Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was surrounded by cowering "good guys with guns"

I am not sure that it is a universal truth that an insane and homicidal teenager can never be defeated with arms. Obviously, deputy Fife in this case was not up to the task. But if you are going to be the one armed person responsible for a school or church or whatever, It is your duty to intervene in any way you can.
There seem to be some real issues in our society in that there is a large disconnect between what we are paying and equipping the police to do, and what they seem to think their duty is.

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Protecting children has nothing to do with testicles. Drop the toxic masculinity thing, it’s part of the problem. (If you disagree feel free to post a list of mass shootings in America carried out by women or girls and we’ll run the numbers.)

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Turns out “Hollywood Wild West shootout” isn’t a tactic embraced by real human people who have to deal with the consequences.

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Fair enough. I would be equally content with:

Gender doesn’t matter. The ability of the willing and able to effectively defend themselves against evil, does.

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OK, you said it better than I was going to, so I’m just deleting my text.

The cop will probably commit suicide eventually, and that won’t fix anything either. Just one more body on the heap.

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Soldiers are trained and paid to risk their own lives to do their jobs; teachers, not so much.

And frankly, unless you’re willing to do the same yourself, it’s really unfair and highly unrealistic to expect them to.

This isn’t ‘Sparta,’ and most people are not the fucking 300.

"Hi.

I’m your kid’s teacher, and I would take a bullet for your child. But I wish you wouldn’t ask me to.

.

We had an intruder drill today.

.

I have shepherded children through a lot of intruder drills. I have also, on one memorable occasion, shepherded children through a non-drill. When I was a children’s librarian in a rough suburb, armed men got into a fight in the alley behind our building. We ushered all of the kids - most of whom were unattended - into the basement while we waited for the police.

During intruder drills, some children - from five-year-olds all the way to high school kids - get visibly upset. At one school, the intruder drill included administrators running down the hallways, screaming and banging on lockers to simulate the “real thing.” Kids cry. Kindergartners wet themselves. Teenagers laugh, nudging each other, even as the blood drains from their faces.

Other children handle intruder drills matter-of-factly. “Would the guy be able to shoot us through the door?” they ask, the same way they’d ask a question about their math homework. In some ways, this is worse than the kids who cry. To be so young and so accustomed to fear that these drills seem routine.

And then there are the teachers. There is no way, huddling in a corner with your students, ducking out of view of the windows and doors, to avoid thinking about what happens when it’s not a drill.

.

People really hate teachers. I don’t take it personally. It actually makes a lot of sense: what other group of professionals do we know so well? How many doctors have you had? How many plumbers? How many secretaries?

Over the course of my public school education, I had at least fifty teachers for at least a year each. So of course some of them were bad. You take fifty people from any profession, and a couple of them are going to be terrible at their job.

So I had a couple of teachers who were terrible, and a few teachers who were amazing, inspirational figures - the kinds of teachers they make movies about.

And then I had a lot of teachers who did a good job. They came to school every day and worked hard. They’d planned our lessons and they graded our papers. I learned what I was supposed to, more or less, even if it wasn’t the most incredible learning experience of my life.

Most teachers fall into that category. I’m sure I do.

Looking at it from the other side, though, I see something that I didn’t know when I was a kid.

Those workhorse teachers who tried, who failed sometimes and sometimes succeeded, who showed up every day and did their jobs: those teachers loved us.

.

Of course you can never know what you’ll do in the event. That’s what they always say. In the event of an intruder, a fire, a tornado.

You can never know until you know.

But part of what’s so terrifying, so upsetting about an intruder drill as a teacher, is that on some level you do know. You don’t aspire to martyrdom; you’ve never wanted to be a hero. You go home every night to a family that loves you, and you intend to spend the next fifty years with them. You will do everything in your power to hide yourself in that office along with your kids.

But if you can’t.

If you can’t.

When people tell me about why they oppose gun control, I can’t hear it anymore.

I’m from a part of the country where everybody has guns. I used to be really moderate about this stuff, and I am not anymore.

I can’t be.

Every day, I go to work in a building that contains hundreds of children. Every single one of those kids, including every kid that makes me crazy, is a joy and a blessing. They make their parents’ lives meaningful. They make my life meaningful. They are the reason I go to work in the morning, and the reason I worry and plan when I come home.

Parents usually know a handful of kids who are the most wonderful creatures on the planet. I know a couple thousand. It is an incredible privilege, and it is also terrifying. The world is big and scary, and I love so many small people who must go out into it.

