Holy crap…this teachers learning to use firearms thing is for real! Just like the NRA proposed! And Alexander Abad-Santos is freaking out over it! He read a Reuters report about 200 teachers in Utah signing up for classes and sees a very bad moon on the rise. “The apparent post-Newtown craze for gun-rights activists to transform teachers into gun-class students has arrived despite the fact that no armed civilian has killed a mass shooter in the past three decades.” Of course, the fact that all but one of those mass shooting happened in gun-free zones may have had something to do with that. Just a thought. But groups like the Utah Shooting Sports Council and the Buckeye Firearms Association aren’t waiting around for federal legislation. They’re training teachers and school personnel now. So while more parents are demanding armed defenders to protect their children, the process for making sure someone’s equipped to deal with an active shooter in schools is proceeding apace. OMG!
I suspect the cost to have an armed and trained officer in a school for the remote chance he or she would be needed would be prohibitive. And, after a few years with no incidents it is likely their pay and position would be eliminated. However, I also think that any teacher that is allowed to carry should be very well trained, practice regularly and perhaps even have a psych evaluation before doing so. They should carry concealed and perhaps have their loaded firearm in a quickly accessible locked safe in their desks. Not sure how that last one would play out in real life though? But a concealed carry teacher or administrator is not a target if nobody knows they have a weapon and the cost for them is already in the budget. I doubt any sane person is going to shoot a student over an altercation unless their life is actually in danger, teachers included. If they are that afraid of their students they may also want to carry mace, a baton or something like that for their own safety in addition to a firearm.