SDGO supports allowing teachers to be armed
(Thursday, October 12, 2006) - As the nation searches for ways to end school violence, South Dakota Gun Owners joins Gun Owners of America in offering a simple answer: Arm the teachers.
Banning guns in school zones has failed. Criminals don't obey the laws and will always manage to get firearms. Putting a 'gun free zone' sign on the front of a school only emboldens criminals who love disarmed victims.
The only school shootings that have been stopped mid-course were ended because law-abiding citizens had guns -- such as in Pearl Mississippi (1997) and at the Appalachian School of Law (2002), where faculty and responsible adults were able to bring their own defensive firearms to bear.
Utah teachers with carry permits can carry in their schools. Not surprisingly, we have yet to hear of a shooting on a UT campus. The same goes with Israel, where teachers can carry. In fact, their terrorist problem at schools ENDED when Israeli teachers began carrying.
This is an idea that Americans support, as 85% of the American public find it appropriate for a principal or teacher to use "a gun at school to defend the lives of students" in stopping a school massacre (Research 2000 Poll).
No amount of gun control would have stopped Charles Carl Roberts from acquiring guns to commit his atrocity. Roberts had a clean record and would have passed any and every background check."
According to the Clinton Justice Department in 1997, guns are used 50 times more often to save life than to take life. This means that for every 5 kids we see tragically shot at school (such as in PA), there are another 250 positive cases of self-defense with a gun.