Kidergarten Teachers Packin HEAT: PERFECT for indoctrinating young minds into the GUN CULTURE

[Martin Eden]

I'm pretty active in an online political discussion group where a very contentious argument is going on about arming classroom teachers.

This is what I posted:


The day our society reaches a consensus that it is necessary to arm elementary school teachers in the classroom is the day that We The People will have crossed the line from culturally deranged to stark raving mad.

If every classroom teacher was armed & trained, it's extremely unlikely that a teacher -- after years of never being confronted with a psycho killer in the classroom -- would be prepared for or be able to fire the first shot (which undoubtedly would be aimed at the teacher).

Much more likely, the teacher's gun would end up killing an innocent person in one of the myriad commonplace ways this occurs.

Our culture of gun violence and easy access to lethal weapons are contributing factors to these mass shootings by mentally ill persons. We should try to avoid exposing children to this when their minds are very impressionable. Kinderegarten teachers carrying guns in the classroom will stoke their fears and indoctrinate them into the culture of gun violence at a very young age. The idea of shooting children in a classroom will be implanted in the children themselves long before it otherwise would have entered their minds.

Better security to prevent unauthorized entry into the building and a trained/armed security guard would make a lot more sense than arming teachers in the classroom, but that still wouldn't solve the problem.

A determined killer could shoot a school bus driver when he opened the door for kids at the last stop, then board the bus and shoot all the kids.

This problem can't be solved with with tighter security and more guns. We need to change our culture, create a better environment for young minds (guns in the classroom ain't it), and improve our methods for identifying & treating mental illness.

And yes, reform our gun laws. I support the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns for hunting and for protecting their home, but guns designed for mass shootings (large clips, rapid fire) belong only in the military or swat teams.

It should be at least as difficult to purchase a gun as to obtain a drivers license, with a test on the laws & responsibilities pertaining to gun ownership. Purchases online and without background checks at gun shows need to be outlawed. If necessary, increase law enforcement and penalties for crimes with guns.

But arming classroom teachers and every Tom Dick & Harry on the street ... that way lies madness and more senseless killing.

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[SharonAnn]

2. Yes, turning schools into a "free fire zone". What could possibly go wrong with that?

[Ganja Ninja]

3. Arming the teachers is a cheap way to get out of paying for real dedicated armed security.

Teachers shouldn't have to double as armed guards. If we need armed guards then we should hire them and tax gun owners to pay for it.

Register all the guns and the magazines and tax them according to their killing capacity. High round magazines and assault weapons would be taxed at a higher rate than guns of lesser fire power. Gun Safes should be required for anyone who has a gun in the home. Yearly inspections in the home of the gun owner should be required for both safety and tax assessment. And last but not least all gun sales should be transferred through licensed firearms dealers.

And lets suppose a gun owner is facing a very large tax bill for the 1/2 dozen assault weapons and magazines he owns. He could then elect to surrender the gun and receive a tax credit worth the market value of the gun toward the taxes on his remaining guns.

[Chorophyll]

4. K&R

And by the way, after a decade of treating teachers like shit, heaping all forms of resentment upon them and laying blame for society's ills at their feet, we're gonna expect them to be Rambo?

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. We used to have a police officer assigned to our high school

The district paid the city. But after the state legislature (super-majority GOP) made extreme cuts in the budget, that was one of the things they could no longer afford.

Guns in the home have been statistically proven to be dangerous for children. Schools would be even worse.

Any gun that is secure from the children is going to be useless if a body-armored psychopath enters the room and starts shooting. As for teachers in other classrooms, in most cases they are going to be better off spending the critical seconds locking and barricading the door rather than trying to retrieve a locked up gun and joining the shootout.