AND why not all public schools

[n0rlf]

Bull hockey!  We need to concentrate on removing any restrictions period. If we can be trusted and permitted to carry some places why not everywhere? 

We need to stop playing their game and start demanding our rights. If you ask for just one thing you are agreeing they have the ability to restrict your rights. Stop doing that

[Omega]

The first thing is to get rid of these politicians that block pro gun legislation.  There is plenty of factual data about crime stats when it comes to pro gun legislation. But to the left it's an emotional response and no matter what facts are presented they will not listen.  And the politicians are only listening to the left because they are more of a solid voting base and vote along political lines.  Conservatives are very fragmented, with many things across the political spectrum that are important to them.  So unless we put enough pressure on the politicians we will be getting some very anti 2A laws passed. 

[DaveTN]

42 minutes ago, Omega said:

The first thing is to get rid of these politicians that block pro gun legislation.  There is plenty of factual data about crime stats when it comes to pro gun legislation. But to the left it's an emotional response and no matter what facts are presented they will not listen.  And the politicians are only listening to the left because they are more of a solid voting base and vote along political lines.  Conservatives are very fragmented, with many things across the political spectrum that are important to them.  So unless we put enough pressure on the politicians we will be getting some very anti 2A laws passed. 

I don’t think I’ll be accused of being a liberal so; what pro-gun legislation are they blocking. If we are being truthful and stating facts the facts show that gun laws are getting less restrictive not more restrictive.

Of course it’s an emotional response for the left; it is for the right also.

What pro-gun legislation do we need that has to do with schools and won’t be blocked by the students or the parents of the students?

[chances R]

Right and Left are all reacting with emotion.....understandable.  What the Left won't stop and realize is the Right hates these tragedies as much as anyone...it's sickening.  It is also a barometer of the deteriation of our society.  Of course we on the Right are sure we have some of the answers, and if one pays attention to history, the Left simply does not like what the truth looks like.

[Omega]

40 minutes ago, DaveTN said:

I don’t think I’ll be accused of being a liberal so; what pro-gun legislation are they blocking. If we are being truthful and stating facts the facts show that gun laws are getting less restrictive not more restrictive.

Of course it’s an emotional response for the left; it is for the right also.

What pro-gun legislation do we need that has to do with schools and won’t be blocked by the students or the parents of the students?

Plenty: 

https://www.tennessean.com/story/insession/2015/03/10/haslam-opposes-gun-bills/24717375/

While some bills get passed, many of those bills are just feel good bills which have little impact either way.

[n0rlf]

5 hours ago, 300winmag said:

We really need to focus on getting college carry with a handgun carry permit legalized first in Tennessee and use the fact that Tennessee is one of the few states in this part of the country that makes college carry illegal with a permit.  It would be of more practical benefit for people who are going to night classes.

We've got to use facts for our side and not emotion and those facts are that college carry is legal in most states bordering TN.  Use the strategy that college carry would be useful for folks walking alone at night for protection from parking lot robbery.  Mention that MS enhanced licensees take the same 8 hour training classes that TN handgun carry permit people take and give statistics of that program.  Emotional arguments can always be cut apart a lot easier VS the facts.

I think K-12 carry is possible with a permit but you have to get college carry first.  You will need to point out that it is already legal in states bordering TN which are MS, AL, and Missouri.

 

No more partial fights. If I can be trusted some places I can be trusted  anywhere. 

[No_0ne]

