Dear Mr. President,
As a teacher, your idea about getting certain teachers that have served in the military and have the training to use a gun, to do so in a school environment, is a no brainer. Specifically, anyone who would suggest this as a viable response to what the students who have been through these school shootings are asking for — to feel safe — has no understanding of what it’s like inside a school when there is an AR-15 toting psychopath on the loose — someone who doesn’t care if they die and has no expectation of escaping. The Florida shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was an anomaly, in that he shot up the place and then walked away. Most others are dead at the scene, either by killing themselves or dying in a shootout, after a team with substantial fire power has arrived to confront him.
The myth of the belief that a good guy with a gun will stop an AR-15 bad guy is nonsense. It has never happened, not withstanding the NRA talking point that has helped fuel the purchase of millions of additional guns, allegedly to ‘good’ guys that have yet to stop one shooter. The reality of arming gym teachers (or any other non-security type person) with the expectation that they can suddenly respond to an intruder who has an AR-15, is so fraught with a lack of clear thinking of what would have to happen at that moment, that it’s what someone who has never been a teacher in a school would dream up.
First, before that teacher could even move out of the gym or classroom, they would have to have someone else take control of their classroom or gym, as teachers cannot leave students alone at any time, especially in such an emergency situation. Generally, schools go into lockdown mode, where they are not supposed to open a locked door to either let anyone in or anyone out. How the rules could be changed to enable a teacher to abandon his students and go into a hallway to confront an AR-15 armed maniac with a simple handgun is sheer lunacy.
Second, let’s say the brave teacher with a gun exits his classroom and comes upon the gunman in the hall with students still running for safety as the AR-15 is mowing them down. Chances are the teacher will not want to shoot at the gunman with so many students in harm’s way and he will become the school shooter’s next victim. If the teacher starts shooting at the shooter, how many students will be killed by his bullets before the shooter returns fire and obliterates the teacher and more students? He might even grab a student and tell the teacher to drop the gun or he would kill the student. Is that teacher suddenly going to become a hostage negotiator, as well? If he drops the gun, he’s dead and if he doesn’t, the student(s) are dead, as well.
Third, the idea that you have labelled the shooter as mentally ill, but then expect him to think rationally about not entering a school because he believes he might be shot by a teacher carrying a gun, is another absolute false premise. You can’t have it both ways — either these shooters are mentally ill and incapable of being rational, in which case they will go into any school where their Ar-15 with countless magazines to kill and body armor make them feel superior (because they will probably take their own life before anyone can get close enough to kill them, but not before they are able to destroy forever the innocent students in massive numbers), or they are not mentally ill and all your efforts to keep them from getting an AR-15 are going to have no impact on school shootings, as long as these persons can buy assault weapons legally.
Fourth, just because you claim there are all these ex-military types as teachers doesn’t mean it’s so. I seriously doubt they account for 20-40% of all teachers, as 75% of teachers are female and that would mean every male teacher would have to be an ex-military, which is absolutely not the case. I’m not and none of my male (or female) counterparts that I know at my school of 200 plus teachers is a retired military person that came to teach as a second career. You are entitled to your opinion, but not your own set of facts, so the numbers you speak of, simply are not real.
Finally, the fact is that what students want in order to feel safe is for these assault weapons to be banned in our society. The false argument that Democrats or anyone who wants these weapons banned is out to eliminate the second amendment is sheer political babble from greedy gun lobbyists of the NRA that have blood on their hands, along with the do nothing members of Congress that accept their money and implement only what the NRA believes is acceptable — more guns! Who is it that uses these weapons for any legitimate purposes? They aren’t, or certainly shouldn’t be used for hunting, except by those maniacs that hunt people in schools, malls and nightclubs. I think America can live as a nation of handgun owners with simple rifles and shotguns that don’t have high capacities to shoot bullets that would only be needed for military purposes.