All of us who carry daily at some point or another are around children. We go to the grocery store, full of kids, we go to a department store, full of kids. If a teacher is allowed in their state to carry legally then they should be able to do so. It is their second amendment right. I think it should be concealed carry though as was mentioned earlier.
As to requiring teachers who carry to have emergency medical training, whether they carry or not teachers should be required to have certain emergency medical training.
@Karacal and @Johnnyq60, thank you both for the warm welcome! Happy to be here.
I do armed security at a private school in southern commifornia and not one parent has complained that there is a person with an exposed firearm protecting their children, in fact I get tons of appreciation from the parents, they all love that I’m here and are always thanking me for what I do.
I listened to a think piece on NPR frim a retired teacher who carried legally in his classroom. He was allowed to do so only after attending state mandated training. I don’t remember his state. The problem as he explained it was simple. The issue became an (us vs them) culture within the school itself. The vast majority of the teachers not only had no interest in arming themselves but felt great pressure to ostracize individual teachers who did.
The big take away from this 30 minute discussion was that the anti 2A culture within the academic communities was the larger majority. So much that he deemed it a waist of his time at attempting to educated fellow teachers on actual facts concerning the clear advantages of protecting students from mass shootings by having guns already at the scene as opposed to waiting for guns to arrive.
Unfortunately the Uvalde tragedy amplified this advantage by painfully exibiting the failures of local law enforcement due to communication breakdowns etc…
Where teachers are allowed to carry, I think it should be kept secret.
The main purpose is that if a bad guy gets in the school, he won’t know where the bullets will come from. As crazy as these guys are, they always pick the gun-free zones. Knowing that someone(s) in the school is armed, but not knowing who, could be a big deterrent.
…and if that means they skip the school and shoot up the mall, instead, I guess I’m ok with that.
But this would also avoid ostracization issues, like you described. If I was a teacher again (no thank you) and decided to carry, I wouldn’t let anyone know I was armed.
The problem there is the mandated training. I think schools should offer free cc training and maybe some kind of specialized active shooter training like they offer cpr training. Completely optional. It’s not complicated. Unless you make it.
I doubt it ever happens successfully. One legitimate reason why, is that you do choose to work for that company, and you do choose to follow their policies. Constitutional protections don’t necessarily apply to employees on the clock/job/company property/etc.
It’s not really any different than if a company tells employees not to push their religion on customers for example. If that’s what the employer wants/doesn’t want, it’s not a First Amendment violation to be like, hey, I understand you are passionate about ___, but please randomly bring it up and try to convert the customers when they order a pair of shoes
Granted, you can argue you are at physical risk if you don’t carry yada yada, but, again, personal choice. If it’s that important to you, don’t take the job if you can’t carry.
Agreed. I think the argument to be made is that if a company is going to deprive me of my right to self-defense, then it is responsible for keeping me safe. But given that argument, it would probably be seen as more of a workplace safety lawsuit (i.e. there were insufficient entry controls) than a 2A lawsuit (i.e. my loved one was not permitted to keep her firearm while in the office, and therefore could not defend herself).
This gets a little more complicated in government workplaces, like federal offices or schools. Oddly enough, we post law enforcement officers to screen visitors to courtrooms, but we don’t necessarily do the same at schools.
Slippery slope. Carried weapons are for self-defense. The prisons are full of well-intentioned heroes. The governing laws are diverse and, in general, confusing.
I guess I’m confused about the slippery slope. If I’m acting in self-defense, what difference does it make if I’m in my own home, a public road, or a workplace with an active shooter?
I understand that specific laws may differ regarding the ways these scenarios are perceived, prosecuted, and adjudicated, but they’re all cases of self-defense. What slope am I slipping on?
If you strongly believe you are the intended victim, and baring any Stand Your Ground law concerns, you may (generally speaking) use defensive deadly force to defend yourself and family members. Non-family third parties are (generally) excluded. Even with all of the laws in your favor you are still at the mercy of your local district attorney. Given the uniqueness of each encounter it is hard to generalize.
There are a ton of things to think about in this regard.
Yes. I think teachers should have a constitutional right to carry in self defense at school.
Yes. I think gun free zones are invitations for victims.
Yes. I think armed staff are a deterrent.
Armed teachers need more than basic firearms training. They need training in how to shoot (or not shoot) in a crowd. They need to realize they may have to wait for a crowd to disperse before they can engage.
They need to deal with the demon that they may have to shoot one of their students whom they deeply care about.
Armed teachers need training in firearm retention. Concealment in a school would be huge. What happens when the smart alec 7th grader thinks it would be cute to try to take your gun?
What about the kid who likes to hug? How do you avoid the kid grabbing your firearm by accident? (Yes. It can still be appropriate for an adult teacher to hug a student.)
I also ponder this question: which is more likely a teacher needing a gun in self defense in the classroom or the teacher making a mistake with that gun? (yes. I know this sounds like an anti-gun question, but it’s not meant to be.) There are stories of even SRO’s negligently discharging a firearm in schools. At the school my wife attended, a teacher left a gun unattended in the bathroom shared with little kids. A kid found the gun. The teacher got arrested. No one got hurt (thankfully).
School shootings are still incredibly rare. Schools are one of the safest places for kids (so says the US Secret Service).
You are more likely to get hit by a drunk driver than be shot at school. But we worry more about school shootings than drunk driving.
I think there was a magazine article in USCCA that dealt with a lot of these things.
Check out the training offered by FASTER Saves Lives.
I know of several schools with armed staff. I trained with a school that keeps AR’s and body armor on site for their trained staff. That superintendent had a few tours in the sandbox before his career in education.
I don’t think prohibiting possession of a firearm is prohibiting/depriving you of your right to self defense. There is something related there, but, saying you can’t have a gun is not the same thing as saying you cannot defend yourself. It may in fact be telling you that you can’t have the most effective tool for defending yourself, but, that’s not exactly the same thing.
My point would be that the company is not depriving you of that. You are making a choice to do so. You aren’t being forced to work for that company and disarm to follow their policies.
Along with all your other excellent concerns and points I would add in schools with a lot of gang activity when gang members figure out which teachers are carrying. A teacher who doesn’t know how to effectively conceal a firearm and who isn’t willing or able to effectively use the firearm in a dynamic stress filled classroom setting can become a major liability. It only takes one little mistake for the whole student body to quickly learn that a specific teacher is carrying. Kids are very observant and quick to share what they learn.
I know it is not popular opinion here and I have said it many times before but I firmly believe armed staff at schools have to be held to a much higher standard. They are responsible for the safety of my son and all the other students. I can’t imagine a more distracting environment than a classroom or a more challenging situation than trying to stop an active shooter in a room full of children. Staff have to be on their game day after day while being constantly stressed and challenged by their regular duties. It takes a certain mindset and well trained skills just to teach in that environment let alone be a safe and effective armed defender.
I don’t believe it is at all the same as a person conceal carrying at the mall with some kids running around or even a CCWL parent who spends a few minutes dropping their kid off at school. Though if I was allowed to carry on school grounds to drop my son off I would definitely get school related active shooting training before doing so. I know it is astronomically unlikely that I will ever run into an active shooter event at a school. But the risks of harming an innocent child while trying to respond to such an event without the proper training are just too great in my opinion.