GA school district will arm staff, but not teachers

School shootings are particularly awful. Our children deserve to be safe while there, and yet schools are prime targets for those who want to slaughter innocent people in job lots. After all, people aren’t armed in most schools.

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Yet that’s apparently changing.

More and more places are considering allowing staff and faculty to carry firearms as a means of meeting such threats.

However, a Georgia school district is taking a slightly different approach.

The Cobb County School Board approved a policy that allows some school employees, but not teachers, to carry guns at school.

Proponents say the policy will keep students safe and help deter the likelihood of a school shooter. Opponents said the measure would not make students safer.

Under the policy, the district superintendent can authorize certain school employees to carry guns on school property, on school buses and at school events.

“Quite simply, this policy gives us other opportunities to enhance and increase the number of school resource officers,” Cobb County Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.

“Teachers are not going to be armed,” Ragsdale said, according to WSB Radio. “It is very important, obviously, for us to exhaust every possible option for keeping our staff and students safe.”

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OK…um…why are teachers not going to be able to carry firearms?

Don’t get me wrong, some people carrying guns are better than no one carrying guns. I just don’t see why teachers are automatically excluded.

After all, teachers are far more likely to be the target of a mass shooting than, say, the janitor. They’re the ones who are seen as the face of the school for many would-be shooters. They’re the ones who hand out discipline to the students including those that decide becoming a school shooter is the path to fame.

So why are they explicitly precluded from carrying guns?

Frankly, we don’t know. It sounds to me like the superintendent doesn’t trust the teachers to be responsible gun owners. After all, why else would they be excluded from being able to go to work armed? Never mind that they’d likely be among the first potential responders to a school shooting. No, it seems like that Ragsdale doesn’t trust the teachers in his district.

Now, considering some of the teachers I’ve run across in this line of work, that may not be the most foolish thing he could do, but I’ve also run across plenty of teachers that are responsible gun owners and with whom I’d trust not just a gun, but my kids.

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To determine across the board that teachers aren’t to be permitted to carry is a gross injustice to the thousands of teachers in Georgia who are absolutely trustworthy to do so.

And, frankly, I don’t understand the decision to not allow any of them to be armed.

Yes, having armed staff is a move in the right direction, but the truth is that law-abiding citizens with lawfully-possessed firearms aren’t the problem, whether they’re the school secretary or the biology teacher, so prohibiting some from being armed is wrong no matter how you slice it.

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