Should teachers be armed? A resounding no. As i mentioned earlier, kids will figure out very quickly which teachers are carrying. Teacher clothing, especially since it is an industry dominated by women (and I don't mean that in a sexist way, I mean it in a fashion way) doesn't really allow for carrying without a noticable bulge showing (Y'all get your heads out of the gutter). Which means if a shooting occurs, those teachers would quite probably be the first targets.

A student asked me today if I thought teachers should be armed at school. I told him no and he disagreed. I then asked him if he felt comfortable with Ms. F carrying a gun at schools. He quickly said no. I asked what teachers in our school he would feel comfortable carrying a gun, he couldn't come up with anyone.

Now I can only speak for my school and the schools I am familar with. But many schools have several buildings that aren't connected, requiring kids to go outside to get to class. In my little school (K-8 with 250 kids) kids who are in band have to got to a trailer. The Media Center and Music room are in other buildings. Thus doors to the main building and the other areas have to remain unlocked. I know one school in our county where the cafeteria, gym, media center 5-6 area and 7-8 area are all in different buildings. Imagine schools with multiple trailers and buildings. Doors really can't be locked.

Metal detectors. Let's imagine a medium sized school of 600 kids. Now imagine all those kids arriving at roughly the same time in the morning when buses roll in. If you thought the security lines at airpoorts were bad, imagine scanning 600 backpacks and all those kids going through a metal detector. Now to staff just one detector, you'd need a minimum of 3 people; 1 at the detector, 1 at the backpack scanner, and 1 wanding kids who set off the metal detector.  Do you pull 3 cops off patrol for this task? Hire TSA wannabes to work 1-2 hours a day, 5-10 hours a week? Teachers have to be in their homerooms supervising the kids so they can't do it.

SRO's in all schools. Great idea, and our county has one in each high school and the 3 big middle schools. But the smaller schools like mine don't have any. And even if there was an active shooter, and the SRO arrived as soon as possible because he or she was at the other end of the building, would there be fewer people killed? Probably. Which means at the last shooting, instead of 17 dead there's be only 8 or 9. Is that where we are? Instead of nipping things in the bud, we'd celebrate that ONLY 8 kids died.

I saw one suggestion that all schools should build large fences around the property AND arm teachers. Instead of that, let's just move prisoners to schools and put students and teachers in the jails. Because that's what schools would become, jails.

All schools that I know of have Code Blue drills. Most school shootings are done by students or former students. These kids know the procedure and know where students are supposed to hide in the classrooms, basically making them sitting ducks. Even then, as the latest shooter did, he disrupted the Code Blue by pulling the fire alarm, leading to more confusion and hallways filled with kids and teachers.

I see a lot of chatter about the mental health of the shooter and very little about the emotional scars these kids and teachers will have to carry with them the rest of their lives. I honestly can't say how my mental health would be affected if I had to walk past dead coworkers and students while trying not to step in any blood that may be pooling up on the floor.

I also mentioned that we shhould tax the #badword# out of guns, ammunition, and anything gun related. And if there's a limit to how much Sudafed I can buy, and have to show ID, and a database is kept so I can't go from store to store to get more than 1 box, surely the same can be done with ammunition, gunpowder, and anything else needed to make one's own bullets.

See, I told you this would be long, boring and random. That is if you are still reading.