How would you feel if a teacher at your child's school carried a concealed hand gun on school property?

Question

Read this story first:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071008/ap_on_re_us/pistol_packing_teacher

I'd be yanking my kids out of that school so fast they wouldn't know what hit them.

Do you think the students are truly safe, if a gunman DID enter the school, and she DID draw her weapon? Does she think a gunman would wait patiently while she sees to it that the students are "in an office and out of the line of fire"?

I'm all for the second ammendment right to own a gun, but if every person going through an ugly divorce gets to bring a gun on school property, doesn't it seem that it would just be inviting trouble?

What are your thoughts on this? Are you for or against, why, and under what circumstances?

Adam: That makes no sense. I am well aware of the fact that the gun would not unlock itself from the cabinet, turn off its own safety, load itself and pull its own trigger. That's not the issue here.

If, at any given time, there are fifty guns on school property, there's a LOT

... ALOT better chance that someone would get shot than if there were zero guns on school property.

Ice Cutie: You realize Littleton, CO (Columbine) is a fairly ritzy suburb, right? And Jonesboro, AR is just a regular little hick town in the south. And the town where the Amish school was attacked didn't even have a police station, because there was pretty much ZERO crime.

I have serious qualms about teachers taking guns to school, but it's important that people not let themselves believe that it could never happen in their town and in their school, because THEY are "safe."

Answer 1

With the way things are today in school, I understand and appreciate law enforcement at schools. The school district here has it's own police force and station. The force is made up of mostly retired or close to retirement officers, so they are real police officers with proper training.

If a school has "law enforcement" on campus, then I don't really see a need for an individual teacher to have a gun. If they don't have law enforcement on campus, then I believe that if a teacher wants to carry a gun, they should be made to go through hours of training for a special certification to carry the gun on campus, a psychological assessment and have signed some sort of legal agreement that if a child is wrongfully hurt or injured by a person in possession of the gun, the owner will be fully responsible.

Answer 2

This is a very difficult question for me for I was a teacher in a inner city school and I am a parent. I think that ( in a perfect society) if a teacher feels the need to carry a gun then the school district needs to seriously re-evaluate their security policy. Ok, not a perfect society. Most of the parents of the children I taught did not care about them..most of the kids only ate at the school. Quite a few of the children I taught had mothers who were on crack while said children were born. I have seen children lick floors, attack me, etc and these were only elementary school students. I am so torn now between wanting to home school my child or working three jobs to send her someplace safe...if there is anyplace safe anymore. Teachers are often wrong..too many around here have been taken out because of pedophile or violent behavior. I can't say I want a gun in a pedophiles hand. I can't say I would not of felt better with a gun in my desk. I have to say no in the end though. We need a better school system, better security, better thresholds, more accountability for cracked up parents. Until that happens your question can never be fully answered.

Answer 3

This practice exacerbates the traditional conflict of most classroom teachers between their role as a teacher, coach, encourager, confidant, friend on the one hand and their role as a disciplinarian. I suspect the kids will believe that the role of disciplinarian has been elevated really high by the possession of a gun. To the extent that the teacher's role is to coax from each student the best that the student is capable of, I can't help but think that the gun would get in the way of any educational approach other then "Beat it out of them!" It may be that schools need to address security concerns, using separate security personnel. In some limited circumstances, those security personnel ought be armed - with weapons provided by and under the control of the schools.

Answer 4

I am all for a teacher being able to keep a concealed weapon in a school. The weapon would need to stay locked up, period. Tell the families of the VA Tech students that there kids were safer with teachers (or even a armed guard in every building) not being able to responsibly have a concealed firearm. Laws like this hurt honest, law abiding citizens more than it will ever hurt criminals or unstable individuals.

To the individual worried about a bad divorce and a teacher carrying a concealed weapon, if someone is mentally unstable enough to just start shooting people ... they can just bring the gun to school anyways and conceal it ... irregardless of any law for or against. Rational, responsible people aren't the problem.

