You may be surprised to learn about this Clinton administration initiative.
Robert Bernat writes in the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 28):
One-third of the nation’s elementary, middle and high schools reportedly already have armed security on campus. In 2000, President Clinton marked the one-year anniversary of Columbine by proposing a significant expansion of the government’s existing “COPS in Schools” program.
It is high time that schools should realise that having Armed Guards on the campus only acts as a measure of uncertainty and distrust in the minds of the students and their parents.
An armed society is a polite society.
I have to agree. Office staff, maybe. A teacher or coach, bad idea. My school district had a dedicated police force (only a dozen or so for four high schools, ten junior highs, and 30-something elementaries). They mostly patrolled the high school halls and went to the football games and got called in only when certain students caused trouble in class. It didn’t happen very often, but it was good when it did.
My high school in the mid-1960s had armed police patrolling the campus circumference — George Washington High, in Watts, Los Angeles. Of course, we still has the occasional knifing or shooting — gang-on-gang stuff — and those responsible were usually caught red-handed.
So what’s new about this idea?
I should add that the nut cases out there that would attack anyway requires the ability to defend.
The ability to defend deters the desire to attack.
Why require a certain teacher or principal to be trained or carry? Just allow CCW in schools. The knowledge that the schools are no longer guaranteed to be defenseless will deter most of the headline seekers, because they won’t know who to target. If you put an armed security guard in each school, he/she will be the first one shot.
The liberal media fell all over each other praising Newtown teachers willing to take a bullet for the kids. If the teachers have enough guts to confront a lunatic with a gun, why don’t they have enough guts to use a gun themselves?
Could it be that teachers don’t trust *each other* to carry a gun responsibly? The headline ‘Teacher guns down students’ or ‘Teacher opens fire in staff lounge’ isn’t all that far-fetched.
Tried to explain this to my wife. She is a teacher and the thought of having a gun on a teacher scares her silly. Too many prying hands in her mind. Trying to pay attention to a bunch of first graders and keep a gun safe is too much to expect.
I couldn’t quite get her to understand that she would likely not be the one being trained.
Having 4-6 teachers and/or administrators within the school carrying a gun after having been trained in there use makes more sense. You could pay those people a hazardous duty pay. You could see that there would be at least 2 and possibly 3 at all times in the school and would do there normal duties until there extra services are needed. They only place that actual police officers would be used would be in those schools that are a threat to the teachers on a daily basis.
Why rise the cost of education to have “COPS in School” when we can simply allow teachers/instructors carry guns. If there is a cost, pay to send the teachers/instructors to gun training.