West Virginia’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to allow teachers and other school staff who undergo training to carry guns in K-12 public schools.
The bill, which now heads to the Senate, would allow teachers, administrators and support personnel with concealed carry permits to volunteer to bring a firearm into school with the intention of using it to defend the school in case of an active shooter event. Designated a “school protection officer,” the staffer wouldn’t receive any additional compensation for doing so.
Supporters say not every school system in West Virginia can afford to hire a full-time school resource officer. This program would provide another option.
Before the vote, Republican Del. Dave Foggin of Wood County, a physics teacher, said he can’t think of anything worse than shooting someone in his classroom. But he said if that person came into his school trying to hurt his students, he would do it.
What’s better, someone completely defenseless with no options but to hide and die. Or someone able to do something about it?
These are supposed to be trained individuals, not just a random 1st grade teacher that got handed a gun the day before.
It’s certainly less comprehensive than police training, and even that is lacking.
No amount of training makes up for the police standing outside not doing anything.
The type of teacher who wants to carry in a school is probably going to do a lot more training than the bare minimum.
Are you earnestly saying that you think gun owners are all responsible and well trained?
I’d bet instead that the main people who are going to carry in schools are going to be shitheads that replace their personalities with guns and who will mainly use them to threaten students. This gives any wannabe authoritarian a great big green checkmark to carry a deadly weapon around kids.
No one believes that or is saying that. “All Gun Owners” aren’t even in this conversation so why are you talking about them? We’re discussing a subset of “All Gun Owners”. These will be the ones who have permits and training, you know…the things that most people on Lemmy continually advocate for to help make sure that all gun owners are responsible gun owners.
Yes, exactly. Just like how everybody with a driver’s license is a well-trained and certified driver.
Or, like with police, the opportunity to carry a gun around like a badass will attract the wrong people to the job, and we’ll end up with teachers pulling guns on students for not treating them as deferentially as they’d like.
As a person who trained to handle a firearm in the army, keep them the fuck away. They have no fucking place in a school.
As a person whose shot with people trained by the Army…stay the fuck away from me at the Gun Range. Most of you don’t belong in a lane unless you are under the direct supervision of an RSO.
The simple fact is that many CCW holders handle firearms better than most Cops or Soldiers.
As a person who knows anecdotal evidence can’t be reliably extrapolated from (and someone who watched a person swing their loaded, jammed weapon at everyone else on the range looking for the instructor for help at a CCW class and still pass) I’d like to know if you based that “fact” on anything concrete.
“Fact” is a figure of speech here I’m guessing. I shared my own anecdote above. And that’s all it is, a story.
Anecdotal, I know, but the only person I’ve ever had to keep on eye on at camp was my ex-Marine friend. And he was a firearms instructor when he served.
He came close to flagging us a time or two, and one night popped one off downrange without letting everyone know. And that’s a rule at my camp. Everyone must be in sight, and you must make eye contact with them and be certain they’re wearing ear pro.
Maybe those guys get a little more casual? And for that matter, women are the best to train. They pay attention and follow rules. Guys tend to cowboy up, act like they know it all.
I mean, cops are supposed to be trained individuals, too. Training flies out the window when shit gets real.
My money is on this leading to an armed teacher getting shot by the police, an unarmed teacher being shot by the police because the police were jumpy or trigger-happy running in (if they can be bothered to run in at all) or, and this one is most likely, a gun a teacher brings legally to the premises being used in a shooting.
The evidence we currently have seems to indicate that while the presence of guns MIGHT lead to fewer property crimes, they don’t actually make places safer for people (and may actually make them more dangerous).
The reason we don’t have much data is because the gun lobby, until very recently, effectively kept the government from doing any research, which indicates to me they either already knew what the data would show or, at the very least, feared what it would show.
The SROs who forget their guns in school bathrooms are trained individuals too.
This law is a terrible idea.
hahahah well trained anything in west virginia? arent they at the very bottom of education? but sure, lets add Firearms to the teachers. that will help.
crazy how people convince themselves that carrying a human killing device makes them safer when its demonstrably false.
if you carry a human killing device, you have increased the danger to everyone around you. you become the problem.
Sorry… why is it “hide and die?” Are you under the impression that it is impossible to hide from a mass shooter?
He’s already completely ignored the “don’t let a potential mass shooter have a gun” option.
It’s fucking infuriating that “more guns” is the only option that can get any traction.
This is America. I have no hope of that ever happening. Too many people are too in love with The Precious.
That’s already not an option. There are more guns than people in the US. Guns have been so engrained into our culture for so long. You will no eradicate gun ownership in the US without starting a civil war
If only there were options other than “ban all guns” and “free guns for everyone”. I didn’t say eradicate gun ownership in my first comment.
Gun ownership has been going down for years. The reason there are so many guns out there is people who own dozens or hundreds of firearms.
Hey, specifically to address the hide question and no other part of the conversation: I’ve worked in a lot of schools. So, in many classrooms, it’s absolutely impossible to hide effectively. I told my last room if something real happened we just needed to take our kids and run. It was a death trap in a shooter situation. Some examples would be doors in-between rooms, doors that don’t lock, doors that do lock with glass panes, outside doors that were mostly glass. Single-exits with no locking doors and no windows so you’d be trapped. I hate having to think like this. Certain rooms are insanely vulnerable. I’ve consulted in a middle school that was like a fortress too. But all the elementary schools were pretty much the same.
Sounds like there’s nowhere for a teacher to hide a gun either in that case.
Also, students in Uvalde literally talked about hiding from the shooter.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/s-time-die-students-describe-harrowing-moment-gunman-entered-uvalde-te-rcna30617
Not only did they hide from him, they hid from him in the cafeteria. And they still survived.
So I’m still suggesting maybe “hide and die” isn’t the only option other than “teachers with guns.”
Yeah there’s no place for a gun in a school. Even on the best days staff are all over the place. It’s a bit of organized chaos, ya know. And some schools are really small. So if someone comes in the front door your chances of getting to safer spot are slim. My last one was literally a hallway and booking it out the back door was our crisis plan (like I said, death trap).
You don’t hide a gun, you carry it. Tucked away inside your clothing hidden in a way that nobody should be able to see it. A gun hidden away during an emergency is useless.
Can you show me where the law says the gun has to be carried? Because the article just says it has to be “concealed on campus.”
Are you saying that every single teacher permitted to carry a gun in school will definitely have it tucked inside their clothing hidden away where no one will be able to see it? Because the law sure doesn’t say they have to.
Are you also saying that it is impossible for a student to be able to get a gun away from a teacher if the teacher believes the gun to be hidden under their clothing? Is there at least a chance that a student could do that?
The summary of the bill is
Good job. You read a one-line bill summary. Now read the article OP linked. Specifically this part:
Here’s the actual bill text, not someone at AP New’s interpretation of the text. The firearm should be concealed while they’re on campus, not hiding it on campus.
https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hb4299 eng.htm&yr=2024&sesstype=RS&i=4299
Where in this text that mentions concealed is either immediately preceded/followed by carried, or in a sentence about it needing to be carried.
What’s better is to treat the core causes of gun violence, like high rates of gun ownership and an increasing lack of common-sense gun laws.