I have been one of those " anti American indoctrinators" working to "undermine society" for the last 30+ years.  During that entire time period I have worked in rural schools in Kentucky and Tennessee, the kind of places in which a lot of the students and teachers own guns, hunt, shoot, and have been raised around guns. Even in those types of schools you're not going to find very many teachers who would support going armed in schools and probably fewer parents who wish to see school personnel carrying for student protection.  School administrators would be petrified at the idea, mostly due to perceptions about liability issues and potential blowback from their communities, county commissions aren't going to support funding, and even if you pass the legislation necessary to allow it I doubt many, if any systems would implement it.  There is a lot of support for additional school resource officers among communities that have had these positions, as most, even if they were initially opposed have seen the many benefits a competent officer on school grounds can have on student behavior and discipline. Not from a law enforcement perspective, but in the schools I have worked in that have had SRO's, these officers have proved efficient at heading off problems before they occur, and many students are comfortable speaking with them confidentially about their concerns and problems. In addition, to the best of my knowledge, the only school shooting that has occurred with either an SRO or some other type of campus security in place and on duty  was the Virginia tech incident several years ago, thus proving the efficacy of this policy. Legislators may very well move towards universal placement of SRO's in public schools (providing of course requisite funding is made available) but I don't see any type of armed carry by teachers or support staff ever happening in public K-12 schools here in Tennessee, there is basically no support for that idea anywhere that I am familiar with, this forum and others like it being the exception of course.

Edited February 19, 2018 by No_0ne

[chances R]

Not suggesting replacement of SROs at all.   Armed teachers are a augmented reactionary force in a worst case scenerio.  I believe if you check, the school in Florida had 3 officers in the school.  I would venture a guess that all recent shootings had a RSO in place.  It is common practice.

 

[300winmag]

I think as far as legalizing K-12 school carry in Tennessee, the best approach would be to take the approach that Missouri has taken.  It is a good balance between not giving people with pistol licenses criminal charges (isn't that the whole point of paying for a pistol license?) for carrying inside schools and allowing schools to ask people to leave the building/take gun to car that they find out are legally carrying.  Missouri basically has it in their law that it is not a criminal offense to carry in school buildings but that a licensee can be asked to leave.  That to me is the way it should be here.

There are some people in the gun community that forget that a handgun carry permit should just be something to keep you from getting weapons charges and not to force property owners to allow you to carry/change their internal policies.  On the flip side, many in the anti gun community can't understand that a handgun carry permit should keep people from getting weapons charges and it is pointless to give someone who has a permit criminal weapons charges for carrying in certain locations whether that be a school, church, state government building, etc. because that person has been checked out.  Hey ask that person to leave and take the gun to the car, but the person has paid for a permit and should be exempt from gun charges because he or she is not a criminal.

[No_0ne]

I don't know the exact situation with the Florida school and it's SRO's.  Having multiple officers is certainly reasonable though, as that school reportedly has an enrollment of 3300 kids (which is about 30% more than the largest high school in Tennessee) with a campus that apparently has multiple buildings (the shootings occurred in Building 12, but I don't know if that means they actually had 12 buildings on campus).  I do remember seeing some initial reports that the officer in charge of that part of the campus was away, called out, or maybe off that day but as I said, I don't know the details.  The statistic I quoted earlier was part of a study on school shootings that is probably about 2 years old now, maybe there are incidents of on-duty officers being present at school shootings that I'm not aware of.  I do know that in Kentucky, SRO's didn't seem to be used as widely as here in Tennessee, I don't think Marshall County had one.  As for the prevalence here, I'm sure that most, if not all of the larger systems and schools employ SRO's, but in the smaller systems and schools found in rural areas the use isn't nearly as common, some have no officers at all, others provide them for high schools only, and several share an officer among multiple campuses.  However, my point was, it's going to be far easier to push for increased usage of SRO's on campuses in Tennessee than to advocate for armed carry by teacher's and staff, I don't think that will ever happen under any circumstances.

[chances R]

No ONe....you make a good point that not all schools may have a RSO for various reasons, cost being one of them.  That cost is one reason teacher/employee carry could be acceptable....no additional manpower costs.  Also, imagine 20 armed guards per school which could be had with employees vs. 3 or so for paid security.  In general, I would prefer the teachers if properly trained.

[No_0ne]

15 minutes ago, chances R said:

No ONe....you make a good point that not all schools may have a RSO for various reasons, cost being one of them.  That cost is one reason teacher/employee carry could be acceptable....no additional manpower costs.  Also, imagine 20 armed guards per school which could be had with employees vs. 3 or so for paid security.  In general, I would prefer the teachers if properly trained.

