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My mother was an elementary teacher, my father a college professor and one of my older sisters is a high school teacher. My mother would not have touched a weapon, my father would have shot first and asked questions later and my sister called me upset they made her search her science lab after a bomb threat. After explaining to her why police would not know what was supposed to be there and what was not supposed to be there she understood but still thought it was crazy. She said she was there to educate students period.

Being in law enforcement and a parent, removing pipe bombs from schools and training for school shooting incidents all bring me to mixed emotions over arming school employees to gain safety in schools. Could you really expect a school employee, who is overworked and underpaid, to go through firearms training as that would be necessary before arming anyone. Legal updates pertaining to firearms would be mandatory every year, as well as being able to proficiently use the firearm. Where is the budget going to come from to supply practice ammunition? Many can barely afford school equipment as it is.

The criminal justice system and the school system each have different goals for the community they serve. These two systems, at least from what I have seen, work together when they have to but then it goes back to status quo. There would have to be an ongoing cooperative atmosphere between both for any type of armed school employee assistance to work. Law enforcement responding to a school shooting would not have time to distinguish a teacher from a suspect and this could make a terrible situation much worse.

Just the training and mentality required to handle an active shooter of any kind is far different than the mentality response to a disaster that has already happened. The mind set differences between a school employee and law enforcement would be a major hurdle. How would it be determined who and how many would be armed? What type of weapon would you provide? Would the weapon be visible or concealed? I think the answers to school safety lie elsewhere.

We need to start arming school employees with the right to even protect themselves from violence before we charge them with carrying firearms to protect others. Can teachers even defend themselves by using a physical response to a student that is out of control? Predators look for easy prey remove the predators, the easy and the prey and then we will be on the right road to providing safety in our schools.

Learn more about this author, Karen Moore.
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