Should teachers and students be allowed to have guns in school?

NO.

No one should be allowed to carry guns or even to own them, unless they are in the military and fighting in a war.

The perpetrator yesterday was taken down by pepper spray. Much better alternative than a gun.

Well this is one of the few only? incidents where the gunman was stopped before he put the gun to,his own head or was killed by police. What took him down? Pepper spray and brute force.

I honestly don’t see the answer as arming students and faculty. In the panic these situations create more guns are likely to make for more casualties. I am a teacher and I would quit before being forced to carry a weapon. I don’t think being armed would make my students or me any more safe.

Having others armed doesn’t stop some of these idiots as shown by the 1990 Darwin Award but it certainly shortens their visit.

I agree with @zenvelo with one exception. I think the police should have guns.

@Kardamom I would have agreed until about 10 years ago. Now, 500 Americans are killed every year by police.

For the record I carry pepper spray as my defense of choice. The last thing I would ever want to do is have to use a firearm against someone. I enjoy marksmanship because it such a technical challenge and is quite enjoyable. I’m permitted but I only really have it so I’m not harassed when transporting them. That said I also support reasonable carry rights. I do not support all of this open carry extremism going on right now. As much as people have philosophical issues with guns sometimes the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. It’s just the harsh reality of the world we live in. It’s not all warm and cuddly. Pepper spray is not always going to be effective. Just arming the police is not really enough. They take time to respond and contrary to popular belief they do not posses some special ninja skills with them that the general public does not have. They usually just end up doing the paperwork and cleanup after something has happened. I think the permit process sucks and that there needs to be tiered access to carry based on training, certification and re-certification not just a basic skills test and a background check. I see much benefit to having highly trained yet anonymous people who carry wherever.

@zenvelo I think the police need to do a better job of vetting candidates for the police academy, and for being able to spot troubled officers (with mental problems or anger issues) before they go rogue. But in general, I think the police, at least in the U.S. need to have guns, but the general public does not.

If you want to reduce gun violence, the obvious answer is to have fewer guns, not add more guns. Unfortunately, you’re talking about the USA; logic will be utterly ignored in favour of “OMG they’re all coming to get me!! Must have more guns!!”.

Ugh, no. Kids carrying guns in the school. I hate to imagine what a schoolyard brawl or scuffle might turn into…I’m all for people owning guns if they could be responsible with them, but it doesn’t appear to be the case. And I certainly wouldn’t let kids have any.

Sure, give immature, violent psychopaths guns, and give those that are terrorised and stressed out by those psychopaths on a daily basis guns, too.
Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Because a shoot-out in class won’t mess up the entire school if several people shoot, or to make life easier for the would-be “crazies”...no more worrying about how to obtain a weapon, just use the one handed to you in fifth grade.

And this on a day when my kids were in lockdown at their high school for three hours because a kid posted a threat on Facebook that he hated all the seniors and was going to do something during the senior picnic.

No.

No. Because the good guys don’t wear white hats and the bad guys don’t wear black hats.

I don’t think everybody in a school should be armed, but I do believe it might be beneficial to have designated trained persons carrying concealed. The High School in our town has a special duty Police Officer who is on duty at the school. Perhaps even if the identity of the carrying personnel were not known to anybody but the principal might add a bit more security to the those persons.

Good Gravy NO!

Now, if all the teachers were trained and equipped with tasers, THAT would be interesting.

@majorrich Bring back the switch and no person would dream of ever entering a school again unless they had to.

”Another school shooting at a University, 1 dead 3 wounded. Should students and teachers just be targets for these crazies or should guns be aggressively banned from private ownership?”

Ask a polarizing, one-dimensional ‘question’ where you are, in fact, just stating your opinion, and receive a polarizing, one-dimensional ‘answer’ where I am, in fact, just stating the polar opposite.

Personally, I prefer discussion to polemics.

Alternately, I could say, “Yes, if we’d armed the elementary school kids, we’d probably have 100 times as many school fatalities annually from accidents as occurred in Newtown. Well, 2,000 because there would be 2 victims per incident, shooter and shot.

