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Teachers are there to teach air marshals are there to be air marshals. Now if you were talking about school resource officers and expanding that program I would be 100% with you since they are basically the school version of air marshals.
In essence arming teachers in schools is not akin to arming flight marshals on planes, it would be more like arming stewardesses.
I'm for that too, but the problem is school resource officers are known to be what they are. If we had some "janitors" or "maintenance" that were actually trained officers then it might work. But I heard that the shooters in the Columbine high school watched the resource officers and knew the right time to lock them out so they couldn't interfere. For the security to actually work, the student body cannot know who is armed.
I listened to an interview with that superintendant this morning, and he made some really good points. I definitely don't think arming teachers in urban districts is a good idea, but it could probably work in the rural ones. This guy said they did this after the Amish school shooting. The board realized they were sitting ducks out in the middle of nowhere, thirty minutes from the police.
Having a security guard on duty doesn't always work because the guard can be locked out or taken out by surprise with planning, but in this school the students don't know which teachers are armed so they cannot target them.
I imagine many of these rural teachers already are proficient in weapons from hunting, plus they have to be trained. He said he got the idea from the air marshalls, even down to the type of bullets the teachers have in their guns. They use frangible bullets, which are hollow point bullets filled with No. 12 birdshot. The bullet can produce large shallow wounds in flesh but won't pass through dry wall or sheet metal, so they are less likely to hit unintended targets or ricochet.
My dad is a retired commercial airline captain (retired in 2006). He always said that if he became aware of an armed marshall on his plane, he'd kick him off.
If you have to ask, I sincerely hope you have no children and don't plan on any, either.
Exactly what I was thinking. What a stupid question to ask.
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