ARMING TEACHERS
Debating guns in the classroom
Fortunately, some school districts in Colorado have more brains and common sense than The Denver Post and are training and allowing their teachers to be armed in the classroom.
Who needs a gun the most when an active shooter gets into a school? A teacher in the classroom! Duh! An active shooter isn’t going after the school janitor but the students and teachers for whom he or she has a hatred and wants to see them killed. Or they might want suicide by cop, but until the cop gets there, the active shooter will kill as many as possible.
It takes policeman nine to 15 minutes to get to a place that calls for help. In that time, an active shooter can kill many people, young and old. Who is right there to stop them? A teacher who has volunteered to learn how to defend his or her students and his or herself.
The Denver Post does a grave disservice to our children and teachers with this editorial. Helen Sabin, Colorado Springs
Let’s compare the responses of the police and an armed teacher to a heavily armed and indifferent, if not suicidal, school shooter.
The police respond with a well-trained team able to protect each member. They wear bulletproof clothing and carry overwhelming firepower. Although they can’t account for every variable, their training allows them to make adjustments on the fly.
The school teacher has a few days’ training carrying only a handgun or a rifle and a few extra bullets to face a well-armed shooter. The teacher has no backup and only a cotton shirt bought at a local department store for protection.
The comparisons are dramatic. Does any teacher want that job? I doubt it.
Mark Wolf, Littleton
I hear and read about suggestions to arm teachers to secure schools in the event of invaders. As a teacher of many years, I know kids. Teachers need to be with the scared and worried children, not in the hallway, with a pistol, looking for or shooting at someone with an automatic weapon. By the time the teacher takes care of procedures — get children into safe areas, account for every child and maybe have to find or worry about the one in the bathroom or hallway, lock doors, close blinds — the school or local security officers could possibly already be there. Knowing children, I visualize one or more of them, curious or worried about the teacher or his/her sibling, leaving the room to go into the hall. Their teacher is their primary protector at that moment. No “bit of a bonus” surpasses a teacher’s caring dedication to the children.
Janet Johnson, Golden
The Colorado House of Representatives missed an opportunity to increase the safety of the children in our schools. They voted down a bill that would have allowed trained citizens who had passed a background check to carry a concealed firearm onto school campuses.
As a grandfather of a child in a Thompson School District high school and another in middle school, I am very disturbed that we have missed this opportunity to increase our children’s safety. Jim Adell, Loveland
President Donald Trump, who wants to arm our teachers, is promoting the “hardening” of school building to eliminate the shootings that have destroyed families and left all of us in disbelief. Our commander in chief has, once again, demonstrated his ability to slice through the rhetoric and offer simple, but brilliant, solutions to our most depressing problems.
Mr. President, please write an executive order mandating the replacement of all school doors and windows with iron bars. This would include all interior doors such as classrooms, the counselor’s office, the gym, restrooms and the study hall. Teachers can forward the attendance reports through slots in the wall. Mandate a moat around the school to deter shooters who want to crash their vehicles into the principal’s office. Please include towers with ground-toair missiles. Substitute teachers can rent their handguns from the bookstore.
Lastly, Mr. President, please mandate that all future schools be built on rocky islands in the middle of vast bodies of water. Daniel C. Fahrlander, Fort Collins
There are safer and more effective ways of keeping students safe than arming teachers. When entering the county courthouse, for example, I must empty my pockets and go through a metal detector. The attorneys and judges do not need to carry firearms. When I visit the Air Force base, I have to go through a security checkpoint and show valid ID, at a minimum.
Unfortunately, if school areas are not secure, I fear these shootings will continue, regardless of whether teachers are armed or not.
This might seem extreme, but our children’s safety is worth it.
Mark Fairchild, Fort Collins