Free Republic

A survey of nearly 4,000 K-12 teachers in Texas found that most do not want to be armed while in class or be expected to intercept a gunman at school, according to the state’s teachers union, which released its survey results Wednesday. The Texas American Federation of Teachers sent an online questionnaire to its 65,000 members, which include public school teachers, support personnel and higher education employees, a week after an 18-year-old gunman killed 21 people — including 19 children — at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Soon after the shooting, Texas Republicans said the solution could be arming teachers....

In the latest two horrific school shootings, one at a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) high school in Highlands Ranch, CO, and the other at a college in Charlotte, NC, two courageous students lost their lives as they tackled the shooters to stop the slaughter. Never again should another precious young person with his whole life ahead of him need to die as a first responder. Now we know they don’t have to because armed and willing school staff can keep them safe. This is the take-away from a new study from the Crime Prevention Research Center after analyzing nearly 20...

The Chippewa Valley school district in suburban Detroit didn’t retreat in 2017 after voters overwhelmingly defeated its proposal to borrow $90 million for spending pitched as “protecting the community’s investment in our schools.” Instead it rebranded the package as if lives were on the line – as an effort to literally protect students. Last year, voters approved the bond proposal with the campaign tag line “safe schools, strong schools” emphasizing the need for new security funding. School districts around the nation have found that security sells in the year since a troubled student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas...

'Why do teachers have to die protecting their students? Why can't we live protecting our students?' In the weeks and months since the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, the debate over whether teachers should be able to carry firearms in schools has received a great deal of attention. A number of states have allowed teachers to carry firearms in schools for years and provide some insight into how such programs work in practice and what motivates teachers who want to be armed. In Colorado, local school districts have the authority to but are not required to...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The Wyoming school district where U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos suggested that teachers might need to be armed to protect children from grizzly bears voted Tuesday on doing just that, though concerns about school shootings worry parents more than the possibility of big bruins on the prowl. The 4-2 vote by the Park County School District No. 6 board in the town of Cody near Yellowstone National Park came after more than six months of discussion and debate. Under the proposed policy...

History teacher Timothy Lock said he supported teachers being armed. For that, he was suspended. From Daily Caller: A New Jersey high school teacher has been suspended from his job for expressing support for arming teachers after the Parkland school shooting.Cherry Hill High School history teacher Timothy Lock, 59, said he was placed on administrative leave last week because he spoke out in one of his classes about arming teachers and ramping up school security to try and prevent a school shooting.Most of the students reportedly didn’t have a problem with Lock’s comments, but one decided to report him to...

An op-ed writer in The Washington Post says that if teachers are armed, they will be inclined to execute black and Hispanic children. How long would it be, if Trump's plan became reality, before a teacher shoots a black student and then invokes the "I feared for my life" defense we continually hear from police officers who misinterpret young black people's behavior with deadly consequences? A mountain of data on persistent racial biases and disparities in education and on police presence in schools – as well as a recent increase in racial harassment in schools – makes it clear that kids...

President Trump’s call to arm more qualified teachers is going nowhere fast with the states and with teachers unions, although some individual teachers support the idea. A mini-lecture that Mr. Trump received Monday from Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee at the White House was typical of the broad pushback against his idea of putting more guns in the hands of trained adults in schools. “I have listened to the people who would be affected by that, I have listened to the biology teachers, and they don’t want to do that at any percentage,” Mr. Inslee told the president at a...

The Khyber Pakhtunkhua provincial government of Pakistan has its taken steps to make its schools harder targets for terrorists.  In December of 2014, it suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history when seven foreign naitonals attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar, the provincial capital.  The seven terrorists killed 141 people, 132 of them school children.  The attack may have been modelled after the Beslan school attack in 2004.  The Government of Kyber Pakhtunkhua has had a different response than the Russian one.  The Kyber government has authorized its teachers and other employees to carry guns.  An...

