South Dakota moving towards letting towards letting teachers carry concealed handguns at school
The vote in the state House is pretty overwhelming. Again, the arguments against this law are hypotheticals and they can never actually point to such cases actually occurring in the places that have allowed permitted concealed handguns on school property.
A bill that would allow school districts to arm teachers and other personnel with guns was approved Tuesday by the South Dakota House after supporters said it could make would-be attackers think twice about entering a school building.
Representatives voted 42-17 to send the measure to the Senate for further debate.
Supporters said school boards, particularly in rural areas where no law enforcement officers are stationed in school buildings, need the option of arming teachers, administrators or volunteers to protect against attacks like last month's school shooting in Connecticut. Opponents countered that arming teachers could make schools more dangerous because it could lead to accidental shootings and put guns in the hands of people who are trained to teach, not shoot people.
The bill's main sponsor, Rep. Scott Craig, R-Rapid City, said the measure leaves it up to each school board to decide whether to train and arm teachers and others. Schools are now inviting targets for potential mass murderers because they are considered gun-free zones, he said.
"The possibility of an armed presence in any of our schools is a deterrent," Craig said. . . .
Labels: GunFreeZone, schoolsecurity
posted by John Lott at 9:07 AM
3 Comments:
One of the more common arguments against letting teachers carry is that one of them may leave a gun lying around in an unlocked drawer, and that a student may find it.
I have never known a permit-holder to leave a firearm unsecured in a public place. In our class, they emphasized always keeping the weapon on your person --- not, for example, in the pocket of a coat that you might hang on a rack that others might access.
I can't think of a single crime that resulted from a child finding a permit-holder's unsecured weapon in a public place. You can bet that if it'd happened, it would be national news. But are you aware of any statistics or other hard numbers that back up my anecdotal experience?
Every time I think of this issue (gun control - and its presentation in the media) yet another way that the left has cleverly "explained" the situation to its benefit comes to mind. When it's suggested by a gun rights proponent that an armed person on the scene might have curtailed the carnage the example always mentioned is the shooter in Aurora, Colorado. The response is something like "Oh yes, your going to bring out your little .380 or 38 special handgun and stop someone in full body armor (including a helmet and shield) brandishing a high power semi-auto rifle? You're just going to hit someone else in the dark theater and add to the deaths, AND get yourself killed immediately." I believe the "full body armor" is a very unusual aspect of a "gun free zone" shooting. The bad guys usually don't need that because in a "gun free zone" they are presumably the only one with a gun anyway. leave it to these clever devious folks (the gun grabbers) to mention the worst case senario IN the worst case senario. And, the very very sad thing is that the public (a good portion of them at least) just accept it as if it came out of Edward R. Murrow's mouth.
When Wayne LaPierre suggested having armed teachers in schools, he was ridiculed.
Now it seems that there are those who wish to implement common sense solutions to deterring would be assassins who want their 15 minutes of fame.
So... Where's the laughter and ridicule now?
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