pull of the action of getting the laws of our various states to go along with this stellar idea.
I have no qualms with teachers carrying at all. What really needs to happen is to get liberals out of child rearing and parents to start raising adults again. Also get Demonrats out of government since their the biggest waste of money and lives since they really care about nothing but power and money.
Space may be too limited for this author to provide more “facts” but does provide stimulus for your/our own additional “school” relevant research. Currently age 86, licensed CPL, AND a retired middle school principal, I many times wished I could have been “carrying” on-the-job during my career. Especially during night activities.
Having some, though definitely not all, of my staff armed AND trained would have made me feel much safer for my 1000 students, 100+ staff and myself. At one time I personally sponsored both air rifle and archery clubs with different school groups. My kids kept their equipment in their lockers during school! Never a problem. In-spite-of some “gun-heads” as I call them, I believe all gun carriers should have REQUIRED training. Even more-so for on-the-job educators. (Ohio’s Buckeye Gun Owners program comes to mind.) I’ve seen too many unsafe gun behaviors at gun ranges over the years. Stay safe.Be safe. Carry always. Charlie
As far as I can remember, most of the school shootings were done by teen age studends who either are a studend or were one, So it would make sense for the school staff and school phycologist to find those sickos. The Parkland school shooting was done by a studend who was well known to the school staff and Sherrifs Dept. The Sherrif Dept was called 39 times to the shooters home. 39 calls to someones’s should wake up Sherrifs Dept. As far as I am concerned they meserable failed in their duty as a police agency and so did the school staff. There were other school shootings that were by stuteends or former stutends. So, lets look into finding kids with problems first, before we blaime the NRA.
To Alfred Kneer,
As a former teacher then school principal, I dealt with many students who needed “extra concern” and brought them to Special Needs attention. We did what we were allowed/told to do by Federal law. We held a staffing meeting involving the student, student’s teachers, district and building psychologists, special education supervisors and the parent(s). [I forget the name of what that “REQUIRED” meeting was called.] We would most often get a joint agreement for the student’s action plan, including residential care in a local mental facility. HOWEVER, the parents had veto power and could destroy the entire plan and we, the school, were stuck with mainstreaming the student with perhaps being allowed to pay for an individual teacher assistant assigned personally to that student to assist and perhaps not be shy about helping to keep that student from physically harming him/herself or others.
Students who were placed in a residential care facility always came bask once the insurance ran-out for the year. Usually only several months. And we had to start over with another Federally required “get-together”.
The non-educational systems and the “refusal-to-accept -the-facts” parents, who also often stated, quote:”It’s my job to get ’em here. It’s your (the school) job to teach ’em.” unquote, are what causes many “schools” to “drop the ball” as we’re told.
We were considered a “Light-House” district with parent involvement in everything. Too often my “professional” decisions and efforts were overturned by adults who had attended school in the past and of course “know more” than all those folks dealing with their youngsters. Teaching, for most educators, but admittedly not all, is a calling for service to fellow mankind much like nursing, doctoring, firemen, clergy and others. I’m not angry at any of the points you’ve attempted to make but you paint the professions with too big a brush. Get focused on the individual facts in each situation. And finally, in my “Teaching” mode; Pay attention to the SPELL CHECKER contained in this website.
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