Pistol-packing teachers in Texas

Published on August 15, 2008 in Violence. 14 Comments By Joanne

In Harrold, Texas, a small district near the Oklahoma border, teachers and staff may be taking their guns to school this year. The sheriff’s office is 30 minutes away.

14 Responses to “Pistol-packing teachers in Texas”

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  • holly
    August 15, 2008 at 10:57 am

    Good. If more schools did this, fewer lives would be lost.

  • BadaBing
    August 15, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    Senatrix Diane Feinstein (D-CA) wouldn’t like that. She’s virulently anti-gun except for the one she carries in her purse for self-defense. That one’s okay.

  • Amy in Texas
    August 15, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Hey Joanne, here is the real education story today in Texas. Another reason I don’t teach in DISD!

    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081608dnmetdisdgrading.4627fe2.html

  • Wolf 359 Vet
    August 16, 2008 at 6:24 am

    Amy’s right. I’m surprised that there’s not already a stand-alone entry on DISD’s new grading requirements with 30+ replies already. :)

  • Michael Tinkler
    August 16, 2008 at 7:28 am

    I remember a survey of teachers done while I was teahing (Latin, part time) in the Atlanta city school system. It asked if you felt unsafe because other teachers were packing.

    I looked up in shock at the other folks in the lounge and asked “are some people carrying guns?” They quickly told me who. It was typically folks who had ticket window cash responsibility for sporting events, but there were some people who just carried.

  • Margo/Mom
    August 16, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Not sure what the grading policy in Dallas has to do with the gun policy in Harrold. My first thought about the gun policy is who are they going to shoot, rattlesnakes? Next, I would want someone to assure that the odds of being shot (or snake-bit, I suppose) by an intruder (I hope that they are not so out of touch with their 110 students as to suppose that this is where the danger lies) outweigh the odds of an accidental shooting from injecting approved firearms into the environment.

    Re: the grading policy–it looks like someone is saying loud and clear that there should be some consistency to what grades communicate–and that they should be indicators first of what students have learned about the content, rather than other things (promptness, follow through, attitude, etc). It’s too bad that the “professionals” (that would be the teachers) are determined to undermine this.

  • hall monitor
    August 16, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    I’ve been scratching my head all day trying to figure out what makes this a good idea. I just fear the headlines “Teacher shoots student.”

    Hall Monitor
    http://detentionslip.org

  • holly
    August 16, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    hall monitor,

    Imagine if the students shot were Klebold and Harris. Make a difference in how you see it?

  • BadaBing
    August 16, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Rock on, holly.

  • Margo/Mom
    August 16, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Still gotta go back to asking–which is more likely to happen, a Klebold and Harris situation, or a kid getting shot by accident when there are guns on site? (And just for fun–what is the likelihood that armed teachers would diminish rather than increase the bloodbath in a Klebold and Harris situation.

  • Andy Freeman
    August 17, 2008 at 7:06 am

    > And just for fun–what is the likelihood that armed teachers would diminish rather than increase the bloodbath in a Klebold and Harris situation.

    Interestingly enough, we have instances of “nutters” running into non-police carrying. The “not police” have stopped the nutters in some cases and have yet to make the problem worse.

    We also have experience with not-police carrying. Curiously, the predicted accident increase hasn’t happened.

    Should we give greater weight to experience or to theory that contradicts it?

  • Robert Wright
    August 17, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Ah, Texas.

    They gave us Mr. Bush, a failed baseball owner and an idiot, who got us into a costly, unnecessary unending war.

    They shot Kennedy and then Oswald.

    They named cities after racists.

    They raped and killed Mexican women to provoke a war for the purpose of stealing land.

    They allow teachers to carry guns.

    They allow students to skip on their homework.

    How backward can you get?

    Look, if I were allowed to carry a gun to class, there would be no such thing as missing homework.

  • Ragnarok
    August 17, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    Robert Wright said:

    “Look, if I were allowed to carry a gun to class, there would be no such thing as missing homework.”

    Right, just missing kids, I presume? Good that CA is so much more progressive than Texas; they want their teachers to carry guns to protect the kids from attack, you want to carry one to make sure they turn in their homework.

    And you’re more reasonable than most of the CA teachers, IMHO!

  • SuperSub
    August 17, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    Robert-
    Wouldn’t Texas get props for shooting Kennedy since he got us involved in an unecessary, unending war?

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