WEST PLAINS, Mo. — At 8:30 on a cloudy, frigid morning late last month in this folksy Ozark town, the superintendent of an area school strolled through the glass doors of the local newspaper office to deliver a news release. Hours later, the content of that release produced a front-page headline in The West Plains Daily Quill that caught residents off guard: “At Fairview School Some Employees Now Carry Concealed Weapons.” That was how most parents of Fairview students learned that the school had trained some of its staff members to carry weapons, and the reaction was loud — and...

The constant refrain that we've heard every minute of every day since Newtown from the gun prohibitionists, the politicians, and the mainstream media is that we must do something, we must "demand a plan", we must pass a law. Josh Felker of LoneStar Handgun in Schertz, Texas decided to do something but it isn't what the gun prohibitionists and their political and media allies are advocating. Mr. Felker offered 400 slots in his Texas CHL classes free to teachers in Texas. The teachers in Texas took him up on the offer and all were booked within 24 hours. From the...

What an irony it was to watch the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre finally emerge after a self-imposed and highly publicized week of silence after the incomprehensible killings of 20 elementary school children. To the elite media, the NRA is the unrivaled boogeyman of Washington lobbyists. The ignorant and urban press would have you believe that the NRA is behind every piece of legislation that has ever passed Congress. That these evil gun-toters sit in the balconies above the House and Senate floors controlling the lawmakers below like marionettes on strings. So moneyed and talented are these slick-tongued lobbyists that...

I didn't want to post about this, because frankly, it is exhausting. I've been having this exact same argument for my entire adult life. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I know pretty much exactly every single thing an anti-gun person can say. I've heard it over and over, the same old tired stuff, trotted out every single time there is a tragedy on the news that can be milked. Yet, I got sucked in, and I've spent the last few days arguing with people who either mean well but are uninformed about gun laws and how...

DELAWARE, OH - Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) announced they have launched a program to provide firearm training to teachers free of charge. The announcement was made at a Town Hall Meeting at Ohio State University Thursday evening where participants debated the gun control issue in light of the recent mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Ken Hanson, BFA's Legal Chair, made the announcement, saying, "Teachers and school board members have been asking us for years about training to prepare for an incident like Sandy Hook. So our educational Foundation will sponsor an Armed Teacher Training Program for...

ST. PAUL -- Minnesota officials say they have tried to prepare for school shootings like one Friday in Connecticut, but there always is more they can do. “We need to collaboratively do a better job of securing those kids,” said state Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, a law enforcement officer for 34 years, 16 as Douglas County sheriff. ----------------------cut------------------------- “We’re going to have to have some people who are armed in our schools,” Ingebrigtsen said. “As sad as that can be, and I think (former Gov.) Jesse Ventura brought it up, maybe some of these teachers are going to have to...

We need to petition the White House to promote Armed adults to protect Children in the schools, as Israel did to stop their school shootings. We need to circumvent the old media's calling for the failed gun control policies of the past. They did not work. They will not work, and they do destroy liberty. Armed adults stop crime. Disarmed victim zones facilitate it. Creating more disarmed victims will not stop future crimes. I am not sure that a petition to the White House web page is the way to do this, but the left has already gathered 100,000 signatures...

A proposal that Nevada teachers be allowed to carry concealed weapons garnered a lot of notoriety but little traction among state lawmakers this year. Now comes this idea: Give bonus pay to teachers - from kindergarten to college - who would be trained and armed as reserve school police officers. Faculty-turned-campus cops would supplement the thin ranks of campus police and be in position to respond quickly to campus emergencies, the two champions of the idea say. Others worry about allowing teachers to be put in that kind of position. The idea will be taken up at separate meetings this...

Reverse Stance on Teachers with Guns Oct 29, 2003 2:30 pm US/Central CHICAGO (CBS/AP) Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steven Rauschenberger said he's changed his mind about allowing some teachers who are trained to use firearms to carry concealed weapons in their classrooms. Rauschenberger said in an open letter sent Tuesday to supporters that after consulting with law enforcement officials and educators, guns do not belong in classrooms. "I have concluded that the risks of having a loaded gun in a classroom outweigh any possible benefits," Rauschenberger said. "As such, I do not support legislation that would allow teachers to carry...