A thought experiment for those who think arming teachers is the way to defend children: Take five minutes and review your memory of every teacher you had K-12. Now ask yourself who among them you would arm with the expectation that they could drop a shooter wearing a Kevlar vest and armed with a semiautomatic. Mrs. Boyd? The one with the cherubic face ringed with blue-white curls who taught me my ABC's? Mrs. Haight? Who had to be reminded when it was time for lunch? Miss Kingle who taught me arithmetic and that I should be careful with synonyms? The four-foot seven Miss Montgomery with the thick glasses who taught me to love classic literature? Miss Muller of the failed chemistry experiments, lover of liverworts and mosses? Mary Jane Dozer, who had deadly aim with chalk erasers, maybe. Mr. Roof... He would have loved laying down a field of fire that would have taken out everyone. Not until I was a junior in high-school, when I had Mr. French for Government and Econ, did I have a teacher that would make me feel safe if armed. He was an Illinois National Guardsman. Which I guess would count as a "well-regulated militia."
Run the experiment for yourself. Put a gun into the hand of every teacher you ever had. Can you see them “dropping the shooter?”
I am so grateful for all my teachers, for giving me the life that I enjoy because of all they taught me. I want teachers in classrooms, not Rambo. To ask them to take on the responsibility of defending children so that we can allow anyone with the cash to purchase a weapon designed for war is far too much to ask of our teachers, even if they were capable of the task. And if we do, shooters will simply move to softer targets: shopping malls, playgrounds, high-school football stadiums and so on, ad infinitum.
Stop the irrational arguments. Make weapons of war illegal for civilian ownership.