Most ridiculous proposal yet: arm all the teachers.

All of my teachers had two arms. How many more do they need?

Is this another teacher bashing post? If so it's too soon, please wait a few weeks until people forget about these teachers unthinkable sacrifice.

If a gun post don't we have lots of these already?

I am a teacher and I support arming teachers. Lives would have been saved in CT if properly trained teachers took the gunman down.

I haven't been following but wasn't a teachers gun part of this?

Like Federal Marshals on planes?

If teachers are packing you'll need to pay them a hell of a lot more (risk of life, similar to police officers). Not going to happen. But they might put a cop at every school now. More taxes!

Nancy Lanza wasn't a teacher. That was misinformation. She was another one of those highly paid for being an ex wife types. With her spare time she taught her son to hate and shoot - a very bad combination.

ridiculousness wrote:

Senators, Congressmen, a former Presidential candidate, and gun rights supporters have said the answer is to provide teachers with concealed weapons, training, and to change the law on weapons in schools.

That may be the silliest thing I've ever heard. Do they actually believe a 25-50 year old woman in the chaos of a mass shooting could calmly resort to her brief target practice stint at the local gun range to take down a hyped up killer?

Heck, highly trained soldiers freeze up in battle, or just can't deal with the intensity of the situation, and cower.

Good luck with that one.

You have a hard idea grasping this idea cause you think every teacher is some grey hair old lady. Well they arent. My school I work at is mostly males who are hunters and gun owners anyway.

Arming the teachers is a great way to make soft targets like schools off the table.

Meeting force with force is the only way to keep schools from being shot up. Hide and seek isnt working.

Using this amusing logic... more cars on the road will reduce drunk driving accidents because more drivers will have an opportunity to run the drunks into a ditch, thereby preventing harm to others.

I've seen some teachers completely snap on people during class, I wonder what would happen if they had a gun.

I guess it's worse to possibly cower & freeze up when pointing your finger at a bad guy getting ready to shoot you, than to possibly do that with a real gun in your hands?

The really stupid thing is you idiots keep acting like the shooters aren't completely untrained cowards. What - a 20 year old mental case is equivalent to some Delta Force operator? Teachers in almost all 24 US school shootings that occured 2000-10 (down from 43 in the 90s..) acted heroically in protecting their students, yet you sexists assume a "25-50 year old woman" would cower & choke in the face of a threat by some elite airborne 20 year old punk bully video game junkie POS? And you're so sure of that that you'd rather a teacher face down a threat like that completely unarmed?

Look, these teachers had to try to protect their students Friday with zero weapons. Nothing to threaten the bully with; nothing to even slow him down or give him pause.

And you scoff at arming them? I'm not sure if it's the answer either, but being so smugly condescending about it shows your true colors..

I guess you idiots also don't think pilots should be armed?

And you know absolutely zero about how our military people handlnke combat. You watch a few stupid war movies & think you have a clue about it, but you embarass yourself by commenting & sharing your stupidity..

There have been cases in recent history when shooter like this were confronted by armed civilians. In almost every case, the shooter folds - just like a bully..

I'm not saying all teachers should be armed but it is a damn shame this woman wasn't.

The Animal Within wrote:

Like Federal Marshals on planes?

If teachers are packing you'll need to pay them a hell of a lot more (risk of life, similar to police officers). Not going to happen. But they might put a cop at every school now. More taxes!

How would an armed teacher be more at risk than an unarmed teacher? I don't think you understand what police officers do if you can equate a cop with an armed teacher.

And what do we do the first time a kid kills people with a gun taken from a teacher? Which will inevitably happen. A middle school or high school kid will disarm a teacher or take the teacher's pistol while the teacher is distracted and people will die.

What do we do then? Arm all the kids also so they can shoot each other?

CHRIS MATTHEWS wrote:

. . .

I do know how our military act in combat, because I was in combat. That being said, I don't know how if I could react in a clear, concise manner after having been out of the military for years, now engaged in a typical everyday career and life. That's why I posted. That's why I believe it is ridiculous.

I will give you a small percentage of hunting-oriented or ex-military males, but that's it. No other teacher, who spends 99.9% of his or her life as a teacher, coach, counselor, parent, etc., could handle the situation with a clear, deliberate mind, and first of all find his/her weapon, draw it from its holster, take it off safety, engage the target, and fire accurately, if a man with multiple weapons began firing off rounds into his or her classroom. The mind would be racing at 100 miles and hour, their hands would be shaking, and the moment would pass.

Why do you think we in the military, or those in law enforcement, practiced close quarter battle and other scenarios, and had to go through pre-deployment tactical exercises prior to being certified to deploy? You make it sound so simple, as the Congressman, Senators, etc. did. Remember, the shooter is already in a heightened state of mind and action prior, and has obviously prepared and thought out, if not rehearsed the scenario, and the teacher is just teaching kids as usual in his or her classroom.

I am so happy for your fellow soldiers you are no longer in the military. You are an idiot and apparently unstable and sounds like a coward. Every day laymen (and women) prove brave and collected and effective in emergency situations. Apparently far more effective than you were with your training. I have trouble believing you were ever in the military or that you didn't find a way to get yourself discharged when you realized you were in over your head.

And to solve the problem in Aurora, anyone who goes to the movies should be armed.

Anyone who goes to a mall, like in Clackamas, should also be armed.

And really, why stop at the teachers? Let's put a 9mm in the hand of every first grader.

When it's to the point that you're talking about arming teachers, pause for a moment to reflect just how insane this type of thinking has become.

I just could see so many things going wrong with this, such as mentioned- student taking teachers gun or teacher misfiring, getting shot by gunman and now gunman having an extra gun. I don't know if adding more guns to the equation would help. Mass shooting like this could happen anywhere (bank,grocery store, mall, etc). You can't just arm everyone.

I believe Jonathan Chait has found a more ridiculous proposal by Megan McArdle:

"I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/12/newsweek-wins-worst-newtown-reaction-award.html

You realize there are over 5 million teachers in the u.s. That's is a heck of a lot of guns (and training)-just doesn't seem feasible or safe.