Assistant Professor Charged in University Shooting

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Again, I think you are severely overestimating how easy it is to grab a concealed weapon from someone. How, exactly, would you suggest grabbing a gun out of an ankle holster, for example? Especially if you don't know it's there. Because, you know, it's concealed.

Agreed, which is probably why no one else has brought it up.

 

I can certainly understand the unconsidered and by-the-minute nature of existence of some adolescents and the like, but I still wonder, why doesn't this happen with armed security guards at schools? Surely there must be some guards who are actually easier targets to disarm than some teachers would be (weak or out of shape, etc.), and yet I hear no hue and cry in general that we have to disarm guards in schools so that the carnage can stop. Also, to your knowledge, did the would-be killer opportunist students ever commit other murders or firearms assaults whenever they encountered firearms elsewhere? I would think that if they would be that quick to take yours by force and start killing people, they would do it any time they had the opportunity - security guards at the Wal Mart, et al.

I'm not deliberately trying to sound sarcastic here, I just have a tough time getting my head around the notion of the apparent exclusivity of danger for armed teachers.

 

Once again, it not the danger of armed teachers specifically, it is the danger of more guns in schools and in the hands of marginally trained individuals.

 

Almost all security guards work in pairs. Simply by having two guards present reduces the odds of someone trying something, because it's obviously harder to subdue two guards than one.

Obviously, if you don't know it's there you couldn't grab it. The situation that LKD is describing is obviously one where the students would know that the teacher was armed. While it's not easy to do, I imagine that two well-muscled teens could overpower one adult...

Exactly. If we do need more people armed in schools (and I'm still not convinced that all schools need this), I'll take it in the form of more professional security guards, thank you very much. I'm sure there are some teachers out there that could be armed and do a fantastic job at it, but by and large, the professional security guard is much better equipped to handle these things, because that's his job. This contrasts with a teacher's job, which last I checked, was primarily about teaching.

EDIT: Further, since we're only talking about arming a select few teachers, who obviously cannot be everywhere at once, what is the advantage of having a few armed teachers in the building compared to hiring a few more armed security guards?

 

That never happened at my school. The guards were always alone, because there were only two of them and too much of the school to cover.

And if two such teens are so intent on getting a gun, there are much easier places to get it than off your teacher who's resisting. The hypothetical, while theoretically possible, is so outlandish to be ridiculous. This isn't a spur-of-the-moment spree-killing any more (already a bad farce), but rather a planned conspiracy to do something vastly harder than necessary for no reason.

1.) Money. Do you want to pay for the guards? If so, I'd be happy to have them.
2.) Concealment. In many violent crimes where guards are present, they're the first targets.

 

The money part would be a tiny part of the total budget of a school district. When you consider that the average teacher makes more than a typical security guard, the cost of books and other supplies, the cost of heating and cooling the school, electricity, water, etc., the cost of a few extra guards per school is peanuts. If they want to raise my county taxes by 0.1% to cover it, that's fine by me.

As for security guards being the first targets, isn't that the point? Don't you want the security guards to be on the front lines and dealing with the gun-wielding psycho? Isn't the point of having the guards in the first place so that they are the ones that deal with the situation, that they are the ones to put their lives on the line in the case of a school shooting, that they are the ones that are getting the guns pointed at them, and not at the students? I don't see #2 as a disadvantage at all, but rather the desired effect.

 

Oh, please. Get real on this one. The VAST MAJORITY of violent crime is not done anywhere near armed and uniformed security. It's called deterence for a reason. Plain clothed security prevent minor infractions, not violent crime.

 

Oh, I'll agree, but in the cases where someone's determined, they target guards first. A combination of the two protects from both sides.

Actually, no. Dead security guards don't help anyone. The point of the security guard is to stop the attack once it's already started. In RPG terms, guards are nukers, not meat-shields.

 

I believe LKD was speaking to armed teachers specifically, which is what I was addressing in that instance.

While their can be a wide variety of circumstances observed by different persons (i.e. I'm not saying you have not seen that ), my own experience indicates that more often that not a guard would indeed be alone. In the case of a school guard, he/she might not be the only guard on duty at the school, just not working with a partner.

Still, when does this happen significantly in other measurable contexts? It's also possible that a group of 10 heavily muscled teens could overpower and disarm 3 moderately muscled police officers, but do they ever, particulary with no criminal intent ahead of time but only as a result of coming upon an available firearm?

I think what's really being proposed here though is not implementing armed teachers as a formal security measure, but allowing teachers to be armed at their discretion to defend themselves. That they might also stop school shootings would actually be a fringe benefit. In that context, the question is not "would teachers make good armed guards to stop school shootings?" but "is there any reason not to allow teachers to be armed in order to defend themselves?"

There are studies that have shown that an increase in concealed carry permits in a given area has a positive effect on crime rates. The same might prove true for school shootings. i.e., if crazy student x is not sure that noble taecher y isn't carrying a gun, he might not be so quick to try to kill everybody.

I think the above may apply to this as well.

This may not be entirely accurate when you consider that matters of pennies can make or break security contracts, which would seem to suggest that school districts do indeed watch their bottom lines very carefully.

 

OK, but we've already agreed that it would be nearly impossible to stop an attack before the kid gets a shot or two off, even if the security guard/armed teacher were in the same room. This is exactly what I'm talking about - once the attack starts, I would prefer the security guards to intervene, not armed teachers.

My wife is a teacher, and I can tell you that that schools districts most certainly watch their bottom lines very closely. I was merely commenting that NOG made it sound like additional security guards at schools would represent a huge increase in the cost of a school's budget. While there certainly would be a cost increase, it's not as large as it would initially appear in the greater scheme of things. In Maryland where I live, school districts are county-wide, and have annual budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Adding a couple million for security guards is not going to greatly over-burden tax payers. I currently pay 2.86% of my income to the county. Additional security guards could probably be provided while not raising the tax to 3%.

 

My point, though, is that a security guard is likely to be the target of those first shots, and thus likely unable to intervene from then on.

Here are the possibilities I see:
1.) Kid shoots in class. Security guards respond in several minutes, but by then the shooter has shot quite a few people. Here, an armed teacher (concealed weapon) could respond in seconds (provided it's in his class) as opposed to minutes. Add to that the knowledge the shooter must have that any teacher in the entire school could be packing. Both as deterent and as potential targets (as opposed to the kids), teachers work.
2.) Kid shoots in the hallways. Security guards are likely to be the first targets. Armed teachers could respond from classrooms in time similar to what another guard in another part of the building could respond in. It's not much of an advantage, but if you only have one other guard, a few armed teachers are a good thing.

This may be true, but it would mean politicians raising taxes. You know no one likes a politician who raises taxes. It doesn't even matter how much they raise the taxes, or why, just that they did.

 

Been there, done that. A few years back Maryland raised it's state sales tax from 5% to 6%, and the state government is still in the hands of Democrats, and we still have a Democratic governor.