School Shootings, Armed
Teachers,
And A Greatly Improved School Safety.
John
Longenecker
Teachers are citizens, too, with full
citizen authority and rights. Let's talk about genuine school safety against
murderers.
Talking to non-gun owners as
always – let's look at the question of arming teachers versus arming students
versus arming staff or security. Let's look at it as how best to work for the
safety of our adult and minor children at school as well as that of
Teachers.
Arming adult students
is the most effective for several reasons. This, of course, includes
armed employees, armed parents and other visitors who have a right to be on
campus.
1. Gun owners know that — as citizens — they have all legal
authority to use up to lethal force when in the reasonable apprehension of grave
danger – wherever it finds them. These citizens assert that administrations have
no legal authority to interfere with this as gun bans do – admissions agreement
or not. Experts agree that it's hard to legally justify surrendering a civil
right as a condition of being admitted to college. Patriots believe it's time to
litigate the matter on behalf of all nationwide.
Put another way, gun
bans which could have been reconciled cooperatively in favor of the civil right
quietly and collapse the issue to a non-issue can now backfire into a sweeping
movement reaching other public buildings and other venues nationwide. Officials
have no authority to force someone to surrender their civil right at the
property line, and certainly not when surrendering it is adverse to the public
interest.
2. Gun owners know that the victim is the first line of
defense, and that there are many illustrative cases of school shootings' being
de-escalated thanks to an armed student or two. [See www.keepandbeararms.com for a
repository of such reports from around the nation.] These number much more than
most Americans know.
3. Gun owners know that no one can take your place
as that first line of defense. Not police, not administrations, not gun bans.
Parents need to think about this one since their adult children are just that:
adult. If there's anything we've learned from disasters and school shootings,
it's that you're on your own in the most critical moments. Profiling shooters,
high technology tracing and instituting gun bans will never change this truth.
4. And finally, tactically speaking, arming any known persons in
an established routine, such as arming the Principal or an armed security guard,
is ineffective for this reason: all a shooter need do is identify the
staffmember and approach from the other side of campus. The response time of the
armed guard or Principal gives a shooter more than enough time to complete
several murders. Or, a shooter can deploy other members of his strike force, as
in several past multi-shooter murders. Or a shooter can simply wait for the
Principal or guard to snooze or eat or make a phone call or go off campus before
adjusting his schedule.
[See the White Paper issued at www.GoodForTheCountry.org/whitepaper.html
for an analysis of how gun bans
operate against the public interest.]
If any individual teacher or number
of teachers or students wants to carry, then he/she/they must be recognized to
carry as individual citizens — one does not check his/her citizenship at the
admissions office — and must be unfettered by silly political rules crafted to
concentrate power away from the authority of the people. The teacher or student
has all of the rights and authority any citizen has, and these override the
silliness of administrations who want to obfuscate that authority in their
territory. Reports show how students are kicked out of school or forced into
counseling merely for proposing their rights. This intimidation is vexing to
all, and is shown to operate against the public interest. Suspension or
counseling is an abuse of power to silence students who only want their safety
respected more.
Vexing and obfuscating citizen authority I call hiding
the ball. It is an underhanded tactic and brings disgrace to the
institution.
Meanwhile, though, other campus administrators share the
patriotic view and have shown that their armed students on campus have presented
positively no problems, in contrast to what the anti-gun administrators continue
to maintain. These officials chose not to hide the ball, and have not regretted
it. They recognize citizen authority and bring credit to the educational institutions they are.
Stop hiding the ball at the expense of our children. Citizen authority
trumps administrator folly in forcing students to choose between felony and
funeral.
And that is good for the country.
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