TexasCHLforum.com

cb1000rider wrote:Liberal, communist, socialist - which one of those philosophies advocates the shooting of teachers at school? Give me a bad guy, I can find an association. You may not like the philosophy, but crazy is as crazy does and political leanings are out the door at that point.

I don't have a huge objection to having teachers with firearms. However, when I was a senior in high school, I was more than capable of taking away a firearm from most if not all of my teachers. It's going to result in perhaps "jusitified" uses of force against unarmed students the student acted to to justify it.. And it may give opportunities for students that don't have easy access a way to get a firearm. Course, that's conjecture, but that's the possible down side in my mind.

Beiruty wrote:I thank our Creator each day, that so far there was no terrorist attack on a school or educational institution like what happened in Russia. After said incident, I still cannot believe the lack of armed security and security measures at virtually all educational institutions.
Terrorists, it seems, are more sane than a wannabe tough Joe schmoe, of no-mama and no-papa of America.

Beiruty,
Look at our implementation of "armed security" at airports. Again, maybe this is a possible solution, but the way our government does it - and at the cost at which they do it - there are simply much better ways to save lives per dollar. Course, I'm being overly practical an analytical.. The last thing I want to see is the education version of the TSA.

Concealed is concealed. Students in the school should have no better access to firearms carried by a CHL/teacher in the school than they would if that same teacher walked through Wal-Mart today. Perhaps some stories out of the schools were it is permitted today would confirm that it isn't an issue.

I know that it may not be a shared opinion but any student who is willing to try to take a gun away from a teacher or anyone deserves to be serving time. Thuggery has grown in our schools and it needs to be thwarted through prompt action against the student(s) involved. Instead, the schools seem bent on punishing kids on "zero tolerance" for just about anything else.

School security - in fact all education related matters - should remain local decisions. There is no way that I want the Federal government in school security any more than I want them pushing Common Core.

texanjoker wrote:

Abraham wrote:The idea of allowing teachers to carry inside the school has a few problems.

Who says they're going to start arming themselves even if they're allowed?

Many teachers, if not most, are very liberal, very left.

Yeah, there's a small percentage of conservative teachers, but there are probably a lot more public school teachers who're liberals that would rather eat glass than own a gun, never mind being proficient with one...

Then, the ones who are willing to carry will probably ask for combat pay.

Am I being negative?

Yes.

From what my kids tell me, most teachers would scare me with guns.

Then perhaps it is time for some new teachers. I believe that teachers should be a cross section of society. If that is true, there will be some percentage, perhaps a small one, of those who frequent this forum. If, on the other hand, the teachers in an area have been hand picked to be the type that would scare you about guns, they likely have a variety of other scary characteristics and should not represent a large percentage of the teaching pool.

I've spoken directly to our granddaughter's teacher. I would be very comfortable with both she and the teacher from last year carrying a gun into the classroom.

I really, really like A-R's proposed law where every gun free zone would have to have a hired, paid professional with a gun. Perhaps that would start helping to balance the tendency to create alternate realities in the teaching profession to turn loose on our kids.

I went to and taught in schools in PA. There, a good percentage of the teachers outside of the major metropolitan areas were gun enthusiasts. If we aren't doing something similar in Texas, we are doing something wrong.

Abraham wrote:The idea of allowing teachers to carry inside the school has a few problems.

Who says they're going to start arming themselves even if they're allowed?

Many teachers, if not most, are very liberal, very left.

Yeah, there's a small percentage of conservative teachers, but there are probably a lot more public school teachers who're liberals that would rather eat glass than own a gun, never mind being proficient with one...

Then, the ones who are willing to carry will probably ask for combat pay.

Am I being negative?

Yes.

It is good to think about some of the down sides of the situation but there are also a number of upsides.

I, for one, believe that the gun free zones and their associated signs and advertizing are a magnet. Even if no one in the school were actually carrying, the idea that someone there COULD meet a shooter with lethal force is more likely to act as a deterrent than not. I buy into the theory that most of the mass shooters are cowards, looking for easy pickings. Actually, I believe that is true for a lot of criminals.

