commentaries

This totally ignores the fact that having armed guards only provides a false sense of security. It is incredibly easy to get around having an armed guard in a school building. Consider a building that is over 300,000 sq feet, 2 or 3 stories, a quarter mile long, and has 2,000 students. How are you going to keep someone from getting in that building and shooting many people before your rent-a-cop even gets to that part of the building? How are you going to protect students at recess, on the bus, or in the parking lot? Where are you going to get the money to pay for this faux security, given that police cost more than teachers, and rent-a-cops at $15 tend to be more trouble than they are worth?

Anyone who thinks armed guards in a school building will protect everyone is only fooling themselves.

This is just window dressing for a larger problem we have as a society. We are just a violent, gun happy society. If somebody wants to kill somebody at a school, they will. And if it's not a school, it will be a church,as we saw in Wisconsin. Does that mean we need armed guards at every church function? If not a church, how about a kids soccer game. Do we put guards there? Unless we become a totalitarian regime that has armed guards all around us, we need to address the underlying causes. Mental illness and the ease of which to attain guns is the problem. I do not want to live in a country where we lose our freedoms just to make it so we can own guns for everybody. That is not a fair trade off.

What an appalling lack of vision coming from an elected leader. I wonder how it feels to be a child who sees adults proposing "solutions" that will never really make them safe. Wouldn't it be better to try to create a society that is more peaceful and safe? Must we give up on that simply because of the gun industry and the "culture" they have created in this country?

The school that the president's daughters attend has 11 armed security guards. Michael Moore goes everywhere with armed guards.

Cornish's examples of schools with armed police do not give an honest and complete picture. The police officers in many schools spend much of their time in meetings behind closed doors and are not patrolling the halls. They are typically working with shool vice-principals, social workers, psychologists, teachers, etc in an attempt to help troubled kids!their ability to respond to an actual shooting would be significantly delayed by many limiting realities!! Putting more guns in schools is not a realistic solution!!

They very well may not be able to protect EVERYONE, but if they can protect the majority it may be well worth it. Its certainly better than no protection at all. There are a lot of guns out there, the criminals will always have them. Why put the law abiding people at a disadvantage. What disturbs me is when the rich and elite like NBC's David Gregory and Even Dianne Feinstein want to take away all our rights or shoot down what many normal people like us think are good ideas than dont apply them to themselves. Gregories kids go to a school that supposedly has armed guards. The same school President Obama's kids go to. Feinstein had and may still have a conceal carry license. Whats good for us is never good enough for them. With all the people killed by drunk drivers do we ban cars or go back to prohibition? How many deaths or accidents are caused by people using cell phones? I doubt we will ever go back to the landline only era. Emotional quick fixes never work they are just an easy way to avoid spending the time and money or even admitting to the real problems. There will always be a few crazies in the world and they use many things besides guns to do their damage.

I'm amused at some folks' negative responses to this idea. Sure, there are still some devils in the details. But after 9/11, there was overwhelming support for providing armed Air Marshalls aboard aircraft and arming pilots. Parents, have you taken your kid aboard an airline flight lately? Have you taken your kid to a sporting event or concert where there were also armed guards and police? Seriously, did you or did you *not* feel safer because of their presence? Of course you did. Why then, do you same people balk at this same idea? I'll tell you exactly why! It is because you desperately want to cling to a fuzzy-wuzzy, idyllic vision of care-free school days. Bah! No matter if you like it or not, these days, our schools have become the soft-targets of-choice for wack-o's and terrorists. So tell me now, which is your highest priority, parents? To protect your cherished, sappy-happy, idealistic dreams of a Beaver Cleaver school-days yesteryear? Or to protect your kids from today's real threats?

"I know there are teachers who carry while instructing." If this true, then we parents deserve to know who they are and whether they are in front of our children or not.

Good on you Tony. I agree that having an armed police officer in schools makes sense. And you didn't pretend police officers in schools can stop every evil person trying to commit acts of violence on school-grounds. You sensibly said it would add a measure of security, and of course it would. Imagine how many kids could have been saved if the police in Newton CT arrived in 2 minutes instead of 22 minutes. You also pointed out that the MN permit to carry a pistol makes an exception to the prohibition of carrying weapons on school grounds that allows permit holders to carry guns at school once they have obtained the necessary permission. I hope the principles of our MN schools have been sensible enough to give that permission to permit holders on the school staff who have requested it.

Nothing like living under siege. This, to me, is a sign of complete failure. We are all responsible that we find ourselves heading down the path of an armed society. Hopefully, this becomes a wedge issue and we start to hold politicians accountable. This guy does not belong in office.