There have been 11 US school shootings this year. Is it time to arm teachers?

Proponents of guns as “defense” are always so sure that, if only they had a weapon, they’d take care of a shooter. The fundamental problem with this is that it is likely to do a lot more damage from added chaos.

You probably will not be in a focused frame of mind in a crisis, and you probably will not have the best aim (despite your normal skill). And, if you’re obviously armed, there is a better chance that you’ll look like the perpetrator to any bystander or police trying to make sense of the situation. This will divide resources as people try to figure out exactly who it is they’re trying to take down.

And guess what, if your dream comes true and you’re allowed to be an armed civilian, then you probably won’t be the only armed bystander in the next crisis. If there are 3 or more people all pulling out weapons and all looking like The Shooter, what then; will these people become confused and try to shoot each other? And when they miss, will there be even more casualties? And will the police actually figure out who the real shooter is, or just shoot all the armed people to make sure they have control of the situation?

There are so many problems kids have that could be addressed before we make society even more militaristic. Poverty? Racism? Bullying? Domestic abuse? Poor investment in education, making schools worse places than they ought to be?

In the 2011 Tuscon shooting [1] (the one where Gabby Giffords was badly injured), Joe Zamudio, one of the people who helped subdue the shooter, was carrying a concealed weapon and nearly shot the wrong guy. [2] Ultimately the shooter was completely subdued without the use of firearms.

The conclusion that I draw from this incident and many others is that it would be more effective to train people to take down shooters by hand, and there would be considerably less chance of serious collateral damage because an armed bystander didn't know what he or she was doing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur...

Asking a teacher to shoot a kid, even a kid who is shooting others, is asking too much in my book. And I say that as someone pretty firmly opposed to gun control.

We need to stop shoehorning kids into high schools that assume that kids are either college-bound, or losers destined for welfare (if they even graduate). There is nothing worse for a kids' self esteem than forcing him to participate in something that he's systematically excluded from.

At my high school, if you were not college bound, you got no attention from career or guidance counselors, and were pretty much written off unless you were gifted athletically.

Strange how the policies posited by conservatives to stop "terrorism" never apply to school shootings.

Racial profiling (most of these school shooters are white!!), extreme unfettered surveillance of children, running sting operations to offer mentally disabled children $250,000 to agree to commit school shootings and then arresting them (as in the Newburgh Sting Operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newburgh_Sting). These should all work just as well, right?

Why does the US, particularly, have a problem with suicide attacks like this? No other place in the world has a problem like this with the kind of political and economic stability that the US has (regrettably, in countries that are constantly in war or political flux, these kinds of attacks are more common, see Ireland during the height of the IRA for example).

You know, while correlation doesn't necessarily equate to causation, it has to be said... There hasn't been a gun-related massacre here in Australia since we took away semi automatic and automatic firearms. I don't know when the last time a child here even accidentally shot someone else with their parents firearm either, I don't recall hearing of it in recent times.

Arming teachers will not solve anything while there is a culture of gun violence in the country. In fact, I see this as making it worse. They're talking about actively desensitising adults to shoot at a child. Even seasoned soldiers have problems in that scenario.

Instead of arming teachers how about using webrtc to bring the classroom into the home? Its less money to give every kid a chromebook than to buy guns, ammo and weapons training for every teacher.

Yep, anything but gun control!! /s