In The Wake Of Newtown, Tennessee Goes For Its Guns

[The Straight Story]

In The Wake Of Newtown, Tennessee Goes For Its Guns


In Tennessee the state legislature is considering arming its teachers. It's worth giving some attention to those who are now putting for their plans. Here Evan McMorris-Santero talks to Tennessee state senator Frank Niceley:

State Sen. Frank Niceley (R) told TPM on Tuesday he believes it's time for that to change. He plans to introduce legislation in the next session, which begins Jan. 8, that will require all schools to have an armed staff member of some kind. The current language of the bill -- which is in its early form -- would allow for either a so-called "resource officer" (essentially an armed police officer, the kind which most Tennessee high schools have already) or an armed member of the faculty or staff in every school in the state. The choice would allow schools that can't afford a resource officer to fulfill the requirement without having to pay for anything beyond the cost of the training and, presumably, the weapon. But Niceley said schools should use the wiggle room to train and keep on hand armed staff not in uniform. That's the best way to protect students, he said.

"Say some madman comes in. The first person he would probably try to take out was the resource officer. But if he doesn't know which teacher has training, then he wouldn't know which one had [a gun]," Niceley said by phone. "These guys are obviously cowards anyway and if someone starts shooting back, they're going to take cover, maybe go ahead and commit suicide like most of them have..."

"Look at it this way, you never see one of these whacko shooters go to a gun show and start shooting. They don't go down to the police station and start shooting," he said.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-the-wake-of-newtown-tennessee-goes-for-its-guns/266459/

[Chorophyll]

1. These are the same people who call teachers "union thugs" and think they're responsible

for everything that goes wrong with society. But they're responsible enough to be armed all day long in classrooms full of children? Okay then.

[Recursion]

2. Mass shootings are horrible drivers of policy

Unlike 90% of this board, I think this actually could do some good against mass shootings, but at the cost of a much higher level of accidents and misuse. This is sort of like people who worry about terrorists hijacking their airplane and so instead drive their car on vacation "for safety".

[louis-t]

3. It's the same, tired rhetoric that says "the criminals will be

soooo scared because they won't know who is armed". Nonsense, anyone who is going to shoot up a building has a death wish anyway. They don't care who is armed and who is not. The conservative 'solution' is to do something after the shooting starts. By then, it's already too late.