Texas School District Allows Teachers to Carry Firearms: Don't Worry About This Coming to a School District Near You, Because It Could Only Happen in a Civilized Society
The first thing you have to notice is the size of the district involved. Sadly, any district much larger than that would probably have many difficulties implementing any such policy (the first being: finding *teachers* who knew the first thing bout *firearms*).
But I still hold out hope that, perhaps, certain small, independent, private schools might consider adopting such a policy.
Many schools — all of them? — have fire drills; but I haven't read of too many fires happening in schools during school hours. I wonder how many there are. Yet, how many schools have "invasion" drills, and how many invasions of schools have I read about in the past few years?
Have school administrations even considered how fundamentally different an invasion is from a fire or earthquake or other natural disaster (in the former event, concentrating unarmed students in a central location is a recipe for multiplying the scope of the disaster)?
I saw this as well. This is an important admission: if a respected and responsible adult has a conceal and carry permit, then permit them to conceal and carry. I wish the other southeastern states would wise up.
As far as teachers who know the first thing about firearms, you won't find them among the liberal elite you are used to dealing with. It's the quiet ones who respect their students that will be in a position to protect them effectively and efficiently.
I know this isn't a moderate comment, but I hope you don't edit for moderation anyway.
The loud ones with the gray pony-tails are the softest targets for the bad guys.
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My hope, at our school, is pinned on the old nice guy teacher who recommended a local mom-n-pop gun shop to me, one of the women teachers, and the upstate NY science teacher who taught archery one year as an elective in PE. He has been known to pack a compound bow and a full quiver in his office area. I wouldn't put much stock in the big-city types, myself.
Since we are spending a ton building out the school property, I advocated building a tower over the science building for the afore-mentioned science teacher to snipe from, but that idea was dismissed rather too quickly, I thought.
One of these days, I actually *will* moderate your comments, and then you'll be sorry.
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The turret extension was a missed opportunity! It has a nice mediaeval vibe. You could bring in Morris dancers and a farmer's market. I love Morris dancers - though, living where I do,that is only admitted in the most subtle of stage whispers. (They are quintissentially olde English.) Their music is just great. It is sort of rollicking sea-shanty-ish and just makes you want to smile. Even with an arra in yer hied.
Speaking of arrows... was telling Dr Bob I once narrowly escaped being skewered by one, from a genuine mediaeval longbow. Well..a precision reproduction, at least. (Prolly more lethal than a seven-hundred year-old antique. But I digress.)
Anyway...I was walking, several years back, along a beautiful quiet beach outside Golspie, where my father lives. The beach runs along the foreshore of the Disneyesque Dunrobin Castle. (It has been mooted that it may have been an inspiration for the great animator.) Anyway again...it was mid-evening, and the light was fading, the last rays of the sun catching in the rock-pools and ripples in the sand. Suddenly, I felt a juddering whack at my side, and heard a clatter, as a long pole landed on the rocks by my feet. In the distance, came a faint cry on the wind, and I became aware of a figure legging it towards me at quite some speed, gesticulating wildly. it wasn't until he was about ten feet from me that i discerned the full exotic originality of the bloke. He carried the most enormous longbow,as tall as himself, which, he explained to myself and my father, was an exact replica of those used in mediaeval siege warfare, and suchlike. He had thought the beach deserted, and was trying a finely wrought arrow out for distance. He apologised pfofusely, and I sort of blinked at him, not really assimilating the full import of the little twilight tableau. My dad, a fellow craftsman of weaponry (he used to carve beautiful rifle-stocks, and was actually invited over for a holiday by the president of the Sharps Rifle company, who came by his photography shop when on holiday in the Highlands. They got talking, he saw my dad's workmanship, and offered him a job!)
It ocurred to me later, that had I been skewered, it would have been one of those quirky items which close news programmes.
"And finally, in the far north of Scotland last night, a woman walking along a remote beach was disembowelled by a stray arrow from a rogue itinerant dark-age archer."
You know...the sort of feature that invokes schadenfreude by the bucketload. Announcer and audience chuckling a little in spite of themselves, behind their hands, while shaking their heads in mock-horror and sympathy. People who knew me from school would say, "Yep, poor Rowan, but - something like that could really only happen to her. :/
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Rule number 3 (or so) of handling firearms, or, in his case, "twangy-string" arms: always be aware of any downrange hazards (people, etc.) in your firing "danger zone." Our Society for Creative Anachronism devotee would do well to review his basic safety routines before he twangs again!
Glad you weren't ke-babbed, after all these years. You are right, though -- St. Peter would have loved to hear your story at the Pearly Gates...
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That is a groovy thought!
I guess we are more dangerous, with all sorts of weapons, having little frame of reference, in general. I forgot to say...I was once threatened with being given both barrels by a sixteen year-old boy in one of my classes. He didn't have a firearm with him (civilians aren't allowed to own them here, unless they are stored at a gun club under certain very strict rules, methinx.) Anyway...it was a farming district, and I knew that he was not kidding. He could lay hands on a rusting shotgun, lying in some shed.
The threat had come by reason of his trying to kick a desk at me in response to a reprimand, and getting all caught up in it instead, flailing around, making outrageous noise, and looking progressively more and more foolish. He was a deeply mentally unstable boy, who had wild staring eyes, and terrified his classmates. As he stalked down the corridor outside, the other lads breathed a sigh of relief, and recounted their anxiety. It struck me how odd the culprit must genuinely be, if a class of sixteen year-old boys are opening up to their female teacher that they are skayuuurrd. Told the management, but they squirmed and said they were already negotiating his early leaving date. His parents were pillars of the community...
