Texas School District Will Let Teachers Carry Guns

[melensdad]

What about security guards they have in schools, they go though the same background checks aren’t they complete strangers too?

Uh, actually security guards in many (but not all) places only go through modest security checks compared to what teachers and CCW holders submit themselves to. Even armed security guards often get far less training than the faculty at this particular school district is required to take before they can even be considered to be allowed to carry a weapon on school grounds.

I think this whole thing is being blown so out of proportion that it is becoming very silly.

I guess to the gun-afraid people in the world it would be shocking for some to find out just how many legally carried firearms there are?

In my state roughly 1 out of every 11 adults has a permit to carry a concealed firearm and the number is increasing, it will soon be one in 10 if it is not already.

Shockingly some of those people are your neighbors, the pizza delivery guy, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, business owners, bowling team buddies, wives, mothers, and single women too. Oh my!

People legally carry guns concealed every day in the supermarket, to the shopping mall, when picking up dry-cleaning, and even when picking-up & dropping their kids off at school.

 

[pismopal]

I once visited a night club in Texas and as I started to enter a security man searched me stating " are you carrying a gun?" I said “no” so the security man said " well then here…take one of ours until you can get one of your own."

 

[stanmaxkolbe]

Uh, actually security guards in many (but not all) places only go through modest security checks compared to what teachers and CCW holders submit themselves to. Even armed security guards often get far less training than the faculty at this particular school district is required to take before they can even be considered to be allowed to carry a weapon on school grounds.

I think this whole thing is being blown so out of proportion that it is becoming very silly.

I guess to the gun-afraid people in the world it would be shocking for some to find out just how many legally carried firearms there are?

In my state roughly 1 out of every 11 adults has a permit to carry a concealed firearm and the number is increasing, it will soon be one in 10 if it is not already.

Shockingly some of those people are your neighbors, the pizza delivery guy, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, business owners, bowling team buddies, wives, mothers, and single women too. Oh my!

People legally carry guns concealed every day in the supermarket, to the shopping mall, when picking up dry-cleaning, and even when picking-up & dropping their kids off at school.

Yes you’re right of course. I know in Texas you will see guys with hip packs/butt packs people would be surprised of how many are carrying in those bags. When I wear mine which is almost all the time I have my little stubby .38 in it and I carry everywhere I can legally carry.

When I come across a business that displays what we call 30.06 sign that will not allow a licensed holder to carry in their business. I give the owner or manager a business card that says the front: NO CARRY = NO MONEY and on the back: lists all the background checks I had to go though to get a CHL. I will take my business elsewhere.

Yep people just don’t know.

 

[melensdad]

When I come across a business that displays what we call 30.06 sign that will not allow a licensed holder to carry in their business. I give the owner or manager a business card that says the front: NO CARRY = NO MONEY and on the back: lists all the background checks I had to go though to get a CHL. I will take my business elsewhere.

Yep people just don’t know.

We rarely see those signs in Indiana. In my state they do not carry the force of law. So if a store displays a “Gun Free” zone sign (Victim Killing Field) sign then we are legally allowed to ignore it.

I carry a 45acp most days, I carry it to school to drop off and pick up my daughter. I carry it shopping during the day. I carry it to the bank, when I run errands, and when I go out to eat. I don’t think anyone has ever known I was carrying a gun. One day I was showing a business associate, who I’ve known for 20 years, a gun and he commented that I was carrying it. I explained that I have been doing it for many years and he never noticed it until that day when he brought up the subject and asked me about a gun so I showed it to him.

I think that is the way it is for 99% of the people who carry guns. Others have NO CLUE they have a gun with them on a daily basis.

As I said, I believe it is far more common than some realize.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Pump action shotgun. It is great for home defense. It is harder to miss a target and the sound of racking a shell makes the average burglar wet his pants and head out from where he came. I think alarm companies should incorporate that sound into their systems instead of a klaxon.

If you have an intercom in your house, or other sound system, you can rig that yourself. And it is a scary sound in the dark, even if you know it’s a fake. You can get some very nice .wav files on the net if you do a search.

Growling dog isn’t a bad one, either. You hear something in the house at night, play the .wav, and most burglars will reconsider their plans.

 

[Wolseley]

Just another great reason not to live in Texas or send your kid to public school!!!

(as if there weren’t enough reasons already… )

I have nothing against Texas; I like Texas.

But as for public schools, I couldn’t agree with you more.

 

[melensdad]

Growling dog isn’t a bad one, either. You hear something in the house at night, play the .wav, and most burglars will reconsider their plans.

I’d like to see some evidence that a burglar has been scared out of the house by a “.wav” file of a dog or a cocking gun.

A “.wav” file isn’t going to do you much good, unless its housed in a very heavy MP3 player and you konk the bad guy over the head with it hard enough to knock him out.

On the other hand there are volumes written, and almost daily newspaper reports, of honest citizens who have used guns*** (often without firing a shot)*** to save their lives, family and homes from invaders who have broken into their houses late at night.

