Reply #222: They don't need to handle criminal situations

[tburnsten]

They only need to be able to effectively protect the room they are in, and the students immediately around them, and only during an actual murderous attack on the school. They are not and will not be taking over any of the duties of a police officer, nor should they. What I am reading from yourself and others is that you feel that police have an explicit duty to protect people. Well they don't according to the Supreme Court in the decision on the Castle Rock case, where they concluded that the police have no duty to protect any individual citizen. They do what they can, and try their hardest to take care of everyone, but at the end of the day, unless they were right there when the incident happened, all they do is take a report and maybe haul someone off to jail. They are the physical embodiment of the courts first and foremost, and carry pistols so they can protect themselves from attack while they are performing their duties. If they know they are going into a fight, they will without fail bring a long gun, either a shotgun or a carbine, not a puny and difficult handgun.

I do accept there is a difference between teachers and police officers, but the teachers here are not becoming cops, they are becoming armed last-resort security for the school. And a police officers day to day handling of guns involves putting on their holster and loading their pistol. No different than what anyone else who carries a gun does. As has been posted before, most police officers are not gun people, they usually don't shoot any more than they have to, and that is precious little. With the rapidly increasing cost of ammunition departments are able to give out less and less practice ammo for their officers, and so many officers who would otherwise practice on their own time don't because they can't afford to or don't want to pay for it.

Police don't have some magical skill with firearms that no one else can achieve, any middling competition shooter will outshoot the vast majority of officers. And this type of security requires no more attention or day-to-day work than to notice when someone begins to shoot in the school.