School Shootings, Armed Teachers, And A Greatly Improved School Safety

Teachers are citizens, too, with full citizen authority and rights. Let's talk about genuine school safety against murderers.

By John Longenecker

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.

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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.

John Longenecker is President and CEO of Good For The Country Foundation, a patriotic non-profit organization.