Reply #114: An honest question for those who oppose firearms in schools... [View All]

[spin]

Do you opposed armed police officers in school?

I found an interesting news story from Toronto Canada. Canada has much stronger handgun laws than the U.S.

Contrary to comments made yesterday by the Toronto school board chair, police officers roaming the halls of Toronto’s high schools this fall will not only be uniformed, they’ll also be armed, Chief Bill Blair said today.
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235930206-armed-police-to-roam-toronto-high-schools

And some high schools in the U.S. have armed police officers.

Since 1992, at least 327 people have met violent ends on or near the campuses of American primary and secondary schools. These deaths, plus stories of bullying, gangs, assaults on teachers, and drug dealing in school corridors, have led to concern about the safety of children in school. Thousands of schools are now patrolled by armed, uniformed police officers (often called school resource officers, or SROs). Schools have metal detectors at their front doors, prohibitions against backpacks and gang-related fashions, and zero-tolerance policies that automatically suspend students for even joking about committing violence.
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0902web/police.html

Now if you are not opposed to armed police in schools, I'll ask another question.

Since many small school districts don't have the funds to pay for police protection inside the school, would you oppose highly trained individuals with comprehensive background checks and psychological screening to carry and or have access to firearms in their school? I'm suggesting an extensive training course teaching these individuals how to respond to serious life and death situations involving a school shooter. It could be argued that the average concealed weapons permit holder has not received the training necessary to handle a school massacre.


I personally feel that laws requiring schools to be "gun free zones" is an attraction to some mentally disturbed individuals who view schools to be shooting galleries. Obviously something has to be done to discourage this. We live in a world where many young people and adults play "first person shooter games". The object of these games is to rack up a high score by killing as many people as possible before the player dies. While merely entertainment for many people, these games can lead a very few to act out their fantasy.

I have two grandchildren in high school in a very poor county in Florida. While it is unlikely, I do worry about some deranged individual running amok in their school. The school is isolated and miles from any police station. And when the local police or the sheriffs department would arrive at the school, I don't believe there would be any trained officers or any SWAT teams to handle the problem. For half of the last school year they did have an unarmed security guard at the perimeter gate to check people in and out. Apparently they ran out of funds to support this very minimum level of security.

I would feel my grandchildren would be safer if some teachers or administration carried or had access to weapons. I feel would they would be MUCH safer if these individuals had passed an intensive course in how to handle such a situation.

I often remember the Pear Mississippi school shooting in which a vice principal was able to stop the shooter:

Woodham drove his mother's car to his high school. Wearing a long trenchcoat, he made no attempt to hide his rifle. When he entered the school, he walked toward Lydia Dew and shot Dew and Christina Menefee, his former girlfriend. Both girls died. Pearl High School Band director, Jeff Cannon, was standing 5 feet from Dew when she was fatally shot. He went on to wound 7 others before Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, retrieved a .45 pistol from the glove compartment of his truck and subdued Woodham while he was trying to drive off campus. The outraged educator demanded "Why did you shoot my kids?". Woodham replied "Life has wronged me, sir". Woodham had been planning to drive to the Pearl Middle School to continue killing; Myrick's intervention prevented this from happening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting