Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 3:30 pm  

To help prevent more school massacres, rather than ban assault rifles, the US state of Dakota has approved legislation to allow armed teachers in schools. These will be called "sentinels". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21722377 Would you feel safer knowing that little Johnny's teacher is packing a Smith & Wesson? Would he/she be expected to instantly be able to produce the weapon and take out an armed lunatic with an assault rifle that bursts into the classroom? Or will the teacher become the first and rather obvious target? Please could somebody wake me up, as I sort of assumed that I must be in some sort of weird dream, but can't snap out of it.

To help prevent more school massacres, rather than ban assault rifles, the US state of Dakota has approved legislation to allow armed teachers in schools. These will be called "sentinels". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21722377 Would you feel safer knowing that little Johnny's teacher is packing a Smith & Wesson? Would he/she be expected to instantly be able to produce the weapon and take out an armed lunatic with an assault rifle that bursts into the classroom? Or will the teacher become the first and rather obvious target? Please could somebody wake me up, as I sort of assumed that I must be in some sort of weird dream, but can't snap out of it.

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 4:11 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

To help prevent more school massacres, rather than ban assault rifles,

But you know how a gun ban works in America? The Govt announce (or there are strong rumours of) a ban of 5 models of gun and ammunition in 18 months time. So the price of the guns triples, the gun manufacturers ramp up production of these guns and everyone who might have wanted one buys them. Then when the ban comes into effect there are 10 million of these guns already in peoples homes and dealers can still sell them because they were manufactured before the ban came into effect.

Yep, it is ****ing crazy, but that's the US of A.

Would you feel safer knowing that little Johnny's teacher is packing a Smith & Wesson?

No. I think that there will probably be more deaths caused through accidents if lots of teachers start carrying guns.

Would he/she be expected to instantly be able to produce the weapon and take out an armed lunatic with an assault rifle that bursts into the classroom? Or will the teacher become the first and rather obvious target?

You're not going to know which teachers are carrying. The hope is that the knowledge that several teachers might be carrying deters people from shooting up schools in the first place.

In KY it's a criminal offence to carry a gun on school property. So a crazed gunman who walks into a high school football stadium is pretty much the only person armed. The change in the law is so that teachers, and probably parents in the crowd as well, can take out the crazed killer as soon as they are seen. Rather than having 5 minutes to shoot as many people as he can before the cops come and there's a shootout.

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 5:05 pm  

There's always the chance that the teacher will 'snap'.Holycow god forbid

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 6:38 pm  

Lord God Jose Mourinho wrote:

In KY it's a criminal offence to carry a gun on school property. So a crazed gunman who walks into a high school football stadium is pretty much the only person armed. The change in the law is so that teachers, and probably parents in the crowd as well, can take out the crazed killer as soon as they are seen. Rather than having 5 minutes to shoot as many people as he can before the cops come and there's a shootout.

Thats always the theory that gets quoted back at me whenever I question the validity of having every citizen armed whenever they go to the post office - its just in case the post office gets robbed while they are there and all of the customers can then start firing off rounds at random rather than stand and watch.

Its one of those theories that sounds good if you are a gun retailer or manufacturer and you have the government in your pockets - the reality of standing in a post office queue with one hooded assailant at the counter and twenty pensioners searching through their bags for their concealed weapons, then shooting them into the ceiling while asking their neighbour if this is the safety catch, doesn't fill me full of confidence, or ease my mind that you might be the one in there catching all of those bullets instead of the robber.

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 8:02 pm  

I don't think the post office scenario is a good one to use. I don't think post offices or banks want their customers or staff challenging armed robbers.

The scenario that the US gun lobby would use is your home at 2.30am in the morning. You're upstairs with your family all asleep in your rooms when your front door is being smashed in. At that moment would you like a gun and the knowledge of how to use it, or are you happy waiting for the protection of the police, who could be 5 minutes away at the very least?

IMO there is no real solution to school shootings. The USA being the gun crazy country it is means school shootings are going to happen.

The NRA's "solution" is more guns - this time in the hands of teachers, cops inside schools and, scarily, even janitors. I'm against that. I think there will be lives lost through accidents that will probably mean that even more people are injured or killed than through school shootings. I think the cost of having an armed cop inside every school is a ridiculous waste of money that should be spent on teaching. And the cop would be the first person targeted by any shooter.

But politicians have to do "something". Which means stupid laws that sound like they might work but are often counter-productive.

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 8:28 pm  

Lord God Jose Mourinho wrote:

The NRA's "solution" is more guns - this time in the hands of teachers, cops inside schools and, scarily, even janitors.

Eh?

Why should anyone be more fearful of a janitor with a gun than anyone else?

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 8:46 pm  

Lord God Jose Mourinho wrote:

I don't think the post office scenario is a good one to use. I don't think post offices or banks want their customers or staff challenging armed robbers.

The scenario that the US gun lobby would use is your home at 2.30am in the morning. You're upstairs with your family all asleep in your rooms when your front door is being smashed in. At that moment would you like a gun and the knowledge of how to use it, or are you happy waiting for the protection of the police, who could be 5 minutes away at the very least?

I've actually been in that very scenario in a previous house - was woken up at about 1am one morning by two loud bangs, when you're asleep you hear the first but then have to wake up so you're not sure if its real or not, then came the second one and you think "Is that our house or next doors?"

Went downstairs making lots of noise (you really don't want to sneak up on a burglar) giving him/them plenty of time to scarper to find the back door kicked in and our Golden Retriever looking out of the door with a puzzled expression on his face, he slept in the kitchen but wasn't a guard dog by any description so had just laid there and watched while some scrote stole my wallet and mobile off the kitchen table.

The police caught him, he was well known to them for break-ins but I still don't know how he managed to kick in (with two kicks from a low down position as the back door was up two steps) a upvc door with multi-point locking plus two additional euro-bolts, he was a drug user so presumably that helped and I'm quite glad that his mode of operation was snatch and run - you really wouldn't want to tackle someone with that sort of strength when you're still half asleep and he is high on something and desperate to get away - despite what macho posturing some may take.

What is different about the UK and USA is that even if I had come face-to-face with him I could be pretty certain that a druggie burglar wouldn't be carrying a gun, probably not even a knife (I may be naive there) as going to break and enter pre-armed with a knife suddenly ups the sentencing, taking a gun is asking for a long time in jail.

He got a jail sentence because he was a repeat offender and had lots of similar break-ins to take into consideration, he wasn't a master criminal, could barely walk and chew gum at the same time - he ran to a nearby service station and bought some cigarettes with my debit card (pre chip and pin) then took £20 cash back and used my mobile to call for a taxi company based on an estate where he lived about five miles away - the police checked the mobile records the next morning and saw the number he'd dialled and checked the debit card record at the same time to find the transaction, then went to the garage and got their cctv, when they got to his house he was still wearing the same trainers that had left a big imprint on our back door - it was hardly Sherlock Homes stuff.

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 8:56 pm  

A screw driver or jemmy used to break in to your house can be used on you. Personally I have cricket bat downstairs and a hefty rolling pin up stairs (not enough room to swing the cricket bat) for protection. If the police ask, I like baking in the bedroom, honest.

Re: Armed teachers : Wed Aug 14, 2013 9:15 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

What is different about the UK and USA is that even if I had come face-to-face with him I could be pretty certain that a druggie burglar wouldn't be carrying a gun, probably not even a knife (I may be naive there) as going to break and enter pre-armed with a knife suddenly ups the sentencing, taking a gun is asking for a long time in jail.

The biggest difference between the US and UK is that the US home invader is risking getting shot and killed. If someone is crazy enough to break into a US home at 2.30am you pretty much do need a gun.

My best friend was a "crazy" gun guy who had a plan for what him and his family would do if there was ever a home invasion. I am a "it'll never happen" person and figure his kids are more at risk of being shot by accident because he has guns in his house than they ever would be of being caught up in a home invasion.

But if someone smashed my door in at 2.30am in America, I do feel my first thought would have been that I was the wrong one and I had let down my wife and daughter.

Re: Armed teachers : Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:58 am  

Lord God Jose Mourinho wrote:

...

You're not going to know which teachers are carrying. The hope is that the knowledge that several teachers might be carrying deters people from shooting up schools in the first place.

Some hope. AFAIK the recent school shootings seem to invariably have been by some nut with a deathwish so the risk of them being killed would obviously not be a factor in their calculations. They usually shoot themselves at the end anyway.

Lord God Jose Mourinho wrote:

,,,The change in the law is so that teachers, and probably parents in the crowd as well, can take out the crazed killer as soon as they are seen. Rather than having 5 minutes to shoot as many people as he can before the cops come and there's a shootout.

First though, unless he has shot someone then you don't know if he will. You don't know even if he is carrying a real weapon.

Second, realistically, are they seriously suggesting that a teacher, with maybe a couple of sessions at the local gun club, can be expected to draw their weapon, and coolly "take out" a madman with an assault rifle? I don't think so, and the thought of several parents and teachers all in a panic loosing off shots at random is surely a recipe for utter disaster. Not to mention a guarantee that a teacher will "take out" a parent or vice versa in the mistaken belief that they were the crazed gunman. It sounds superficially attractive until you think about it for more than 2 seconds.