TexasCHLforum.com

LDB415 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 4:06 pm I'm just a cranky old guy, emphasis on cranky. There should be a specific "super-license" for LTC. It should require higher proficiency demonstrations and additional classroom training. It should be available to any LTC holder that chooses to obtain it. With said license holders should be able to carry anywhere. Anywhere. Out of a school of 1000 kids, not unheard of anymore, how many parents would obtain it? How many would be present at any given time with the constant random coming and going? How much more deterrent to bad guys knowing these people very well may be there and will end them? Definitely not less, that's for certain.

I can see that - have something like a "Class II LTC" that might have expanded carrying privileges, something like that.

An "armed officer" is going to be worthless in most school shooting situations.

A shooter goes into a classroom and starts going "bang-bang-bang-bang..." With each "bang," a child dies. Even if you have a freaking Navy SEAL on duty, how many "bangs" will there be before he actually gets alerted, travels to the building, locates the classroom, goes in and neutralizes the shooter? To that, consider that most schools have multiple buildings scattered all over several acres. Large urban high schools can have 30 or 40 buildings, almost like small town. Are you going to have an armed officer in each one? Hardly: many schools today can barely afford toilet paper.

Don't get me wrong, I strongly support having armed personnel on school campuses, including teachers with quick access to guns in the classrooms. There are gun safes, for example, where you press on it with your thumb or fingers, it reads the print and instantly pops open, with a gun standing there upright, loaded and cocked and ready to grab and shoot. I can see something like that on a teacher's desk.

But people are dead wrong if they think if they just get an "armed guard" on a school campus, they can kick back and think they've solved the school shooting question.

The whole answer is in access. Who can get into a school building, and how? Some schools have "panic buttons" on teachers' desks, where the teacher can thump the button and instantly lock the classroom door and alert the front office. There are other arrangements where somebody in a front office, principal's office, security office, etc. can thump a button and instantly lock every door on the campus, or maybe all the doors in a certain building or area. Some have "codes," like "Code Red" means active shooter. "Code Blue" means a weapon on campus. That sort of thing.

A gun is necessary to STOP a shooting, but access control is necessary to PREVENT a shooting. It's important to look at both.

It's sad that we have to talk about this. When I was a kid in the 50s, many people didn't even HAVE a key to their front door. The milkman would come by and if you weren't home, he'd go in and put the milk in the refrigerator, and if it was a holiday you'd leave a plate of cookies for him on the kitchen counter. Imagine doing that now.

It was common back then to see 200 bicycles on the rack in front of a grade school or middle school. Now you don't see any; it's too dangerous for kids to ride bikes to schools, they'll get kidnapped and raped and murdered.

The world has changed, and we have to change with it.