A Few Observations On School Shootings

Most teachers are women, and liberal women at that, and few of them have any experience with guns, or even want it. Many of them are rabidly anti-gun, in fact. Expecting them to train and carry guns to deter maniacs is a fool's desire.

Supposing, though, you did manage to persuade teachers (and school administrators and school lawyers) to carry guns: there's lots of details there to take care of. Do the teachers carry them on their persons, in holsters? In their purses? In a locked cabinet in the classroom? What happens if when a teacher has a negligent discharge? Or feels threatened by an unruly teen and throws down on him? If the guns are locked in the classroom 24/7, it makes a target for thieves.

Probably a better solution is what the airlines came up with in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist hijackings: making access to the cockpit impossible by "hardening" the access door. The same could be done for classrooms: metal doors with no windows, with a heavy metal bar on the inside to keep a gunman out and the kids/teacher safe within. Periodic drills to familiarize the staff and students with the necessity of getting inside the secure classrooms.

Limit access into and out of the school building itself with more hardened steel doors. If the school has a "resource officer" (read: cop), he should be stationed at the main entrance so as to monitor people arriving at the school.

Well, those are my ideas. Feel free to contribute others as you like.