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.
Ah yes, the solution in a mass shooting event is to make sure there are more panicked, armed civilians fearing for their lives around the place.
When you have bloodthirsty police who are scared of acorns in the mix too this is just going to lead to dead teachers.
Is obviously to bring more guns.
/s
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.
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.
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.
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.