Arming the Teachers
Dave Kopel argues that it’s time to allow trained teachers to carry concealed weapons in school. An interesting discussion follows. Professor Bainbridge offers the predictable “What? Are you crazy? Didn’t you know guns can run amok on ther own?!” response.
UPDATE: (Formerly?) Venomous (currently) Kate says Missouri Governor Matt Blunt is considering the idea as well.
October 7th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
While I have absolutely no philosophical problem with trained teachers carrying, and indeed encourage it if that’s truly what we need to stop school shootings from happening, Dave Kopel’s answer to the argument of “What if a teacher shoots a student?” holds for me in general: If school shootings are now becoming so much the norm that we have to arm teachers, then for me personally it is time to refuse to send my child to school.
I lean toward homeschooling as the healthier model for my child anyway, althought it’s still up in the air whether I will actually make that happen or not. Where I live I think it will be a cold day in hell before they allow teachers to be armed, but if I decide the threat is great enough that they *should* be, that’ll be the last straw for me. Homeschool it is, thank you for playing.
October 7th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
It seems to me that both professors are equally ignorant about firearms.
Xrlq, you know what it takes to be even fair to middlin’ proficient with a gun. Learning the proper skills and habits and maintaining them with constant practice. But that’s the easy part.
Developing the judgment and instincts to use a firearm effectively in a defense situation, recognizing a threat and responding accordingly, is a different matter. That requires a mindset developed over years of training, drills, day to day preparedness for violent confrontation, and a group culture (army, police) which promotes and reinforces that mindsest. (I’m not even sure that the disciplined aggressiveness necessary to pull the trigger when you must can be taught after a certain age.)
I suppose that teachers who are combat veterans or former peace officers (some of mine were) have a head start but still … they are out of the environment and is their focus teaching or guard-duty?
Bottom line: All guns do is propel little pieces of metal at high velocity. Nothing more. Their utility is entirely dependent on their user. Since we are talking about the safety of our children we should leave the job to professionals and not armed amateeurs.
October 8th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Bottom Line: All nuclear weapons do is explode creating a blast wave that utterly destroys everything within several miles and irradiates everything within several dozen miles.
To make this statement would ignore the vast effect that nuclear weapons have as a deterrent. With the exception of the end of WWII, nuclear weapons have been most effective at preventing wars, not ending them. Armed teachers would serve the same effect.
In Israel, armed teachers didn’t end school attacks by killing the terrorists who were conducting them. The ended it simply by existing. Schools are our softest target. They are effectively undefended, having at most three or four (and more likely one or none) armed defenders, and these defenders are highly identifiable and predictable. (They are also likely to be as poorly trained for combat as any given English teacher.) Once they are taken out (if they ever factor in at all) the school is completely undefended, and full of victims who have absolutely no chance of defending themselves against a grown male an attacker with a baseball bat, much less a firearm.
That has to chance, or we are going to have a lot more Nickel Mines type attacks, and even more ominously, we will start having our own Beslan style attacks.
October 8th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Sorry to disagree Phelps. I am not anti-gun. I grew up with guns (my father was a soldier, shooter and hunter although in a “do as I say not as I do” way he tried to keep me and my brothers away from them) and I have been shooting since I was fifteen and I am now fifty. Guns are nothing more than tools and the tool is worthless without a good workman. I disagree with your “bluff” (my characterization) argument. Someone who ties up ten little girls and shoots them cannot be bluffed. I will rephrase the second part of my bottom line: If we really care about the safety of our children we will pay for professionals, expert in the use of guns, to protect them and let the teachers, expert in teaching, to teach them.
October 8th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
nk, if I were a practiced shooter who was also a teacher (I’ve been a teacher but am a rank novice shooter), it wouldn’t take any special expertise for me to know when/how to use the gun. Namely, if a guy comes into my classroom with a gun and a threat, the thing to do is shoot him, at first and/or best opportunity. The only tricks, in that case, would be 1) finding a way to shoot him that took no child with him and 2) aiming well. The most likely thing to happen is that I won’t find the right opportunity because he will be using a child as a human shield, but armed, I have far more of a chance of ending the situation than unarmed.
If a uniformed security personnel can come through the door or window and end the situation instead, more power to him, but I completely disagree that it’s inappropriate for teachers to have guns because they don’t live in that situation the way cops do.
October 9th, 2006 at 9:10 am
[...] in exactly the same way that I support arming every one. It’s just how I am. Dave Kopel thinks so too (via Jeff). [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 10:28 am
And I do not hold out myself as an expert either, Anwyn. I know only enough to understand how little I know. But let me try a different argument. I thought your first comment made a lot of sense. As a father I would have serious issues with sending my daughter to a school which thought it necessary or even useful to have armed teachers. If I had no other choices for her schooling I would be picketing city hall and the police station demanding that police officers be permanently stationed at that school. I would demand that the basketball, football, baseball, art and music programs be cut if necessary to pay for it. Not that it should be necessary. This is 21st century America. If we cannot educate our children in safety what do we have to be proud of?
October 9th, 2006 at 11:52 am
NK, I don’t understand your argument. No school (or other facility) can be made 100% safe. Ever. The best you can do is make it as safe as reasonably possible. If every school had an unlimited budget, they could hire so many armed guards that there would be no more reason to arm the teachers than there is to arm every stewardess on an airplane. But that’s not realistic, so why not consider alternatives that are?
October 9th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Xrlq, in the two days that this post has been up I have come to think that Anwyn was right in her first comment and that my expert vs. non-expert argument is weak. I discussed your post with a school-teacher I know and she thinks allowing teachers to carry guns is a great idea but for different reasons. She has colleagues who were assaulted by students. Anyway, in as straight an answer to your question as I can manage: I have just as much trouble believing that guns are magical talismen (talismans?) who protect us as I refuse to believe that they are demons who hurt us without a human agency. (And I will not deny that I may very well be projecting my own feelings of inadequacy with my shooting skills.)