When gun rights advocates talk about arming teachers, no one is suggesting that all teachers should be armed or must be armed. Instead, we’re talking about allowing teachers to have the option to carry a firearm. Many would but aren’t allowed by state law, after all.

However, one thing almost any of us will tell you is that just having a concealed carry permit isn’t enough. Everyone, not only teachers, needs proper training to understand how to effectively use their firearm in a time of need.

To that end, a couple of firearm instructors in Tennessee have offered to provide that training.

Two local firearm training businesses have announced a partnership to provide safety, firearms and self-defense training to school staff and teachers after the Tennessee Legislature decided to take up the issue of arming teachers.

Austin’s Tennessee Firearms School and Norsemen Training and Consulting Group announced their partnership in a news release. The group’s School Administrator and Faculty Empowerment (SAFE) training comes in response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida Feb. 14 where 17 people were killed.

Austin’s website lists the reason for the training so there can be a “safer more prepared citizenry that is ready to face and defeat evil if ever they are forced to confront it.”

The SAFE training will begin on May 19, National Train a Teacher Day, where they will offer free Tennessee handgun carry permit classes.

This announcement comes as Tennessee begins looking at allowing local jurisdictions to determine for themselves whether teachers should be permitted to carry firearms or not.

Let’s be realistic here; the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun.

Of course, there are some who seem to think this will work:

The death part is pretty much what would happen in such a circumstance. We know this is especially true in the case of a mass shooter who has entered a school, we know because so many teachers have died doing exactly this. Whether their conscience was clean or not is something I can’t comment on, nor would I care to do so, but we do know they died.

Would those teachers have died if the law had allowed them to carry a firearm? That’s impossible to answer definitively, in part because we don’t know if anyone in that school would have done so if given a choice.

What we can say is that if teachers were permitted to carry, the likelihood of a shooting would have dropped significantly. Mass shooters tend to target places where no one is carrying. If you remove that protection for them, they’re likely to go somewhere else.

But the point remains, let teachers have the choice.

“Oh, but my teacher friend said she didn’t want to carry a gun,” someone said to me recently. To that, I say, fine. Whatever. No one is saying she should carry one.

That’s the problem, though. Anti-gun activists want to shut down a person’s right to decide for themselves. Why? They don’t think people can’t be trusted to make good decisions?

Well, two firearm instructors in Tennessee are working to help teachers make good decisions should they decide to carry. Good on them for it.