So when adults tell me, “I have the right to own a gun”, all I can hear is: “My right to own a gun outweighs your students’ right to be alive.” All I can hear is: “My right to own a gun is more important than kindergarteners feeling safe at school.” All I can hear is: “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

.

When you are sitting there hiding in the corner of your classroom, you know.

The alternative would be unthinkable.

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We live in a country where children are acceptable casualties. Every time someone tells me about the second amendment I want to give them a history lesson. I also want to ask them: in what universe is your right to walk into a Wal-Mart to buy a gun more important than the lives of hundreds of children shot dead in their schools?

Parents send their kids to school every day with this shadow. Teachers live with the shadow. We work alongside it. We plan for it. In the event.

In the event, parents know that their children’s teachers will do everything in their power to keep them safe. We plan for it.

And when those plans don’t work, teachers die protecting their students.

We love your children. That’s why we’re here. Some of us love the subject we teach, too, and that’s important, but all of us love your kids.

The alternative would be unthinkable.

.

When you are waiting, waiting, waiting for the voice to come on over the PA, telling you that the drill is over, you look at the apprehensive faces around you. You didn’t grow up like this. You never once hid with your teacher in a corner, wondering if a gunman was just around the corner. It is astonishing to you that anyone tolerates this.

And the kids are nervous, but they are all looking to you. You’re their teacher.

They know what you didn’t know, back when you were a kid, back before Columbine. They know that you love them. They know you will keep them safe.

You’re their teacher.

.

If you are a parent who thinks it’s totally reasonable for civilians to have a house full of deadly weapons, and who accepts the blood of innocent people in exchange for that right, it doesn’t change anything for me. I will love your kid. I will treat you, and your child, the same way I treat everyone else: with all of the respect and the care that is in me.

In the event, I will do everything in my power to keep your child safe.

I just want you to know what you are asking me to do."

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I guess the thin blue line is just rhetoric and bumper stickers?

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Question: have you actually met any teachers who think it would be a great idea to bring a loaded firearm into a classroom full of children every day? Because I’m a teacher and my wife is a teacher and neither we nor any of our colleagues think that would be a good idea. In fact we could recite a whole list of reasons to believe such a policy would be disastrous.

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On the one hand, calling people that don’t want to charge into a school with a handgun and get shot to death by someone with an automatic rifle “cowards” is unfair. People are generally averse to getting shot to death. A group of people, for instance, could overwhelm a lone gunman at close range(which would be the case inside a building), but some of them are probably going to die in the attack, so this doesn’t happen.

On the other hand, you would expect the police, our supposed protectors and upholders of law, to be part of the small subset of humans that would take action in a situation like this. But I can’t blame them, really, for being scared.

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The only thing that’ll happen if you arm teachers, is that the next time this happens (Thursday week, or whenever y’all are due) teachers will deliberately be shot first. I don’t value their lives any less than their students’, no matter how much of a dick my Calculus teacher was.

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Pretty much destroys the “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” argument the NRA keeps chanting, now, doesn’t it.

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Not to mention publicly shamed for failing to stop the attack.

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I agree. It pretty much GUARANTEES that student homicide-by-teacher rates skyrocket across the nation. Those little bastards can be damn annoying - amiright?

The real answer: less guns in general, NO types of certain guns (like AR15s), restrict access to the pool of guns that remain, and better supports for those who would consider killing innocent children to prevent this kind of thing happening…

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When reality refuses to support their mantra they just shift to “I wasn’t talking about the ACTUAL good guys with guns, obviously they didn’t work out. I mean the hypothetical good guys with guns who would have prevented this in my fantasy scenario.” (See @law’s comments above.)

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Not to mention even trained police officers are far more likely to miss their targets. (I’ve read studies citing from 18-36% of shots hitting their intended targets. And these are people who have to get continually recertified in marksmanship.)

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I wonder, if there were more guns in the schools, how many kids that wouldn’t otherwise ever get access to guns would manage to lift them from the teachers. When I was in middle school we stole a teacher’s toupee right off his head, no lie.

Thank you for that. Gives me some hope for my country.

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Oh you mean like military bases?

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Isn’t the first rule of most conflict situations to deescalate the situation. To lower the risk.

If the situation is “mass shootings”, arming every other person and turning the entire countryside into a permanent war zone feels like the exact opposite. A never ending escalation of risk for everyone involved.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks that’s the best direction to move.

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Because America will always do the right thing, after we’ve tried everything else.

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When we find out that several of these guys were football coaches or played football will we change that to: “this wouldn’t have happened if they were Home ec teachers”?

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