If arming more people is the answer to reducing gun violence, do we start with kindergarten teachers (as Dr. Ben Carson, U.S. presidential hopeful has suggested), or do we need to start with the kindergartners themselves?

It doesn’t, and it’s a totally absurd proposition.

I just read about allowing guns on Texas campuses. I think it’s a bad idea, but what the hell. Maybe we’ve become such pricks that the only way we can be polite and tolerant with one another is if we’re all armed. So, go ahead, I say. There are 7.2 billion people on earth. If we lose a few Texans in this experiment and these idiots finally realize that the gun control people have been right all along, maybe we’ll finally get a consensus on this. And then again, I might be wrong. Maybe we have become so ornery and backward we must re-visit the Wild West in order to have an orderly society. Go for it.

But, if this spreads, leave my favorite university librarian out of it. Good penguins are an endangered species.

You certainly don’t arm young children.. that’s a stupid question. Arm teachers? Maybe.. but that depends on the risk in the environment. If you’re in a small town in the middle of nowhere without crime in general.. of course you don’t need to arm the teachers. If you’re in Queens or Detroit or something.. absolutely.. arm the teachers.

This will be my only answer in this thread as I’m completely sick of the “blame guns for people’s actions” theme going on here lately. It’s stupid. It’s asinine. And it’s another reason why I want to move back to a small town that isn’t so gun-sensitive… a town where 12 year olds go hunting with their Dads.. a town where people can drive around with a gun rack in their truck without fear of some city slicker making a new law against having one.

The parents in the linked cases should be prosecuted for not securing their weapons.

I kinda like that idea as well.
The dumber and more ignorant the further I want to distance myself and Mrs Squeeky from them.

@Espiritus_Corvus I work in an open computer lab with about 200 computers and no locked space. Will be a sitting penguin if the madman comes. Scares the shit out of me if I think about it – and penguin poop is nothing to sneeze at.

We need more guns on college campus. As demonstrated yesterday, they are effective at ending arguments from conflicting groups.

I’m becoming less and less interested in leaving my house. Ever.

Why is it that everything has to be the most asenine extreme when people rant about who should have firearms. It would be not only illegal, but immoral to arm children before they understand the responsibility that comes with bearing an implement of death. Believe me when I say I have seen children bearing arms, but our schools are not a war zone, and it was still immoral in my eyes then.
Resource officers, trained volunteer teachers or even parents would be better protection for kids than none. Parents would be most formidable protecting their own children! But they must have the full ‘shoot/ don’t shoot’ exercise available at police academies across the country. It is several exhausting days, but very eye opening. I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to take this course if thy can. There have been people who quit carrying after this experience, so I feel it to be worthwhile to remove some Rambo types.

A Jill of all trades, I taught school for twenty years. There is no way in the world I would Ever arm the teachers in a school. Did I say Ever? All you need is a miscommunication or both gender’s machismo and that’s all. Quick Draw McGraw on steroids. Pure and simple stupidity.
Why in the world would you get more weapons out there? Why not have better security measures on the school grounds? Spend funding on safety.
I don’t care what permits a person has. Stupidity is contagious.

Unemployed combat vets should be hired to walk school perimeters to keep them safe from intruders, and carry a radio to be alerted of anything erupting inside. It would serve dual purpose. I don’t know for certain if they should carry a gun, but certainly a tazer.

In the four years I attended high school, three teachers were arrested for assaulting students. None were convicted, and all got a lovely paid vacation before coming back to work, including the one that broke an oar over a student’s back.

The last thing I want in one of those teachers’ hands is a firearm.

An armed society is a polite society and guns create safety, right?

Everyone who believes so should come to Chicago and prove the point, waving their guns around on the heavily-armed South and West sides.

Let me know in advance, please, so I can make popcorn. Thanks!

You might as well claim a Big Mac is a cure for obesity.

I would love to say something about students probably deserving more than they got, like where that oar should’ve ended up.
But I won’t.

Keep student weapons out.
Do not arm school personnel.
Have airport-like security to assure everyone’s safety. We can’t do that!
We’re violating rights by examining personal effects!!!!!
And hey diddle, diddle,
the cow jumped over the moon….,

Everyone having guns totally helps with gang violence.

But realistically. The gunman would just know to shoot the teacher first.

And we have examples of similar countries that have limits on guns that don’t have this shit happen every week. So less guns helps or Americans are worse people. Your choice.

I enjoy political candidates ranting on, because they’re just digging their grave.

Lately the gun lobby’s mantra has been “We need more guns, not less.”
Shooting in a grade school? Arm the teachers.
Shooting on college campus? Allow more legal guns on more campus’s.
Shooting in shopping center or movie theater? Make concealed carry easier.

As @Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One points out, the absurdity of this approach comes out when people with no legal access to guns are shooting people with no legal access to guns. In this case children shooting children in cold blood.

