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December 28, 2012

Armed teachers in schools?

By Bob Regl

There are countless unforseen problems with having armed teachers in our schools.

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Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association has suggested that the way to prevent mass killings in schools is for teachers to pack heat.

Now I am fully supportive of our teachers (I was one myself), but let's try to think this through.

There are almost 100,000 public schools in America and about 33,000 private schools and about 3.7 million teachers and perhaps 0.3 million administrators for a total of about 4 million teachers and administrators.

Now let's suppose that 10% of these people (400,000) are armed. In any population of 400,000 people some of them, let's guess 1/10th of 1% (400 people) have some sort of emotional issue that might cause them to react inappropriately under stress (some students can be very difficult to deal with, even violent).

Teachers are not immune from psychological problems. Now do we really want 400 people with psychological issues wandering about our schools carrying deadly weapons?

Think about it.



Authors Bio:
Bob is a retired engineer and lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He contributed significantly to the post-Challenger redesign of the solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle.
He has taught engineering at several universities and was involved in the design of Offshore platforms.

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