Any institution that restrains people from their right to protect themselves, firearm or otherwise, should be held legally and financially responsible if a mass murder is committed on their property. That 1 responsible person with a concealed firearm can easily be the difference between 5 people dying or 32 people dying.

Not going to get into the death penalty part of law. The laws need to be strengthened or actually enforced regarding crimes committed with a firearm. I say you rob somoene and threaten them with or point a gun at them ... go to trial and minimum mandatory 5 years in prison. Shoot someone while robbing them and injure them ... minimum mandatory 20 years. Kill someone while robbing them ... life in prison or death penalty. I'm not talking about killing or injuring someone in self-defense. I'm talking about murder and injure related to use of a firearm while committing a crime. Don't ask me to cry for someone that spends life in prison for shooting 1 or however many people during a crime ... first time they did it or not.

Edit:

I agree with Sapphire about if I school has its own law enforcement officers, not talking about a cop that stops by once or twice a day to take a look around.

And to the author, you find a way to keep anyone from "ever" bringing a firearm on any/all school campuses and I'll agree that teachers shouldn't be allowed to carry concealed weapons. Metal detectors and police searches are intrusive and violate someone's rights ... and aren't 100% effective either.

Answer 5

if you were to ask this question 6 months ago i would have agreed with you but after what happened at Virginia Tech in April I think I would feel a little better if there were armed people at school but everybody has there own opinions and I respect that and then again i live in a little hick town where there is very little violence maybe the occasional fight at the football game

Answer 6

Just what I want...my son to be in the middle of a "shoot out" between his teachers and a crazy gunman.
I'm wouldn't be too thrilled if my son went to that school, to find out that the teacher was being stalked her disgruntled ex-husband either. I agree with you. I'd start home schooling my son if the teachers were allowed to bring concealed weapons to school. The thought of ANY guns at a school scares the crap out of me.

Answer 7

There are strict rules, in most states, for carrying a concealed weapon. If a citizen has proven him/herself to meet those criteria, then let them carry the gun. I think that a person who uses a gun for an ILLEGAL purpose would think twice about it if there was a real chance that he would be met by someone who was also armed. Level the playing field! It's just like the bully on the playground. It's typically the bigger kid picking on the little one. He's got the upper hand and he knows it. How often do you see a third grader pick a fight with an eight grader? Here's the short of it from my standpoint. If I were a teacher, with my pistol by my side, and I had an opportunity to use that gun to save innocent lives, I wouldn't think twice. Bet you'd be happy to see the gunman splattered and not your child!

Answer 8

Until we have the good sense to restrict the possession of handguns to military and police personnel only, there will be crazy people with guns. That is what our insane attachment to the right to bear arms has led us to.

One cause people go crazy is the children. They kill their kids because they cannot have custody, or just kill someone else's kids instead. Or the kids go crazy with puberty and shoot each other with their parents' guns. It seems that the people we expect to care for our kids could be armed when that starts to happen.

If you don't like it, move to a country where they try to keep guns out of the hands of the insane.

Answer 9

My BIGGEST concern would be one of the kids getting a hold of the gun. A gun should be no where near kids -- period.
This is such a touchy topic though now though too. I think to myself, if my kids were in school and a gunman entered, would I want the teacher to be armed to protect the kids too though? Damn, this is a hard one. I would want my kids protected...........I'm really wishy washy with this. I would kill for my kids (they are grown now) and yes, would shoot someone if need be but then again, because of my kids, I never had a gun anywhere in the home. This is a really tough question!!! Going to give you a star for it -- although my answer probably isn't too great.

Answer 10

It depends on where your childs school is located. If your childs school is in a good school distric that u dont think anything would happen then no but you never no what could happen just keep that in mind. but think of it this way, in a VERY bad part of town obvisously the school isnt gonna be a good one. and students in high school or middle might bring a weapon to school, what is the teacher gonna do if the student decides to break out the weapon to hurt him/her? I think that as long as they keep it in a drawer or in a clost hidden like in a book or something to where the student couldnt find it and it was easy to acces for the teacher (just for emergencys) then it would be OK.