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Gun Nuts Stay Home: No Teachers or Staff With Guns in Schools! [Greg Laden's Blog]
The gun nuts did not waste much time after the brutal slaying of 20 six year olds, some teachers, a principal, and some others at a school in Newtown Connecticut to start suggesting that everything would have been fine if only the teachers were armed. And now, after more days have gone by, it seems that the gun nuts are making this suggestion even more frequently.
The evidence suggests that when there are more guns around, especially in the hands of untrained individuals, there is more rather than less danger. Don’t let anyone tell you that an armed population is a safe population. That is a blatant lie. The evidence also suggests that the few times there is an armed citizen in a position to to intervene in a spree killing, they don’t manage it. Arming citizens does not help. These two facts together explain why spree shootings in towns, neighborhoods, places, where people are constantly yammering about their guns and touting their conceal-carry behaviors all the time (like Colorado and Arizona) did not involve response by armed citizens even when they were present.
But none of that is as important as one simple fact. Well, two simple facts, regarding arming teachers in schools. Fact 1: The teachers want no part of it. Fact 1: The parents will not allow this.
There is a very good rational argument to not arm teachers, and there is not rational argument to do so. So we should not. But sometimes we also just need to do what people really want to do, or avoid doing what people just don’t want to do. That counts too, depending on what issue we are talking about. Here we have a situation where the gun nuts would really like to see teachers armed, but they are not teachers and they probably don’t even have kids in schools, and where the teachers themselves are saying they won’t do it. The parents are saying they don’t want it to happen. In this case, then, not only is there a rational argument to not arm teachers, but nobody involved who counts (the gun nuts don’t count) is going to allow it.
Today, a staff member (not a teacher) in a Minneapolis school who has a carry permit brought her pistol to school in response to her own fears raised since the Sandy Hook Massacre. The boneheaded gun nut bragged to her colleagues about it. Someone called the cops, the cops came in and found the gun and took it away, and the school administrators sent her home and have her on leave (charges are being considered). And guess what? The parents are livid.
If you work for a school and you think you know better than everyone else and unilaterally decide to bring your firearm to work, then you you should be fired and jailed.
2012-12-20 01:00:18
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