Arming the Teachers, That's the Answer (part II)

Today the New York Times reports on the situation in Harrold Texas. As we discussed before, teachers in the north-Texas town are encouraged to carry concealed weapons to class at the local high school. The driving force behind the program is David Thweatt, school superintendent.

The school board in this impoverished rural hamlet in North Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre along the lines of what happened at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

Even in Texas, with its tradition of lenient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers’ taking guns to class has rattled some people and sparked a fiery debate.

“I’m not exactly paranoid,” Mr. Thweatt said. “I like to consider myself prepared.”

Some residents and parents, however, think Mr. Thweatt may be overstating the threat. Many say they rarely lock their doors, much less worry about random drifters with pistols running amok at the school. Longtime residents were hard-pressed to recall a single violent incident there.

The title of this post is slightly facetious. "Arming the teachers" is not what the school board is doing. (Thanks Nomen for pointing that out.) What they're doing is giving teachers who are already licensed to carry weapons permission to do so. There are even additional requirements placed upon them, special anti-ricocheting ammunition, special training by a private security company.

The point is that permitting the teachers to be armed, regardless of the probability of an attack, is sending the wrong message. It may work in the short run, but long term it will move us backwards to a time in our history when violence and lawlessness was the order of the day. It brings to mind visions of the old West in cowboy movies we all grew up with. Wasn't the answer to that chaotic period to introduce laws and law enforcement? Wasn't it to encourage education and cooperation? Wasn't it to move away from this very thing, everybody being armed and at the ready for a gunfight? Why would we want to move backwards towards the type of society we struggled to outgrow 150 years ago?

I'm wondering if it really is a macho thing. Anyone who's ever handled a gun, and liked it, can understand that there's a tremendously exhilarating sense of power involved. I say it's wrong to play with that power, to bring it into our daily lives. That's what we have law enforcement people for. We should keep the guns for hunting and target shooting and collecting, if that's what you like. But, bringing them into our everyday lives is only going to exacerbate the crime problem in the long run.

What do you think?

Arming the Teachers, That's the Answer

The question is, according to Harrold Texas School Superintendent David Thweatt, what are the best school security options. CNN reports on the situation.

...the board approved the policy in an October open meeting that had been publicized. He said the decision was made after nearly two years of researching the best school security options at the school, which is just off a busy highway and 30 minutes away from the sheriff's office.

"When you outlaw guns in a certain area, the only people who follow that are law-abiding citizens, and everybody else ignores it," Thweatt said.

I'm still not convinced by this argument. We've discussed it before. I understand the logic behind it, but somehow it doesn't quite work for me. What's worse is, in this particular statement, which probably fairly reflects the majority, Mr. Thweatt says "everybody else ignores it." Now, I can't believe that. In places where the law says "no guns" the good guys obey and ALL the bad guys don't. No, that must be an exaggeration. I would imagine in these places, schools, hospitals, businesses in Texas that post signs that guns are prohibited, some criminals comply, for one reason or another. I imagine further that more would comply if we cut accessibility to guns in half.

On the other hand, I can't help but agree with the unspoken message in that exaggerated statement by the Superintendent. When the good guys are armed and the bad guys know it, the bad guys are going to behave themselves. That makes sense to me, but do we really need to go that route, and do we really want to. I agree with this:

"As far as I'm concerned, teachers were trained to educate my children -- not carry a gun. Even police officers need years of training in hostage situations," said Traci McKay, whose three children are among the 110 students in the red-brick Harrold school.

Limiting the availability of guns is the answer for me, or at least a big part of it. I don't see why we can't all agree on that, as at least a partial solution, and work towards it, pro-gun folks and the rest of us. Working towards this goal need not diminish anyone's rights to own guns legally. I'm talking about the seemingly endless supply of guns available to criminals and psychopaths. Perhaps stricter controls at the manufacturing level are required. Perhaps stricter controls at the retail level would help. I don't know, but somehow, this is what we need to accomplish.

The other part of the answer is in the education and nurturing of our young people. They've got to get the message that violence is not the answer to every problem. Arming their teachers isn't going to help them learn that. The school in this case is "30 minutes away from the sheriff's office," just like a million other schools. Eventually should we arm all their teachers too? Wouldn't that exacerbate the problem?

Please let us hear your opinion.