Firearms not desirable part of public education

Is the teacher packin'?

She might be, if Sen. Mark Christensen is successful with bill to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons on the job.

The idea didn't make it out of committee back in 2011, when the Imperial senator offered the idea following an Omaha incident in which a student shot and killed a vice principal and then himself.

It was resurrected after the December 2012 mass-shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, where a troubled young man shot and killed 20 first-graders and six adults before killing himself.

That incident left some wondering whether a teacher with a gun could have cut short the 11-minute rampage and saved many lives in the process.

Declaring schools a gun-free zone exposes them as a "soft target" for someone bent on committing a mass atrocity.

"I absolutely don't want every teacher to have one. Nobody does," Christensen told The Associated Press. "But if you have a gunman coming into a school, I don't want kids shot up and killed until the police arrive, which could be four or five minutes. It could be 10 minutes. Ten minutes could mean a lot of dead kids."

Christensen's bill wouldn't mean a mass arming of educators.

Teachers would first have to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon and then undergo more training, possibly in a simulated school setting. The local school board would also have to approve the teacher, making its decision in a closed session so teachers with guns wouldn't be identified.

The Nebraska State Educators Association opposes any weapons or other dangerous devices in schools, and a January poll of 800 National Education Association members found 22 percent favored training programs to allow teachers to carry firearms in schools, 68 percent opposed.

"The NSEA believes that children and educational employees should be guaranteed a safe, secure learning environment and working conditions," said Nancy Fulton, NSEA president.

Everyone agrees with that goal.

The difference arises when it comes to ways to provide those conditions.

Arkansas, Oklahoma and Virginia each passed laws this year to allow permit holders to carry weapons on school grounds, but none of the laws applied to public schools, and in Virginia, only for security officers hired for that purpose.

Yes, it sometimes takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. Unnecessarily adding firearms to the chaos that sometimes exists in public schools is not the answer, however.