 

[The_Barbarian]

There you go again with your false mantra that the kids are somehow in harms way.

I’m pointing out to you that the hazard of intruders coming onto a campus and shooting them is almost nil. And I’m pointing out to you that the relative hazard of having guns on campus is much higher.

You mix your statistics so they suit you instead of looking at relative statistics.

You don’t understand the concept of likelihoods, and so it all seems the same to you. But it’s not. For some people, it’s a very difficult thing to grasp. Which is why they do astoundingly risky things, while obsessing over something highly unlikely.

I think it’s because they weight hazards heavily as to which is more terrifying to them. I spend a good amount of time in backwaters of lakes, taking pictures and collecting specimens. A neighbor is terrified that I will be bitten by a cottonmouth. While I’ve seen them, I’ve never really had a problem. I go with someone else (mostly for boat safety reasons) and I know that cottonmouths generally don’t inject venom when they strike people. My neighbor has no worries about driving after a couple of beers, which is an astoundingly higher risk. That’s where you are.

There are far more kids shot accidentally by handguns than are ever injured by attackers in school. Adding more guns is a bit like mining your yard to stop axe murderers.

Its about the children

If it was, they wouldn’t be trying to control a tiny hazard with a greater one. And there are all sorts of lockdown measures that work far better than a shootout in the middle of a mass of students.

But it’s not about the kids, is it?

 

[The_Barbarian]

I’d like to see some evidence that a burglar has been scared out of the house by a “.wav” file of a dog or a cocking gun.

I used to work with a guy who had once been a probation officer. He had a lot of young burglars. He asked them all what sort of a house was “good” and what was “bad.” They all said that any indication of guns or a bad dog was enough to make them back away and try something else. He had one, but of course, he had some experience to draw on.

A “.wav” file isn’t going to do you much good, unless its housed in a very heavy MP3 player and you konk the bad guy over the head with it hard enough to knock him out.

I think most burglars are a lot less courageous than you make them out to be.

 

[The_Barbarian]

I have nothing against Texas; I like Texas.

But as for public schools, I couldn’t agree with you more.

Texas is a great place to live. I love it. And the public schools have moved up quite a bit in the last few years. They used to say about public education in Texas “thank God for Mississippi.” No more. Some districts are now among the best in the country.

Still a long way to go, but they are not an embarrassment any more.

 

[melensdad]

I’m pointing out to you that the hazard of intruders coming onto a campus and shooting them is almost nil. And I’m pointing out to you that the relative hazard of having guns on campus is much higher.

You have failed to prove your second point, and it is, in fact, false.

You don’t understand the concept of likelihoods

Again you are wrong.

There are far more kids shot accidentally by handguns than are ever injured by attackers in school.

Again, your first point is true. However, the two issues are not related in any way making the comparison completely irrelevant.

Adding more guns is a bit like mining your yard to stop axe murderers.

This is clearly untrue, why do you keep repeating your mantra when it is false?

I used to work with a guy who had once been a probation officer. He had a lot of young burglars. He asked them all what sort of a house was “good” and what was “bad.” They all said that any indication of guns or a bad dog was enough to make them back away and try something else. He had one, but of course, he had some experience to draw on.

I think most burglars are a lot less courageous than you make them out to be.

First, I never indicated in any way that a burglar is courageous.

Second, your cute little story is not proof.

 

[gelsbern]

Are your numbers for deaths or injuries. Being shot does not equate to dying. There were more than 14 people shot in the last incident.

In 2005-2006, 14 students were the victims of homicide in a public school. That represents a risk of about one in
Here’s the relative likelihood of a child being shot in school:

 

[Sir_Knight]

You know that the district has never had an incident, and the likelihoods say the first one should be a few thousand years from now.

It could happen a few thousand years from now or it could happen tomorrow. Nobody knows for sure. What we do know for sure is that for the past several years, we’ve been having at least one school shooting per year. So while your statement is GENERALLY true, it is not true SPECIFICALLY for every school.

Trying telling the family & friends of those who lost loved ones at the VT shooting that the shooting that happened wasn’t suppose to happen for a few thousand years.

 

[Sir_Knight]

If no one had access to guns…only police and our military…**in a perfect world…there would be less violence. **This is my opinon.

Consider this … Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.

If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When someone carries a gun, you cannot deal with them by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade them, because they have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] criminal to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the criminal’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation … and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
You know that the district has never had an incident, and the likelihoods say the first one should be a few thousand years from now.

It could happen a few thousand years from now or it could happen tomorrow.

There could be a flood. Have they fitted everyone out with life preservers? Actually, it turns out that drowning in floods is more common for schoolchildren than being shot by intruders in their schools. So if it’s about protecting kids, we should first require them to wear life preservers, before we start arming teachers. But it’s not about the kids, is it?

Nobody knows for sure. What we do know for sure is that for the past several years, we’ve been having at least one school shooting per year.

And quite a few drownings from flash flooding. So by your argument, life jackets first, then arm teachers.