I'm not disputing your idea, just pointing out that in my opinion, based on many years of working for school systems, it has no chance of actual implementation.  For one thing, in a typical school you will be hard pressed to find 20 teachers who would be willing to go armed. We are, after all, quite busy spreading the socialist, liberal agenda to the kids ...

Edited February 19, 2018 by No_0ne

[A.J. Holst]

11 hours ago, No_0ne said:

I'm not disputing your idea, just pointing out that in my opinion, based on many years of working for school systems, it has no chance of actual implementation.  For one thing, in a typical school you will be hard pressed to find 20 teachers who would be willing to go armed. We are, after all, quite busy spreading the socialist, liberal agenda to the kids ...

With the workload of indoctrination, when is there time for consistent training on top of routine practice?

Throwing out the liability conversation, continuos learning is a commitment in time and finances.

I don't have SWAT-like training to proactively take the fight to an active shooter and not a fan of handgun vs. long gun. 

I would have to step my game to train in the environment I am most likely to use my firearm.

In the other post, it was mentioned Wal-Mart partnered with Texas State University to create Avoid, Deny, Defend. It is the current Active Shooter video presented by LEO to financial institutions.

At about 7:40, I gained additional justification for a good gun belt.

From the LASP

 

Edited February 19, 2018 by Gotthegoods

[chances R]

GO.. the option for teacher carry is not in the vein of SWAT tactics.  It is simply the last resort.  Training is simply safe handling and competence in shooting.  I have to believe many involved in the FL shooting, especially the coach who lost his life would have liked that option.  

[JAB]

On 2/17/2018 at 11:23 PM, m16ty said:

TN just needs to let permit holders carry in schools. I don't know when these people will get it through their heads that these "gun free" zones don't work, all that does is issue a open invitation for a shooter to know that there will be little to no resistance.

Most schools around here have 1 resource officer per school. There is no way 1 officer can protect a whole school. Either he will be the first one to take a bullet, or do like the FL shooter did, make sure the SRO is out of the area. 

Just the simple thought that the teachers and principles in any given school may be armed could very well cause somebody to think twice about trying to shoot the school up. These people are cowards for the most part, they go after schools partly because they are a soft target.  

 

When I got my HCP back around '08 the instructor's wife assisted him with the class.  She was (I guess still is) a school teacher.  I can't remember if she taught elementary or middle school.  Like him, she also shot competition.  As part of a conversation during the class break she said that she wished she could carry at school.  She also said that she had done what could be the closest she could legally do - she had made the resource officer aware of her proficiency with handguns and told him that if there were ever an 'incident' at the school if he could get a gun in her hands then he would have backup.

[Mr.Mildot]

I work in some pretty high security places, the kind of places dudes with machineguns patrol around in body armor.  The likelihood of anything going down in these places is almost zero, but if it does it's gonna be full-on combat.  It takes a tremendous amount of expense and time in training to keep these guys primed, just like a lot of cops in quiet suburban districts.  Fighting (especially gunfighting) is a perishable skill, so you have to replace actual action with tons of training to keep the edge sharp.

There are like 130K public schools in the US (up to 12th grade).  So, if we're going to put just one cop in charge of a whole entire school we need a force of 130K highly trained dudes, ready at any moment to stand alone between hundreds or thousands of students and a murderous bastard who has the advantage of planning and timing, but do nothing else 99-100% of the time (except possibly mundane SRO stuff which only distracts from the primary mission).

If we do go down this road, be prepared for the National School Defense Administration which will create yet another giant bureaucratic federal police force to put armed federal agents in every school, federal agents who are not from the area, owe more allegiance to the federal govt. than to the kids they protect and can never get fired even if they hide in the toilet when the bad thing happens. 

The immediate fix IMHO is to arm the school staff (or allow those that want to be to be armed).  Give them a training budget, get them involved with the local PD to work on tactics, communication, first aid.  The point is not to create a security force out of the school staff, but to have people there who know anything at all about what to do and have some means of doing it.  If you go on a cruise there are lifeboats and evac drills, they are not intending to give you the required training to navigate a raft safely from the middle of the ocean to land in a tuxedo, but to give you a fighting chance if the unthinkable happens.

