Guns do not belong in our schools
By Katie Elmore
The mere thought of arming school personnel, as Gov. Bob McDonnell has suggested, is equally outrageous and horrifying. The vision of a kindergarten teacher or a college professor with a concealed weapon shatters the image of a safe classroom community.
Teachers are not cut out to be gun-wielding vigilantes, ready to drop the first “bad guy” who enters the door. I shudder to think of the many Trayvon Martin cases that could arise simply because a teacher with a gun suspects a student may be trouble. Teachers are agents of peace, striving to create classroom communities where learning can flourish, ideas are emboldened and students are nurtured.
Elmore, of Salem, is a teaching associate in the Education Department at Roanoke College.
January 6, 2013 - 8:01 AM
Ms. Elmore, I understand your concern but you offer no solutions. Teacher’s should be trained and armed to protect their students. Or at least there should be more armed resource officers at the school.
Gun control WILL NOT WORK! Criminals want gun control laws. “Gun free” zones like schools and theaters are easy, attractive targets for criminals.
As for your Trayvon Martin comment, Trayvon brought his death on himself through his own violent actions.
Sure gun control would work and no amount of capitalization will change that. If you want to eliminate death by guns, eliminate the guns. Seems simple enough.
#2 – “If you want to eliminate death by guns, eliminate the guns.”
What do people seem to have such a hard time accepting that such a thing will never happen?
Really, Scott…it will NEVER happen.
@3 Michael, complete and utter eliminate will not happen. I’ll agree with that. The numbers could be severely reduced though. It happened in Australia.
How about we go back to institutionalizing the crazy people, Scott?
4 – happened in Nazi Germany, too. And the Soviet Union. Red China.
Good times.
2. “If you want to eliminate death by guns, eliminate the guns”
Scott, it worked so well for illegal drugs, didn’t it? And I use capitalization because people seem so blind to the reality that guns will NEVER, EVER be eliminated.
@5 Michael, I’m sure your family will miss you.
@6 89Hoo, so what? Are you saying not having guns under those regimes CAUSED the problems associated with them? More to the point, do you think having more guns in those societies would have helped?
@7 JimW, so let me take a page from Sandi’s playbook. So we can’t eliminate all drugs so we shouldn’t have any drug enforcement laws? Same for guns. You’re saying we can’t eliminate guns therefore we shouldn’t have gun regulations?!
I know that’s not what you’re saying of course so forgive me. Please try to understand, I’m not saying we should get rid of guns. I’m really not.
What I take issue with is the absolutism and rhetorical trick of saying it can’t happen. ‘There is no other way’ simply isn’t true. Granted, it’s not likely but it’s not true in those absolutist terms.
If you had said it’s not likely or there are better ways to address the problem, I’d have let it go.
Best wishes.
8 – Scott, you almost have it. While an unarmed populace did not cause the problems (evil people did) the fact that the people were unable to resist was a huge enabling factor. Which is the reason the first things tyrants and would be tyrants is disarm the populace…just like the redcoats were trying to do in Lexington and Concord…which is one of the reasons the Virginians helped ensure the right to defend oneself was in the Bill of Rights.
Well said Katie Elmore, and thank you for your commentary!
If I could get past the irony of the folks who one week consider teachers inept, ineffective leeches now wanting them armed and trained security officers too, I might see the efficacy of arming teachers.
If I could get past the irony of the same folks blithely wanting to take away a woman’s most private and agonizing reproduction choice now protecting to the death the right of people to own combat style weapons, I might be more willing to agree that no right has limits.
I’m with Katie and I believe this “solution” is no solution at all.
#8 – “Michael, I’m sure your family will miss you.”
ToS violation aside, Scott, tell me why we shouldn’t lock up those with mental issues who are potential threats to society.
Scott, criminals don’t follow regulations. They’re criminals.
The point I was trying to make concerning drug laws is that all that has been accomplished is the creation of a lucrative black market. If guns are banned, you’ll accomplish the same thing. Chicago is proof that strict gun
control laws do not, and never will work.
If guns don’t belong in schools, why did they call for men and women with guns once the tragedy started?
If guns were need / called for, why wait eleven minutes for them to arrive at the school?
@14 Mr. Hicks asks, “If guns don’t belong in schools, why did they call for men and women with guns once the tragedy started?”
I know! I know!! (says raising hand)
Because there was an insane person inside killing people with a gun?!
That’s a fun “what-if” game. I’ve got one.
What if we didn’t have guns in society and 20 children and 6 adults were still alive?
@13 JimW, you’re right we will never get rid of guns completely and scarcity will create a black market. Hopefully driving the price out of range of most people.
There are other similarities and differences that should be noted. To grow a lot of marijuana, for example, planters take advantage of natural fields and camouflage provided by other growing plants. To manufacture a lot of guns, you need a large manufacturing facility with specialized equipment, lots of electricity, etc. Much harder to hide.
Plants are easy to grow. Guns are hard to manufacture. Drugs are addictive, guns aren’t. Drugs (such as alcohol and tobacco) are regulated. We could regulate guns more. For example, go to a shooting range and rent a gun but turn it in to the professionals when you’re done. You could even rent a gun to go hunting.
Your comparison between drugs and guns is only applicable, I think, when you point out you’ll never get rid of them all and it creates a black market.
But the point isn’t to get rid of all of them, just the majority of them.
@12 Michael, as someone referred to in passing as an attention whore, your complaints of violating the ToS don’t concern me.
However, you say, “[T]ell me why we shouldn’t lock up those with mental issues who are potential threats to society.” I have a couple of observations.