@majorrich, if I may:
“Why is it that everything has to be the most asenine extreme when people rant about who should have firearms. It would be not only illegal, but immoral to arm _anyone before they understand the responsibility that comes with bearing an implement of death.“_
The first hurdle to allowing open access to police academies ‘shoot, don’t shoot’ programs is funding. The second hurdle would be the realization that nut jobs were completing the training in order to better ambush police and make their real-life death-wish games all that more realistic.

I don’t find the notion of arming teens and pre-teens any more or less absurd than arming kindergarten teachers.

Our community is seeking funding for more resource officers to augment the two we already have. This, in my mind is the best solution as it places a trained officer at the school and brings response time to an active shooter event from minutes to… well… fewer minutes.

I see this as a forum for brainstorming a solution to the problem using the resources we have at hand. At least we are open in our opining here.

WHAT the fuck is wrong?? The solution is to bring more trained armed people into a community that probably hasn’t had a mass shooting… Or have you majorrich? When was the last mass shooting in your county?

You are totally justifying my problem is Americans theory. Except Canadians. Technically North American but not as fucking evil.

No shootings at school that I can remember, but several knivings every year at the high school. Drugs are starting to appear in the school as early as fifth grade. Where we don’t get the shootings, our resource officer is pretty busy. The drug problem has been blossoming of late. It’s just a matter of time I think is the tenor of the story as I read it on the front page of Sunday’s paper.
We have had a rash of murders in the last year. A double homocide just north of us where the victims were stuffed into a tree trunk. Another last week fleeing through from a nearby large city. Typical stuff of suburban life that never would I dream of as I remember my childhood. I wish I could fathom what is wrong with people, I just watch anymore.

There are and have always been drugs in every school, ever since the first little kid got into daddy’s weed stash and brought it on the playground.

That’s no reason to have an SRO literally trained to kill students that step out of line.

Where on earth did you get the idea that an SRO is trained to kill students?! That is more stupid than the OP! An SRO is a regular police officer assigned to the school. He even gives classes for the DARE and safety programs at the elementary schools. It serves to engender positive relationships between the kids and law enforcement. And of course they take care of when one kid shanks another kid.
And these are kids trading in narcotics that they get from goodness knows where. My understanding is he local PD actively interdicts when narcotics are recovered at school.
I only know one of the officers from my sons high school and he is a great guy but is going to retire soon.

@majorrich Shouldn’t it be not only immoral, but illegal to arm anyone before they understand the responsibility that comes with bearing an implement of death?

@ibstubro , that sounds ideal, but our world is not ideal. The thing is, we are all born with an implement of death.
Our minds which is powerful, inquisitive, and inventive, can also be destructive.
Guns are a human invention. So too are knives a human invention. If there was a manufacturer churning out humans, and equipping them as they churn out, then that would be neat.
As it is, we are humans, born free and thinkin’ wild. We invent what we want and don’t have.

My argument was to the original post. Arming children is an all around bad idea. They don’t yet have the capacity to understand the repercussions of sending a round downrange.
When people get too angry and can’t control their anger, they do stupid things. I was reading a devotional about mental illness this morning about the fundamental flaw of lumping too many people into the mental illness box. Better to put many more into the Angry box.
A very smart man (my father) often joked about the biblical prose on beating swords into plowshares. A B-52 load of plowshares will still do a world of hurt on someone. The implement doesn’t matter it’s the intent. The position of many is people who would harm children in a school won’t be stopped by a sign that says ‘no guns beyond this point’. It hamstrings people who want to protect those children by the same means to make them criminals for doing so. They want to make it possible to have the chance to keep the area safe without breaking the law is all. Not to become a meat shield for anyone.
Your question is indeed valid and a responsible FFL would/should be able to refuse to sell a gun so someone who is clueless about what they are purchasing is capable of doing. They are adults and by law have the right to buy it, but they (the Dealer) are permitted to refuse. It’s in the rule book.

Thanks, @Here2_4, but this is a general question regarding gun violence, so I thought that when I paraphrased @majorrich using the “implement of death” quote that it was understood we were speaking of guns.

But, @majorrich, if there’s not some sort of mandatory training involved in purchasing a handgun, how is the dealer to know?
I’m not willing to pass off to a dealer what the law doesn’t cover.

Absolutely. I used Implement of Death because I am studying for a Maonic Ritual and that phrase is just so creepy.
Training only comes into play when (at least in Ohio) you wish to carry your handgun in public. A Bit counter intuitive but you need to pass training to carry concealed, but need a concealed license for open carry. Otherwise carrying a loaded handgun in public is considered ‘inciting panic’ a first degree misdemeanor. Often that will also get your weapon confiscated. It is unclear if it affects further purchases. But losing $400+ for the gun and court costs and fines are enough to pretty much keep me keeping my license up to date. I can’t speak for everyone though.