Posted on 12/21/2012 9:21:00 AM PST by Obadiah
Poll: Should Schools have armed police officers?
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
NO, because Police Officers can travel at the speed of light and can stop all acts of violence... /sarcasm.
Find me what colleges do NOT have armed police. Even my local junior college has a totally armed system with police cars and personnel. They are police unformed with all the armament. What in the hell are we doing not having armed guards protection our lower schools? The NRA is right. Most Americans seem to be as dumb as a box of rocks.
A ridiculous poll. It plays into the hands of gun grabbers and those offering simplistic solutions who will say “see - our society is too violent!” Who is promoting this???
Schools do not need armed guards. The chance of a kid dying from a Newton-style random shooting is probably the same as them getting hit by lightening - twice in the same day.
As to those problem inner-city schools - don’t they already have guards and metal detectors? Their problem is not guns, but the culture.
Why isn’t the Capitol a “Gun-Free” zone?
Why is Mayor Bloomberg’s office a Gun-Free zone?
Why isn’t there a Gun-Free zone around Obama?
Besides, it won't be police. It will be TSA.
A lot of people have their head up their a$$. This should be easy. A police officer at schools with a gun! Or should they just put up a sign that says “no guns allowed.”
Uhh... Virginia Tech?
Where have these people been? Many California public school districts have had dedicated campus police for decades!
LOL, good question!
I have a patient who is an airline pilot (he flies big jets to far places for a big airline), and he states that, including himself, a very large percentage of pilots now carry a sidearm. In fact, each pilot must pass some type of annual recertification process to continue to have the ability to do so. This made me feel real good to hear that many pilots are armed. I would guess this fact would make more than 75% of the people back in business class and coach feel better, too. Now why wouldn’t those same people not want the same or similar situation in the schools their kids attend? Aren’t the stakes just as high?
People have lost their minds.
Nearly every day, millions of kids go to school in 125,000+ schools across the U.S. & nothing happens
An extremely small percentage of the time, a nutjob goes crazy & starts shooting.
Yeah, it's tragic. I understand & sympathize. But it's no reason for the severe overreactions most everyone seems to be fond of.
In the big cities they already are. We need more unionized teachers too.
Many schools already have armed officers. However, I think that it would be just as effective to have panic buttons in all classrooms (location known only to the teacher — or worn by the teacher) that can be pressed in the case of an emergency with an armed officer at the receiving end ready for response.
Barney the purple dinosaur will protect them.
A lone police officer at the Sandy Hook school would be a sitting duck for a determined skilled gunman.
First off a policeman would be out gunned if all he had was a standard issue side arm. The Sandy Hook shooter had a M4 with a twenty round magazine of 0.223 caliber rifle ammunition.
The 0.223 round will easily penetrate any of the police issue body armor.
A Dylan and Kleabold type killing partnership could easily out maneuver a single cop. Having one member locate the cop before beginning and have the other arrive with the guns to take down the cop. The killing could then proceed until the police arrive on mass. A beat cop (which a school cop is) will inevitably fall in to a predictable pattern, even a individual shooter could probably recognize this pattern and plan an ambush. For example: The cop is always outside Miss Brady’s room flirting between 5th and 6 period I can step around the corner and pop a cap in his ass.
The only true solution as has been said before is to have multiple members of the faculty armed without the students knowing who.
A know quantity can be planned for with a small but determined force and the element of surprise. An unknown quantity must be met with massive force if success is to be assured.
If we can afford to have police officers driving around looking for someone with a burned out taillight, we damn sure can afford to have an officer in a school!
And there needs to be threat identification procedures developed, and rapid response procedures.
If peoples property taxes have to go up a few bucks to help cover it, so be it.
If teachers and the NEA have to stop their non-stop whining about money and take a bit of a cut, so be it.
You may not appreciate how correct you are. Nothing happens there!
Kids graduating and now headed for college cannot read, cannot write, cannot multiply, and know more about Paris Hilton than they do about Paris France.
Based on what I have seen, armed police should be assigned right into many classrooms. Have you observed one lately?