I was somewhat glad to be going on maternity leave, the following Monday.:/
I don't have a cultural frame of reference to comment with any knowledge on the firearms issue, but I have sometimes wondered what it might be like to birl one on my finger and return it to its nattily embossed holster during a particularly testing bout of Shakespeare. (I would miss, it would hit the ground, and blow my kneecap away.) Or I would succumb to the urge to recreate Arnie tableaux and come out with things like, "hastalavista baby" (sorry about the spelling) and, "go ahead, punk, make my day," just as the headmaster stops by my open door, showing some visiting politicians around the building.
I digress a little from the point in hand, but the best thing I ever saw for classroom managment was sported by a border collie in training. The shepherd who owned him yelled for him to come back, pressed a button on a wee gadget, and the dog, two hundred yards away, leaped a foot in the air, yelped, and came charging back to his master. Thirty of those electronic collars, in school livery, and I could have spouted forth on the conflict between the State and the Individual in Tudor England, wrought in the breast of Sir Thomas More in "A Man for all Seasons" for weeks on end, and not had one single eye close.
Well, a girl can dream... :0D
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Your tale of the 16-year-old highlights my informal training of my high schoolers, who are old enough to pitch in on defense in my classroom:
1.) Do not listen to the person(s) with the gun(s). They do not have your interests at heart.
2.) Everything that can be thrown, staring with your textbook, is a weapon. Throw it all at the person(s).
3.) I will be the one charging the assailant with a desk held head-high.
We have dubbed the strategem Total Noncompliance.
In an invasion scenario, in my classroom, pacifism is not an option.
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"...birl one on my finger and return it to its nattily embossed holster during a particularly testing bout of Shakespeare. (I would miss, it would hit the ground, and blow my kneecap away.) Or I would succumb to the urge to recreate Arnie tableaux and come out with things like, "hastalavista baby" (sorry about the spelling) and, "go ahead, punk, make my day," just as the headmaster stops by my open door, showing some visiting politicians around the building..." This is the sort of thinking that I figure rattles around in the more socialistic folk here in the 'States -- the ones, anyway, who have no experience or training with firearms (like myself) and I think such folk find it scary to think that people with firearms might feel the same way. So, they pass laws restricting the owning and bearing of firearms, maybe forgetting one tiny thing:
We (you and I) are subject to the Barney Fife fantasies precisely because of our inexperience. Or, so says I.
After the romance wears off, I suspect your average weapon becomes -- to the average, responsible adult -- like having a hammer around the house, or maybe (if it's a pretty one) a nice-looking car.
We'll let you know, if we ever take that route.
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"spouted forth on the conflict between the State and the Individual..."
Indeed. In the absence of (low-wattage) shock-collars, I use bombast.
Let us pause, though, in reverential acknowledgment of the country of origin of James Watt...
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Yep - I read recently that the highest rate of gun ownership per head of population is in Switzerland. They also have the lowest rate of gun crime. It is practically negligible. They must have good training programmes, or maybe the abundance of quality milk chocolate is an extraneous variable... high theobromine consumption as a factor in contentment with one's lot. Unless you get so fat you get depressed and go and shoot yourself. But that isn't a crime, per se.
Interesting topic!
Bombast is good. It beats cynicism any day. With am edge of wit, the class is with you, and the culprit deflates. I like the ' sustained eye-contact with raised eyebrow' trick, myself.
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Am sneaking-in two more tangential stories involving teaching and weaponry, just because they still make me laugh.
When I was training, I had a placement in a school with a bit of a rough element. My fellow student was in the Maths dept, and we were both having a big assessment done by the course administrators. We sat in the staffroom before the start of school, comparing our teaching materials. Mine was a unit on 'The Moral of the Story' and ranged from proverbs and fables, to parables. It was all cut and pasted by hand, copied in a nice lurid red ink, and, I felt, eye-catching for the twelve-year olds, and indicative of hard graft, for the assessor. My co-assessee had gone one better. He had brought actual props, and slowly unwrapped his long canvas parcel to reveal two shining sabres, circa Crimean War. Delighted at my goggle-eyed, open-mouthed squeak, he laid out his lesson-plan. Selected members of the class would come out to the front, take up a sword each, and display different angles with the blades. As we had the same class, not the most biddable, I was keen to know how things would go...
During break, I found him white and sweating in a corner. He had unwittingly given the sabres to two young members of bitterly warring families. The thrusts and parries around the classroom had been frenzied, and for real....
My second story, witnessed by a reliable source took place in a history class. The teacher, a jocular fellow, was showing a class of fourteen-year olds a hand grenade, dating from World War One, and gathered from the Flanders fields. Enthralled, they listened as he explained that it was potentially still live. Putting his hand on the pin, he announced that he'd pull it out, but not to worry - he still had twenty seconds or so to replace it before it blew. Carefully, to gasps from his audience, he pulled out the pin, only to fumble it artistically and drop it to the floor, watching it rool under the desks. "OUT NOW - RUN!!" he yelled, and there ws a screaming rush for the exit.
Needless to say, the joke got back to the Headmaster, who was not quite so amused, as his member of staff. I think though, had I been one of the kids, I'd have found it funny in retrospect.
Maybe.
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