2nd Amendment
Without a police department would you feel safe without the 2nd Amendment?
I was listening to Bill Maher have a discussion with a guy representing the NRA and Bill said something that was erroneous. He said that teachers don't want to be armed and that it is not part of their job.
Prior to Sandy Hook I would have agreed that this is not part of our job, however, since then we don't just do fire drills, we also do active shooter drills, shelter in place drills, and lockdown drills. What used to be a five minute talk at the start of every year with the buildings security manager about the importance of fire drills is now thirty minute talk with videos and exams. Like it or not this is now part of our job and they make it very clear to every teacher you better respect that.
Since this is now part of my job I would disagree with Bill about teachers not wanting to be armed. It depends on the city, in South Dakota I'd say about 50% of the teachers would be willing to be armed. In NYC it was probably lower than 20%. That probably represents the range in the country. I do not conceal carry because in NYC it is very difficult to get that license and it seemed unnecessarily expensive. However, if they asked for a fifth of the teachers in our school to volunteer to be trained and then to conceal carry I would volunteer. I would do it for the same reason I volunteered to learn CPR. I understand that in the event of an active shooter they would expect those of us who are armed to respond somewhat differently from everyone else. I'm not sure what that training would be, perhaps we would be responsible for various hallways and stairwells. It is unlikely that doing this could prevent 100% of the shootings, but it would probably be able to limit the deaths to 2 or 3, just like the Indiana Mall.
One thing that was said on that Bill Maher show that struck me was this, he said if he does get into an active shooter event he doesn't want it to be fair, he wants the odds to be fully stacked in his favor. If you have 20% of the teachers in our building in Brooklyn armed that would be 40 teachers patrolling 4 floors. That doesn't include the security the school has. There are five cops at the front door, and then 40 more armed teachers this shooter will have to contend with.
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