The issue of arming classroom teachers is not going to simply fade away into the sunset like the good guy that rides off after cleaning up the town, but given the amount of violence throughout American history and now being spewed out in theaters and TV’s across the land it isn’t any wonder we continue to be viewed as a violent nation filled with violent people. The fact that most Americans would simply prefer to live in peace is countered by the violence not only in the entertainment media but in our cities and even in our schools. However, when it comes to the schools I can say from experience it would be a disaster to arm teachers unless they are qualified professionals in using firearms, and by that I mean what the Downey Chief of Police told me back in the 60s and is taught in classes for police agencies: “Guns are meant to kill; we intend to prepare you to use a gun for that purpose.”

As a lifetime supporter of the NRA and advocate of Right to Carry as well as being raised with guns and becoming an expert gunsmith I’m very familiar with firearms, but I’m also very well aware that you don’t really know whether you are prepared to actually kill someone with a gun until you face that situation. Our military is quite good in preparing personnel to be proficient in using firearms, but as Stephen Crane’s main character Henry Fleming so well illustrated you don’t really know what you will do in battle until that time comes when you are supposed to fire a gun at someone with the intent to kill them or be killed.

I’ve been a high school teacher in some war zones like South Central L. A. and East San Jose where guns were a commonplace and I went armed; but I was very well qualified to do so. Because of so much violence in schools today and the innocent too often the prey of monsters with guns there should be someone qualified to use a gun to protect the innocent from harm. A small school district far removed from immediate assistance cries out for a qualified person to make sure some monster with a gun does not take advantage of such an environment to do children any harm, but when it comes to the larger school districts I can only hope there are qualified people with actual police or military experience to provide security rather than classroom teachers. At that, in the event of a shootout it will still come down to the situation Henry faced in The Red Badge of Courage.

There is no possible way to tell beforehand how someone will react in an emergency, especially in a kill or be killed emergency, or even to save the lives of the innocent. Apart from personal experience my Ph. D. is in Human Behavior, and I understand the unpredictability factor of extreme situations people find themselves in. While the Free Will debate is going on involving atoms and possible unpredictability there in quantum physics, the matter of choices we humans make is often unpredictable outside of very general and controlled parameters.

The heroes of wars are glorified and romanticized, the laurels going to conquering heroes epitomizing bravery in battle and we applaud our movie heroes that blow away the bad guys. As a species we seem doomed to violence being a way of life with no way out, and continue to glorify and romanticize violence. In Fail-Safe the professor posed the interesting question as to who would eventually be the final victors in the event of nuclear Armageddon; the educated file clerks protected by paper or the hardened criminals protected by prison walls. My bet has always been on the criminals, even though file clerks may reach within themselves and find they were actually warriors at heart. But they would lack the practice in violence that gives the hardened criminal the edge.

Police agencies and the military have had many years to study the question of how you prepare someone to actually pull the trigger and kill others. It was an eye-opener following WWII when it was found only about 50% of our soldiers in combat ever pulled the trigger on their weapons. Training has evolved from that time to the point where the percentage is now far better, but that unpredictability factor as per Crane’s novel remains.

Of course we should do all within our power to protect the innocent in our schools from any monster with a gun, but it is going to be an extremely difficult thing to do as the pool of those qualified to carry firearms and use them effectively in an emergency is quite small, smaller than I believe most imagine.

Ours is a violent society, and children are being exposed to and learning violence wherever they turn today. But at the same time we see legislators and judges treating the monsters preying on children with more compassion than the little victims of these monsters we are going to have a debate over arming classroom teachers!

However, I concluded long ago ours is not only a violent society, but behaves as a lunatic one as well. But the civilized person, a classroom teacher for example, even if qualified in the use of firearms and prepared the best they can be to shoot and kill are they going to have to stop and think about a lawsuit resulting from using a gun even to protect children in a classroom? Many of our uniformed Sworn Peace Officers have been emasculated already by having to consider this before they use their guns. At that, can teachers ever be reasonably expected to have the kind of gun training necessary for Sworn Peace Officers?

I am committed to the idea of an armed citizenry; I want people to be able to protect themselves with a gun in their homes and on the streets. But arming teachers in our schools is going to prove a very difficult and enormously complicated thing to address. For example, trained armed military personnel walking the halls or campuses or all school principals could be required to be properly trained and become Sworn Peace Officers. Not likely; though as schools have to confront the growing violence the debate over how to make them safe for children by involving armed personnel for protection is one not only well worth having but absolutely essential in my opinion. After all, why should politicians have more protection than children?