Finally, it’s a nice touch calling the mentally ill, “crazies”. It really solidifies your position.

@ibstubro While you are piling on the new guy, let’s keep the discussion semi rational and within the confines of current Federal Firearm ownership laws. You have to be 18, have no felony convictions and have a tattoo to own a gun. So please stop attempting to apply this question to elementary and middle school kids who only have tattoo’s.

There is a certain logic to everyone toting a gun. After all, if guns were as ubiquitous as cell phones, the public would lose its irrational fear of firearms. And as shootings replace fist fights, and the the country’s already astronomical firearms death rate soars ever upwards, we could escape the irrational fear of death itself. Here in America, we’re living through an interesting experiment. It’s a land awash in weaponry, with virtually no assets devoted to mental health. As we become increasingly accustomed to folks blowing one another away in schools and churches, why not arm EVERYONE. After all, why should just the psychopaths have all the fun? Since anyone who wants a gun can already get one, why not make it legal? If a few million shootings a year are the necessary price to protect the freedoms of those of us who aren’t yet shot, we can take comfort in the fact that our dead bullet laden dead or maimed friends and relatives took the hit to insure our “freedom”.

stanleybmanly Wow

I wasn’t piling on, @CWMcCall, just pointing out that Fluther works better as a Q & A site than as a ‘Make a flame-bait statement’ site.

Arm the students, and when law enforcement arrives, how do they tell the “crazies” from the kids? How long do you think it would take before a cop shot a kid that thought he was being heroic?

Arm the teachers? High stress, low paid teachers? Every day there’s a story about a teacher’s inappropriate punishment of / contact with a student. Do we really want to give them the option of “going postal” in the classroom? Granted, that would be a rare occurrence, but what’s the allowable rate of kids dead by a teacher’s hand?

@stanleybmanly, stop piling on the new guy.

Yes, and let’s not forget to arm the postal workers, our first line of defense!

@ibstubro Cops are highly trained and are instructed to announce drop your weapon before opening fire and I would assume anyone who does not want to die that day will comply. And by the time the cops arrive, the mad hater will be less than room temperature and all firearms will be safely tucked away.

@CWMcCall Cops may be instructed to announce ‘drop your weapon” but they don’t. More innocent people have been killed by police in the US in the last 10 years than have been killed by terrorists.

The police in the U.S. need to be disarmed.

I recall an old ‘All in the Family’ episode where Archie Bunker solves the airplane hijacking problem. When you think about it there’s a grain of sense to it. A few rocks against it, but those 9/11 planes would not have hit their targets had the airlines followed Archie’s recommendation.

@LuckyGuy Uh… please tell me you didn’t miss the entire point of All In the Family.

@zenvelo The gangbangers across the country would love to see that happen! O-o

@dappled_leaves Relax…. Note, I said there was a grain of truth against rocks.
I thought that scene was hilarious and I always appreciated his misuse of the English language. “The big bankers want to emasticate this here country like puppets…”

How about this? What is the cut-off age for handgun ownership for students? How about grade 12, grade 6 ,kindergarten. Where exactly does it become too young to hold a firearm, in school? Or is their a licencing test for maturity and anyone who passes can own a hand gun.

Again @talljasperman we have to bow down to state and federal age restrictions to own firearms.

Yes, the K thru 12 kiddies will have to make due with pepper spray. Well, maybe in middle school, we could allow them tazers. I mean no one in our society can afford to be unarmed, right?

I sort of like @stanleybmanly view of what the future could look like with everyone armed, like they have their cellphones, they have their loaded weapons. iGun? Samsungsidearm? Anyone? I imagine it looking like an American version of that movie, ‘Brazil’.

The situation might look something like this.

Absolutely, yes! What could possibly go wrong?

People who have gone through a school marshal class can be designated to carry (meaning they are part of a bigger school safety plan). It’s quite involved and they must pass several tests along with a thorough background check. Once they pass and receive their certificate, they can carry a concealed weapon on campus.

No student should be allowed to concealed carry a gun, ever. They are not yet adults.

Most teachers would not be mentally suitable to use a firearm in a crisis, so no.

What an odd question.