So wrong on so many levels

South Dakota to allow armed teachers in schools

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21722377

The US state of South Dakota has enacted a law allowing school districts to arm teachers and other school staff.

The law’s backers say it will prevent mass school shootings like a December massacre in Connecticut that killed 26.

Amid a push by the White House to strengthen gun laws, the bill reflects a growing divide in the US over whether more or fewer guns keep people safe.

The measure does not force school districts to arm teachers and will not require teachers to carry guns.

But it allows each school district to choose if staff could be armed. It takes effect in July. 

You send your children to school to be safe.

How safe are they going to be if the people who are looking after them have a gun in their hand? How safe are they going to be with more guns in the school? How safe are they going to be when little Timmy McGuire finds the gun that his teacher has to protect him and accidentally blows hi head off?

How safe are they going to be when a full scale gun battle, the likes of which was last seen at the OK Corral or The Alamo, is going on over their heads as they try to find cover?

How safe are they going to be when the people who are supposed to look after them are using guns they are probably not trained with and might never have used before to look after them?

How safe are they going to be when someone comes to their school, uses up all their ammo, shoots a teacher, steals their gun and uses it to kill more kids?

And even setting aside the fact schools are being turned in to war zones, there is the issue of the second to last line – ~"The measure does not force school districts to arm teachers and will not require teachers to carry guns"

I would imagine there are a few teachers who don’t want to be armed. Either because they think guns are wrong, because they don’t think they would make the school a safer place, because they thinking bringing guns in to school is a crime against nature or for any number of other reasons. 

So – the teacher refuses to carry a gun, because the law doesn’t force him to.

But the parents in the area want their school to be safe, so they ask the headmaster to make all the staff carry guns. 

The teacher refuses, and the parents say that the children will be removed from their classes until the teacher gives in and starts carrying a gun to school.

So what happens? Does the headmaster stand by the teacher and let all the kids be taken out of school? Or does he stand with the parents and sack the teacher, replacing him with a more flexible one?

And if the parents of the children in that one class talk to all the other parents in the area, and they form a HUGE protest against the school, how long will the head teacher hold out before giving in and forcing the teachers to carry guns?

As far as I can tell, this won’t make anyone safer, and it will (potentially) cause a lot more tension and wrangling and legal challenges and unfair dismissal cases and people getting their faces on the local, maybe national, news.

Another point :-

What if the teacher – who, now thanks to this shiny new law is allowed to carry a gun in school where previously she would have been banned – is the one that snaps and goes on a shooting spree? Will that makes the kids safer when the government has put the weapon that kills them in the hand of the person who kills them?

But wait – there’s more. 

Do you remember the scene in Die Hard where the police light up the building with spot lights so they can have a better view? And then the terrorists start shooting and the first thing they do is take out the lights? 

Imagine (for a moment) that you are intent on going in to a school and shooting a shit load of people. Now imagine you know that the teachers are all going to be armed, to prevent you from doing that. 

Wouldn’t your first target when you enter a classroom be the teacher? Because I am assuming this law isn’t going to give guns to the children in the school (unless it is even more ludicrous than I had considered), then only the teacher will be armed? 

And wouldn’t this also apply whether the teacher is armed or not? Because if you (and again, use your imagination because this is hypothetical) don’t know if the teacher has a gun or not, are you going to take the chance they don’t, or are you going to target them first just in case?

And finally – a more philosophical point.

The whole cause of this law is that someone took a gun in to a school and shot some people. 

And the reaction to this is to teach children that – because taking a gun in to a school to shoot someone is wrong – the government is telling you to make more guns in to school to shoot people.

I am not sure that is the best way to formulate the argument that shooting people is bad.

I am not an American and there could be subtleties about this that I am missing. Maybe putting more guns in to a given area will make it safer, and prevent anyone from trying to attack people in that area.

Because god knows it worked with President Regan. And since surrounding him with well trained armed agents made sure no one ever took a shot at him, I can easily see how putting guns in to the hands of barely trained (if at all) teachers would easily prevent anyone from coming in to a school to shoot at the children.

"If you build a twenty foot wall, then someone will get a twenty one foot ladder"

If you put more guns in to the school, then anyone who is intent on going to a school to kill will simply bring bigger, more dangerous guns with them. 

Or if you put more guns in to the the school, then anyone who is intent on going to a school to kill someone might go somewhere else where there are fewer guns, such as a local kids’ swimming pool, or a local amusement park, or a local park, or a local cinema showing the next installment of the Batman Franchise, or just wait outside until the kids are on their way home and no longer protected by the newly armed teachers. 

There have been three mass gun related killings in the UK in my 40 years. Just three. (Don’t get me wrong, that is three too many, and the 45 lives lost are far too many, and they should never have happened, but compared to the US, three is actually quite a small number). And in each occasion, the government of the day looked in to how to take the guns away from the people who have them, to stop them using them to do this in the future. Because the general assumption was if someone doesn’t have a gun, they can’t use it to shoot someone. 

And while the argument that "if you take a gun they will use a knife" might sound reasonable, it is REALLY, REALLY hard to kill someone 50 yards away with a knife. Or a sword. Or a rock. 

If someone doesn’t have a gun then – whether you have a gun or not – they can’t shoot you and klll you.

If someone has a gun, and you don’t have  a gun, they can shoot and kill you. 

If someone has a gun, and you do ha

ve a gun, they can still shoot you and kill you. 

Guns may not kill people, but they make it a fuck of a lot easier to do.