Most schools in my area already HAVE armed police officers. They are known as “school resource officers” and do a fine job keeping the lid on the out of control kids, reared by out of control parents, in the environment of out of control teachers unions.
All that is true. The object of a silent (or audible) panic button would be to call multiple armed people for aid. The object of being in a secret location is that the perps don’t know where they are being reported.
Every bank has secret alarm buttons. Most home burglar alarms have them too. (I have 3 in my house.) Most elderly are equipped with “Get Help” alarm buttons on a pendant, or bracelet. They are cheap (compared to an armed force on hand at all times). Hopefully they will never be used.
At my rural High-School in the late 70’s, it was well known that the Shop Teacher, the Hunter-safety teacher, and the football coach all carried sidearms, OPENLY, on most days.
Add in the two or three dozen rifles/shotguns in the parking lot. And funny, know one was ever shot.
We create unarmed victim zones, and then WONDER why this crap happens?
At my rural High-School in the late 70’s, it was well known that the Shop Teacher, the Hunter-safety teacher, and the football coach all carried sidearms, OPENLY, on most days.
Add in the two or three dozen rifles/shotguns in the parking lot. And funny, know one was ever shot.
We create unarmed victim zones, and then WONDER why this crap happens?
While attending a YMCA youth “Model Legislature” in California in the early 70’s, while Reagan was Governor, I was in the outer Governor’s office when someone accidently tripped the alarm. Even though Governor Reagan was out of town that day, it was amazing how quickly the plainclothes and uniformed officers were there. I was a “committee chair” and our committee room had a button under the table at my position - I was very careful to not bump it.
Personally I see arming a good percentage of the administrative and teaching staff of the school.
They are always there when the students are there. No one other than the staff need know who on the staff is armed. Actually no one other than the school board and the administrative staff need to know who is armed. The fewer the better.
The teachers could be paid a bonus to their salary for taking the training and carrying the weapon similar to the extra pay teaching coaches get.
The panic button would be a good additional measure however the extra cost to the school could be prohibitive. Anything like that designed to school specifications is always going to be much more expensive than the simple civilian package.
There you go! This technology is not even new.
School Marshalls. Much like Air Marshalls.
There is an added benefit to arming teachers that had occurred to me.
The teenage thugs in high school and Jr. high school may be more hesitant to assault their teachers if they must assume that some of them are armed.
Indeed. I think this is one of the reasons that many high schools already have armed, or multiple armed, security on site.
I am willing to bet that every school has a few people who believe in the 2nd amendment and are likely experienced, trained and responsible with firearms, thanks to military and/or civilian training. There may even be a few in every school system who have a CC permit.
Why not encourage those who are already interested in and have experience with firearms, and who are already in positions of trust engaged in teaching our children, why not let those individuals, rather than cops, be given additional training and then the responsibility for carrying at school?
They already know the territory, the people, the students and faculty, and are motivated to protect and to serve far better than an off duty cop or security guard hired for the job.
Let them protect their own. Train them until they are trusted in today's world, insurable, etc., and then let us take care of ourselves rather than farming out the job to government.
I agree. Howeveer, you have to realize that most teachers would not be any good with a gun. It takes a firm spine to actually pull the trigger at someone — even if they are assaulting you; and I don’t think most teachers carry that gene. However, if there are armed personnel available who have the training and the will, the rest of the teachers could alert them with call buttons.
Call buttons are such cheap technology and available anywhere that I don’t know why school boards haven’t utilized them before. They don’t even have to be hard wired these days. RF technology. I spoke to my daughter about this. She is a teacher and (naturally) is brainwashed like most teachers. She said, “I could just use my intercom.” (If she knew how to use it, which wasn’t the case the one time she really needed it.
“Well, no you couldn’t. If you were being held at gunpoint, you wouldn’t last very long if you went over to the intercom and made an announcement,” I said. With a call button, you could press it and summon help without anyone knowing it.
A call button would be useful — not only for an armed invasion — but for any kind of accident, or health problem.
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