Here is an article from the Tennessean. This is the place Bob Lee Swagger famously called "the patron state of shootin' stuff."
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I know the author of this article, so I automatically trust her judgment, but that is not necessary since Dr. Laurie Woods succinctly makes her case as an authority on this issue.
I believe I am one of only a few college professors who have shot another human being. As a narcotics agent with the California Department of Justice in my previous life, I had the occasion to shoot a suspect who was trying to kill my partner and me. The suspect missed — I did not. I later taught handgun training at a pistol range, and despite my 21 years of law enforcement and my so-called expertise with handguns, I still do not want to carry a gun as a professor.
There are voices around which want to lay the blame for mass shootings on video games. There may be a little bit of merit in that argument, but when only one in a million kids who play those games ever goes out and actually shoots someone, it seems difficult to draw even a correlation, much less causation. It seems more apparent to me that video games and movies have misinformed many into thinking that shooting a bad guy is pretty easy stuff. Here is one stunning statistic from Dr. Woods:
Police officers, who must qualify at a pistol range on a regular basis, still hit their human targets only about 17 percent of the time, a nationwide statistic that does not vary much from year to year.
As she points out, most police chiefs and sheriffs, professionals who supervise other professionals who are trained to carry and use firearms, are against arming teachers.
It is a brief and powerful column. Please read the rest. I will let Dr. Woods have the final line here:
We ask our children’s educators to enrich their minds and help them find their way in the world. I, for one, think that doing that job well requires a mindset of a very different focus. My own experiences as a cop convince me that most Americans prefer to give teachers the freedom to teach — without their having to worry about being ready to kill.