So while your statement is GENERALLY true, it is not true SPECIFICALLY for every school.

Indeed. There are schools that are dangerous enough that it is a reasonable thing to have armed guards. It would be preferrable to have professionals, rather than arm teachers, however.

Trying telling the family & friends of those who lost loved ones at the VT shooting that the shooting that happened wasn’t suppose to happen for a few thousand years.

I don’t have to. I heard an interview with one grieving father, who said that it was like his child was struck by lighting, an awful happenstance that no one could predict.

So many of them seem to understand.

 

[The_Barbarian]

The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid.

That is a very sad admission.

 

[melensdad]

Sir Knight, one simple question for you.

When you carry a gun, you carry it concealed, just as I do???

I ask this because while your post was very eloquent in explaining things, I don’t think I explicitly saw that point that nobody else knows you have the gun.

I want to really make that point clear because someone who knows you have a gun, but has some fear, might be led to the conclusion that by wearing the gun you are exerting force on them, by fear of your gun. However, if they have no knowledge of your guns existence then that is a totally moot point.

In my case, my business associate, who is also my friend and someone who’s house I’ve been to on many occasions for social events and even to help him install a new floor in his kitchen, had no idea that I always carried a gun. If someone that close to me didn’t know it, then clearly a stranger is not going to be aware of the gun’s presence under my shirt either.

It strikes me that those folks, like us, who choose to carry a gun, typically avoid areas of town where there are problems, we typically speed less, drink less, and even attend church more than many members of society. We don’t carry out of fear, and with guns strapped to our waist we don’t look for trouble. We simply are prepared if the worst imaginable thing might happen. I consider having a gun with me to be no different than having a back-up generator hooked up to my house and a couple weeks worth of food in my cupboard. Its there just in case.

Not sure about anyone else here, but I’ve had power outages in the winter that have lasted for longer than a week; our road has been closed by snow for 3 or 4 days at a time . . . so ‘being prepared’ for various challenges and adversity simply makes sense to me.

Your thoughts?

That is a very sad admission.

Wow, that is a bizarre thought. Why is it sad to simply be prepared?

Is it also sad that I can keep my home powered up and heated in the eventuality that our power goes out? Or that I keep enough food on hand to feed my family for a week or two?

I think it is just the opposite. Power goes out and I try to be the first to check on the neighbors to see if they need help and offer assistance.

 

[KenEOTE]

But it’s not about the kids, is it?

Please I ask you don’t use this phrase. It makes you come across as a pompous you know what. If you are going to say it at least tell us what you think it is about.

Say I don’t think its about the kids I think it is about blah blah blah.

You may not be meaning it to come across as someone looking down from on high but that his how it reads.

Its irritating to read simply because it makes me picture you as an old man who is bitter and thinks he knows everything cause he is old, but not will to share his supposed knowledge he just wants you to know he has knowledge. That is all I am saying.

Frankly most of the people I hear getting hurt by guns are either shot by someone who does not have a permit or stole the gun, or a child is playing with it in their home. If a Teacher has a gun, I would think they would have enough sense to keep it on their person and not let the kids take it out for recess.

 

[Sir_Knight]

Barbarian observes:
You know that the district has never had an incident, and the likelihoods say the first one should be a few thousand years from now.

Floods happen in flood areas and there is usually advance notice which is not the case with a school shooting.

There could be a flood. Have they fitted everyone out with life preservers? Actually, it turns out that drowning in floods is more common for schoolchildren than being shot by intruders in their schools. So if it’s about protecting kids, we should first require them to wear life preservers, before we start arming teachers. But it’s not about the kids, is it?

Have you read the opening post? Money is an issue and that are not in a position to provide life preservers. Nor are they in a position to ARM teachers. They are merely PERMITTING teachers who are already qualified to carry a firearm and who wish to do so, to be able to legally carry.

And quite a few drownings from flash flooding. So by your argument, life jackets first, then arm teachers.

Funds! Again, nobody is ARMING the teachers.

Indeed. There are schools that are dangerous enough that it is a reasonable thing to have armed guards. It would be preferrable to have professionals, rather than arm teachers, however.

And do you expect these armed guards to work for free if there is not enough funds to pay them?

I don’t have to. I heard an interview with one grieving father, who said that it was like his child was struck by lighting, an awful happenstance that no one could predict.

So many of them seem to understand.

Just imagine how they would then feel if that loss did not happen because a teacher halted the shooting.

 

[Sir_Knight]

That is a very sad admission.

It’s the truth! Fact is, if you encounter somebody who is younger, stronger, quicker & stronger than you are and neither of you has a weapon and he has evil intentions, you will be at his mercy. A gun will level the playing field – a senior citizen in a wheel chair need not be afraid of a young gangbanger. A petite woman need not be afraid of a husky rapist twice her size. Why is that a sad admission?

Fear is meant to alert us to an existing danger. Once we prepare for that danger, there is no longer a reason to be afraid.