Dr. John Lott has a short piece on whether schools should allow teachers to carry guns in Health Behavior Research, a journal of the American Academy of Health Behavior. The paper can be downloaded here.
Abstract
With 20 states having teachers and staff carrying guns to varying degrees on school property, we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of accidents or other problems have not materialized. Letting teachers carry is the only effective way to overcome the strategic advantages of mass public killers. The other alternatives to preventing mass public shootings have real limits.
Teachers have demonstrated multiple times that they will, and did, lay their own bodies in front of their studentc to try and save them. HOW can anyone mistrust their motives in wanting to have with them at all times, those that choose to do so, when we’ve seen time after time their sacrificial hearts toward their students? As to level of skill.. look to the FASTER Saves Lives programme, developed in Ohio in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. The training those teachers and staff get exceeds that of almost all law enforce.ent. And we’ve seen, particularly at Parkland school in Florida, how professional law enforcement are so skilled, prepared, trained, dedicated, sacrificial.. NOTTTT!!!! Those guys are mere hirelings. Wolf comes round, they get straight.. outta here.
Two other things about Ohio’s FASTER progamme.. it costs taxpayers/schools NOTHING. Teachers that want to participate already hae their own carry weapons and carry rigs, most of them VERY familiar with them already. The training is supplied by grants and donations, and volunteer time from instructors, ranges, facilities, etc. NO pubilc money goes toward this programme at all.
Second, since the programme was begin in the first year after Sandy Hook, NOT ONE INCIDENt or attempt has occurred in any school in Ohio. Why? Putative perps are well aware that NOW they have no idea whicih adults at any given school may or may not be armed and HIGHL skilled/trained. The chance they’d “happen” to pick the proper classroom to enter on the prowl for defenseless victims is far too high that that room will have an armed, skilled, dedicated teacher knowing its kill perp or be kille,d then all my stidents. AND that teacher has the skill, training. mindset, to DO it. One and done for that perp. Not the headlines he’s after.