Thread: The Guardian Plan

Obviously "gun free" schools are not working. Is it time to set up programs for schools to arm teachers who volunteer for a program such as this one in Texas?

Thweatt is the architect of ?The Guardian Plan,? a blueprint for arming school staff, including teachers, that may be catching on, at least in the Lone Star state. Teachers there are allowed to have weapons in the classroom, as Thweatt's faculty members do, but State Attorney General Greg Abbott suggested Monday that lawmakers may consider ways to encourage the practice statewide.

"Bearing arms whether by teachers and guards and things like that will be all a part of more comprehensive policy issues for the legislature to take up in the coming weeks," Abbott said. "And you can be assured in the aftermath of what happened in Connecticut that these legislators care dearly about the lives of students at their schools and they will evaluate all possible measures that are necessary to protect those lives," he said.

More momentum for the idea is evidenced by Austin gun shop dealer Crocket Keller, who announced his store will now extend the same discount on firearm purchases to teachers as it does to veterans.

Thweatt said there have been no incidents since October 2007, when his district adopted the plan giving an unspecified number of teachers and school staff -- dubbed "Guardians" -- authority to carry concealed weapons on school premises. Participating staff are anonymous and known only to Thweatt and the school board, which must approve each application for an employee to become a Guardian. They receive a small stipend annually.

?We?re 18 miles and 30 minutes from the nearest police station," Thweatt said. "So we are our first responders. If something happened here, we would have to protect our children. You know, police officers are true, everyday heroes in my book, but one of them once told me something very revealing. He said, ?Ninety-five percent of the time, we get to the scene late.? I can?t afford to let that happen.?

Each Guardian must obtain a Texas conceal-and-carry permit, and must lock-and-load their weapons with ?frangible? bullets that break apart when colliding with a target. ?They go through people,? assured Thweatt.

?They?re very similar to what the air marshals use. The bullets are glued together with polymers, and we insist upon them because we don?t want the bullet to ricochet off a wall after it?s fired and hit a child.?

Read more: Stop school shootings by letting teachers fire back, say Texas officials | Fox News

Holy crap. It's not working to keep guns out, so let's hand them out to everyone?? And that's going to help? Wow. Just wow.

Gun free schools DO help, because it stops students from bringing them in. This didn't happen bcs a kid brought them in, it happened because someone out there wasn't even human. He could have bombed from the outside. What do we do in that case? There is evil out there and horrid awful things are going to happen. Bringing more violent weapons into a place where our children spend all day is NOT a good answer.

Sorry, I disagree. It doesn't stop anything. And how does letting teachers have guns affect whether students are allowed to have them?

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

The Facts about Mass Shootings - John Fund - National Review Online

I just don't have the heart to argue with someone who wants to arm educators. I don't want my children going to school surrounded by weapons. Ever. This is simply not the solution.

I completely agree. I want less guns to no guns in this society so I am NOT on board with teachers being armed. If that happened in their school I would pull them out immediately.

Sorry pie in the sky dreams are not reality. You can't turn back the clock and take guns away. They are already there. There is not one gun law that would have prevented what happened. The assault weapons ban that Obama is proposing wouldn't have helped. He didn't use an assault weapon.

In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.

They are my dreams and I hope that it will someday be real. It's real in many countries and it should be in ours since we're so "advanced". Putting MORE guns regardless of the type is not what I want and I wouldn't support it. I send my kids to school to be educated not pretend like they are in a prison with armed guards.

The news said that Obama has already visited the scenes of 4 mass shootings in his first term as President. Hmm. Yep, let's put more guns out there, in our children's classrooms. Makes sense to me. So much sense, in fact, that I can't even do this one. For me, there's nothing to debate.

I would not be a fan of arming teachers. They already have a full time job, i dont' think they are in a position to take on proper security training to be the first line of defense in an emergency, and without that, i don't see that as a benefit, i see it as a detriment.

I don't nec. have a problem with adding actual security staff though. A friend of mine in a neighboring district reported that there was a police SUV in her school lot yesterday when she arrived there. She talked to him and he said "I am here to look after the kids, and you will see me more often."

But armed teachers? No i don't want that. I think security and law enforcement should be handled by people who's professions are security and law enforcement related.

Originally Posted by GloriaInTX

Sorry pie in the sky dreams are not reality. You can't turn back the clock and take guns away. They are already there. There is not one gun law that would have prevented what happened. The assault weapons ban that Obama is proposing wouldn't have helped. He didn't use an assault weapon.

oh that's a lie you can tell yourself if you like. But if you look at other countries death rates from gun violence you simply have to admit that there ARE laws that would help. You just don't happen to LIKE those laws, Gloria. I don't believe that America is so much more stupid than England or Scotland or Australia- I think that we know exactly how to curb gun violence and its time we stopped crazy people from standing in our way while our babies are murdered in cold blood.