States Push Ahead With Plans to Arm Teachers

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/states-push-ahead-with-plans-to-arm-teachers/267390/


An instructor helps a student at a teachers-only firearms training class in Sarasota, Florida on January 16. (Reuters)

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, lawmakers are moving quickly to respond to the public outcry to do more to ensure schools are safe. But will arming teachers -- or putting an armed guard at every school in the nation, as the NRA has suggested -- make a meaningful difference? Or would it actually increase the risk of harm, as some gun control advocates contend?

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky recently addressed those concerns with a degree of candor that might not help advance his crusade to allow educators to pack heat. At an event with business leaders in Oldham County (as recorded by the Louisville Courier-Journal), Rand said the following: "Is it perfect? No. Would they always get the killer? No. Would an accident sometimes happen in a melee? Maybe."

Labor groups and associations representing the nation's school teachers and principals have already said that asking educators to be prepared to respond to an armed intruder with similar firepower is an unreasonable burden. At the same time, there's also been a reported spike in interest among some teachers who say they want to know what their options are when it comes to protecting themselves -- and possibly their students -- from an armed intruder on campus.

For more than decade, the Utah Shooting Sports Council has offered free weapons training to teachers. The first class of the new year brought ten times the normal enrollment, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The class covers the fundamentals of applying for a concealed weapons permit, carrying a weapon, and using it to respond to an emergency. And the training doesn't just focus on how to respond with a gun. Teachers are also taught techniques such as "gouging an attacker's eyes, choking an attacker and how to hide," according to the Tribune.


***i'll be waiting for news of the first gun to drop on the school room floor and accidentally discharge.

[RKP5637]

1. Earth, a spinning ball of dirt relegated to the corner of the universe inhabited by

an undeveloped species in perpetually living in the dark ages.

[marmar]

2. ........

[Bigmack]

3. Combat pay...? nt

[SDjack]

4. I'm waiting for the first teacher to go nutz and become a mass murder in a school. Then we can

say: "Guns don't kill kids -- teachers do!"