1) If they’re a threat to society, they should be locked up. So I can’t tell you why they shouldn’t be.
2) Why are they a threat to society? Is it because they have violent tendencies or is it because they have violent tendencies and easy access to a lot of guns? If they’re violent but have access to, say, only flyswatters, then they maybe shouldn’t be locked up. It’s the ready access to weapons as dangerous as guns has the potential to make the mentally ill so dangerous.
I have a hard time getting past the tragic irony of someone self-righteously claiming to give a damn about twenty-six children’s lives while a) specifically advocating policies that have killed more than 30 million babies in the last several decades (many many at taxpayer expense), and b) advocating policies that advertise to those bent on killing that there will be no armed resistance.
#15 – “Because there was an insane person inside killing people with a gun?!”
And why was there an insane person out on the streets?
That’s all nice and sarcastic Scott. Not very helpful to anything though. In reality, there are guns in society. In fact, there are already so many guns in circulation that implementing gun control now is the epitome of locking the barn door after the horse is already gone. How do the gun control advocates plan to handle the guns that are already out there? How do you plan to respond to the guy who comes to school with a pre-ban weapon if not with an armed response? Cops simply cannot get there in time to prevent this type of violence. I am not suggesting arming the teachers. I am fully in support of a trained school resource officer in every public school anytime students are present. Sure, it will take 100,000 new cops, but if that isn’t a worthwhile government expenditure, what is? If I recall correctly, no one called Bill Clinton crazy when he advocated adding 100,000 new cops back in the 90′s.
@19 Michael, why did an insane person have such ready access to guns?
Technically, the shooters in any of the mass shooting incidents where they took their lives or were killed by others, were not nor can be retroactively deemed to be “insane”. That is an opinion, as is angry, irrational, even evil. But certainly they were not all “insane” before they acted. It is as absurd to advise we begin “institutionalizing the crazy people” (whatever that means) as it is to advise we ban all guns. Neither is advisable or possible and only serves to muddy the discussion. Could we not agree to stop that?
Ms. Elmore’s opinion that guns do not belong in schools matches precisely the policy at Sandy Hook, a bastion of liberal arrogance known as a gun-free zone (advertised as such, saving the killer the trouble of having to try to find out the hard way). If you want to guarantee that more children are sitting targets, and that no one is able to offer armed resistance to a madman, then by all means maintain the school as a gun-free zone.
So no one has ever been shot outside of a “a bastion of liberal arrogance known as a gun-free zone”? Is that really the story you are sticking with? That is almost as helpful as blaming the victims for being unarmed.
24 – don’t be simple Sandi. Of course people are shot outside of gun free zones. But unlike at Sandy Hook, they’ve been able to defend themselves. A more relevant question would be how many people at Sandy Hook had the ability to defend themselves. Our at Columbine. Or any school there has been a mass shooting over the last few decades (gun fee zones all).
Why advertise to those bent on evil that they will meet no resistance?
89Hoo, Adam Lanza’s home was not a gun-free zone and look where it got his mother. Also, Newtown is home to many gun enthusiasts. Apparently having many in that town armed wasn’t enough to stop the killings and you think the problem is because the school is the only place without guns?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/nyregion/in-newtown-conn-a-stiff-resistance-to-gun-restrictions.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
…Yet recent efforts by the police chief and other town leaders to gain some control over the shooting and the weaponry turned into a tumultuous civic fight, with traditional hunters and discreet gun owners opposed by assault weapon enthusiasts, and a modest tolerance for bearing arms competing with the staunch views of a gun industry trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has made Newtown its home. ….
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/friends-of-gunmans-mother-his-first-victim-recall-her-as-generous.html
Nancy Lanza loved guns, and often took her sons to one of the shooting ranges here in the suburbs northeast of New York City, where there is an active community of gun enthusiasts, her friends said. At a local bar, she sometimes talked about her gun collection. ….
One question — what does a 4th grade teacher do with their pistol while they’re teaching the kids such that a child could never touch it but the teacher could be armed in a matter of seconds to defend his or her classroom? I’m just wondering what kind of scenarios the NRA folks are envisioning here.
It just smacks of blaming the victim to me and I guess I just cannot buy the answer that more guns is the answer for gun violence. Call me “simple”, I just cannot get past it. People should not need to be armed at school, in church, the grocery store, the mall or anywhere else in order to go about our day. Admitting the bad guys have won in this instance is just another step on the ladder.
Why not just fence and razor wire every public place and have armed security clear every entrant? Pretend every place is a prison. It is the same difference IMO.
“People should not need to be armed at school, in church, the grocery store, the mall or anywhere else in order to go about our day. ”
I agree. Unfortunately, there are thugs and other dangerous elements in society that create that need. They have shown up in schools, churches, stores, malls, restaurants, theatres, etc…armed with the intent of doing harm to innocent people.
I hope I don’t ever “need” my protection. But as a law-abiding citizen, I have the right to be prepared in case that need ever arises.
I would rather have it and not need it, than vice versa.
Instead of arming teachers or having security guards its better to call 911 and wait for a 20 man excited swat team to show up with heavy weapons and maybe an armored vehicle or two. They just crouch behind trees and cars until the shooter finishes up by killing himself then tell everyone its safe to go inside.
Waynep, they’ve changed procedures. The situation you describe was true for Columbine but now they rush in. I heard it on NPR.
#31 – “The situation you describe was true for Columbine but now they rush in.”
I just showed your comment to a couple friends of mine who are cops. I haven’t heard them laugh so hard in quite a while.
“I heard it on NPR.”
Believing what you hear on NPR, my friend, was your first mistake.