Not the best option

[struggle4progress]

By Esther J. Cepeda
Thursday, February 22nd, 2018 at 12:02am

... Arming teachers means capitulating to a status quo of congressional gridlock on any efforts to put some muscle into background checks and limits on the sale and accessibility of assault-style rifles. It means surrendering to the idea that we cannot prevent these rampages, but must instead adjust ourselves to the inevitability of their recurrence ...

"Americans hold high expectations for schools as places of friendship and romance, yet too often students find alienation, humiliation, and isolation," wrote researchers Bryan Warnick, Benjamin A. Johnson and Sam Rocha, in an article on The Conversation, a website of academic and research news. "The frustration at these thwarted expectations at least sometimes seems to turn toward the school itself."

The researchers call on us to investigate why these shootings so often happen in schools.

"To answer this question, we need to get to the heart of how students experience school and the meaning that schools have in American life," they write, and that not doing so might, "actually make things worse by changing students’ experience of schools in ways that suggest violence rather than prevent it."

https://www.abqjournal.com/1136514/armed-teachers-not-the-best-option-against-shootings.html

[lagomorph777]

1. It was incredibly evil and offensive for Pres Turd to even think, let alone say that.

Especially in front of all those grieving people.

How dare he.

[turnitup]

5. "those grieving people"

had ideas. did you listen to what they said?

[lagomorph777]

6. Yes, and none of them were crazy like Trump.

Not sure I could say the same for myself in that circumstance.

[Squinch]

2. No one seems to realize that the vast majority of teachers will not consent to being armed.

It's disgusting how this conversation is taking place above the heads of the people who are involved, as if teachers are children.

Gosh. Wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that most teachers are women.

[BigmanPigman]

3. This will not happen.

I firmly believe that. The teachers' unions won't allow it. I was a union rep at my school and I really don't see that arming any teachers would be allowed. If someone told me that I would have to carry a gun in class I would refuse and get an attorney through the union or just have them represent me and the other teachers in court.

[Hortensis]

4. Also, America has something like 130,000 schools.

Mercifully, almost none of them will ever have this kind of attack. And the chances that those districts that armed their schools would be any of those that experience attacks are extremely poor. That's just based on current statistics. We will eventually be passing comprehensive gun control measures, and the chances will drop dramatically from this baseline. Other conditions will change, such as economy and national mood improving, and also make them less likely.

Discussing only cost-benefit considerations: Arming schools and then keeping the electronic security systems, the weapons themselves, the school protocols, and the changing users all maintained and trained and retrained to standard for the next 30 years would be both extremely expensive and literally possibly never yield a payoff from even one of those armed.

Meanwhile, every year, budget needed right then for current needs would be diverted to these aging, increasingly obsolete (perhaps very quickly) systems.

One of our knowledgeable members explained convincingly why we would want one of these systems properly in place if an attack occurred as it would potentially save many lives. But again, they would all involve a wide range of negatives, and perhaps none would ever have a chance to be used for the purpose intended.