Teachers and guns

The Nightly Build...

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Texas Lets Teachers Carry Guns

The Harrold ISD near Wichita Falls, Texas permits teachers to carry guns in schools. Rodger Jones, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, asks readers if that's OK with them. Readers respond with expected escalation.

Tod Robberson, an editorial board staff member, criticizes the practice:

"If schools have concerns about security and safety, they need to hire personnel whose specific job is security and safety. It is ludicrous to think of empowering teachers or principals to carry guns and potentially have them in the classroom. It is a disaster waiting to happen."

Reader Zachary Hilbun says whenever gun laws are relaxed, gun control advocates predict there will be blood in the streets. Hilbun says they have yet to be right. Apparently, he is ignorant of violent crime statistics in the US that show that there is, indeed, blood in the streets...and in stores and offices and homes.

Reader Trey Garrison asks "What good is a right when it's thrown out the window at the first mention of safety or necessity? ... A human's job is to exercise human rights." For Trey, the right to bear arms morphs into a citizen's job to bear arms.

Reader "big_melvin" carries the argument to its logical conclusion: "If you arm the teachers, then students must have the right to carry weapons also. Some teachers are known to be child molesters. How are these innocent teens to protect themselves from armed perverts without an even playing field?" Maybe this is satire, maybe not. Regardless, many readers will nod approvingly.

Every day, dozens of people die from gunfire in the United States. And the gun rights advocates believe the answer is... more guns. America is awash in guns. Gun control advocates can't do anything about it because the Constitution grants Americans the right to bear arms. If gun possession is protected, there's no way to keep guns from criminals. To defend themselves, law-abiding Americans buy more guns. Americans are caught in an arms race from which there is no way out.