Today, schools are restricted and teachers who might otherwise get CHLs are less inclined to do so because they couldn't carry them as much of the rest of us. While you are correct that there are a lot of Liberals in the teaching ranks, there are also some hunters and gun sportsman. I believe that every extra gun, in the hands of a responsible CHL in the school environment is good.

When the free CHL classes were offered after Sandy Hook, teachers flocked to them. I would personally be willing to pay for a responsible teacher in my granddaugher's school to take the CHL class and receive the extra training that I would prefer that they have in the school environment. I believe that there is an interest level and there could be incentives added to make it even more attractive.

I had a disagreement with an ardent anti-gun Liberal who is a teacher. She went off on how she wouldn't be comfortable carrying a gun. My response: fine - don't YOU carry one. But don't try to put your personal situation on someone else who doesn't share it. "I don't want a gun" does not equal "nobody wants a gun" in my math.

I'm fine with combat pay. I'd be willing to lead a fund raising effort to raise the money for that combat pay so that it didn't come out of the taxpayer pocket, thus avoiding someone complaining about the use of their tax dollars. I'd approach gun related businesses and ask for donations with the idea of creating sponsors who received recognition and to whom those looking for guns and accessories to further the teacher CHL program could be sent.

For me, there are enough examples of ISDs that are already more firearm friendly. This is not another "third rail" in the political landscape where opponents can stake a claim unchallenged any more. If we had local control of our schools and the Constitution busting Federal Department of Education wasn't driving their agenda, I believe that we would have solved this problem locally along time ago.

I'm ready to take on the Liberal teaching establishment on all levels. I hate Common Core. I hate the Liberal bias in the textbooks and lesson plans and I'm ready to challenge each and every example of it that I can find. I'm tired of us rolling over and playing dead, thinking that there is nothing that we can do. We can do a lot. We just need to start doing it.

To the point that layers of security are a good approach, here is another school district with a good, logical step that accomplishes several things.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/12/12/fris ... -security/

CBS DFW by J.D. Miles December 12, 2013 10:14 PM

The district has been offering free lunches to police officers in an effort to get more armed security inside schools.

cb1000rider wrote:Devils advocate:
So if I'm a moderate / centrist / person that really doesn't feel strongly about the 2nd amendment, which of the two solutions is more likely to have prevented this issue:
1) Removing the "gun free zone" status of public schools
2) Taking all the guns out of the USA so kids can't get them easily

I'm suggesting that we come up with something else other than blaming the liberals...

Colorado has had an awful recent history of incidents like this.. We need to do what we can as a group to be sympathetic, supportive, and come up with productive solutions otherwise the centrist moms and dads will start to think that removing all guns might solve the problem. The more this kind of stuff happens, the bigger fight we've got.

Like just about every other forced choice, the alternatives offer no solution but simply demand that a person choose between the lessor of two perceived evils. It is much like going to vote in an election and having two unappealing candidates. That is because complex matters never have simple solutions, regardless of what those with political agendas try to say.

1. Removal of gun free zones, by itself, is not going to stop those with evil intent from harming others. Security experts will tell you that the answer to threats is layers of preventive measures. Many here believe that one of those layers needs to be a last ditch, when all else fails way to stop an evil doer. It is not a singular solution to the problem.
2. Bans do not work. Countries who have banned guns still have gun violence. Often what might have been gun violence is turned into some other type of violence and therefore is dismissed as non-violence. It is like claiming that banning guns prevents suicides. It doesn't. Some of the countries with the highest suicide rates have banned guns. Banning drugs hasn't worked. Banning alcohol didn't work. It each of those cases, the bans have produced nasty side effects.

For me, the root of the problem is leaving school security in the hands of school administration. What a foolish idea. Many school administrators are self-serving tyrants who view the school environment as their own private fiefdom and absolutely get off in controlling it. They have no background and training in security. The district where our granddaughter attends school has recently hired a security expert who is evaluating an overall security strategy and reviewing each campus for it unique security challenges. I'm hoping that a more common sense approach will result and I'm lobbying through one of my school board members to have teachers with CHLs be considered in that plan. Explaining such a program to the centerist parents is a far better way than giving them the forced choice decision.