Most mass shootings end immediately when the shooter is met with force.  So even a few poorly aimed shots across this guys bow might have ended it, not necessarily a full on tactical response.  

But the long term fix is to fix our society and restore the remnants of the culture we have spent the last 50 years tearing down.  

 

[Mr.Mildot]

Or we could all just abandon the public school system and stop letting the government dictate what level of protection (and education, and indoctrination) our kids get.  I homeschool my 3 kids (well my wife does actually).  Sure, we could use the extra income she could make, but there's more to life than money and things...

[Ugly]

2 hours ago, Mr.Mildot said:

Or we could all just abandon the public school system and stop letting the government dictate what level of protection (and education, and indoctrination) our kids get.  I homeschool my 3 kids (well my wife does actually).  Sure, we could use the extra income she could make, but there's more to life than money and things...

Winner!

it is not difficult to see, the start is to fix the cause. Otherwise we will just keep swimming upstream. 

[Raoul]

Is anyone in this conversation actually married to a school teacher?

[DaveTN]

6 minutes ago, Raoul said:

Is anyone in this conversation actually married to a school teacher?

My ex-wife retired a school teacher. My daughter was a school teacher, but she got tired of not being able to do anything about the problem; so she became a Probation Officer.

[DaveTN]

And that’s another reason the school District may not like having their teachers train with the Police; the School District may lose a lot of the teachers to the Police Department and the Police Department may have a lot of new Officers with teaching degrees.

[Raoul]

My thinking on this is that it takes a certain kind of person to teach, certainly at the elementary level. My wife is practical and in her way ferocious, but to deal with the elementary students she does and especially the parents of that lot, she has to have a vision of the future that's somewhat hopeful. Certainly more so than mine at least.

I will say that after 25 years she's gotten to the point where she's not as able to tilt at those windmills as she once was. Of course having married me, it's evident she's an optimist...

[rob261]

What do private schools in the state do? Are they using armed Security Guards, paying Cops, or doing nothing?

 

I know one small private school that has teachers who volunteered go thru formal security guard training/licensure. Those teachers carry concealed on their person each day. They also go thru active shooter training and other scenarios onsite.

 

It’s a great model - albeit expensive. The parents, in general appreciate this more than the ‘gun free zone’ alternative.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JayC]

About 8% of non-felon adults in TN have a HCP, they are just as unlikely (if not more so) than police officers to be convicted of a serious crime.  Their children are in these public schools, and I'm sure a number of them would be more than willing to participate in helping defend their own children as volunteers.  School has parents volunteer constantly in school, to help out doing things they can't afford staff to do, why on earth not use this model to better protect the school.

Sure more training would help, and having highly trained and paid security might be a better option, but at the end of the day parents will die to protect their children, and in most of these shootings just controlling a fatal funnel would be well within the abilities of an average HCP holder with very little training. And could very well save lives.

It's a crime that I can't have a loaded firearm on my person at my daughters school, I'd be a lot more active if I didn't have to completely disarm every time I go there, even after hours for meetings.

[DaveTN]

4 hours ago, JayC said:

About 8% of non-felon adults in TN have a HCP, they are just as unlikely (if not more so) than police officers to be convicted of a serious crime.  Their children are in these public schools, and I'm sure a number of them would be more than willing to participate in helping defend their own children as volunteers.  School has parents volunteer constantly in school, to help out doing things they can't afford staff to do, why on earth not use this model to better protect the school.

Sure more training would help, and having highly trained and paid security might be a better option, but at the end of the day parents will die to protect their children, and in most of these shootings just controlling a fatal funnel would be well within the abilities of an average HCP holder with very little training. And could very well save lives.

It's a crime that I can't have a loaded firearm on my person at my daughters school, I'd be a lot more active if I didn't have to completely disarm every time I go there, even after hours for meetings.

Because there is no need to use untrained people unless you are saying your schools can’t afford trained people. If you can’t get any help from your local PD, the state or the Feds; then yes, HCP holders might be better than nothing.

Sorry, but I would pull my kid out of school if they said the best they could afford was someone with an HCP. I have been to an HCP class; you can’t even pretend that’s a training class; that’s an information class.