Texas School shooting 19 children and 2 adults murdered

Well, to be fair, in my last paragraph I clearly did concede that a gun would be good to have in that moment — but my point focused more around the realities of how you build an everyday policy around that. It is obvious that if I am a teacher I would probably like to have a gun on me when Psycho is coming through the door, but as I said this means a policy being in place for how I am trained with that weapon, what I am expected to do with it, where I keep it (on my person, a locked safe etc). There are just so many questions as to expectations and practical realities.

So yes, a teacher with a gun might help in the isolated scenario, but how “worth it” that is versus the practicalities, ethics and general upholding of what school should be about for children is doubtful. I also think it’s probably a step in the wrong direction for a country where they should be doing more to tackle the root problem instead of trying to find flimsy simplistic solutions. If one day a teacher saved a group of kids using his gun in the school, one would feel ill-equipped to quibble over that, but then it leads to that “more guns is the answer” thinking that fuels the root cause of the very problem in the USA and their society’s unhealthy relationship with weaponry.

The type of testing is just being pedantic. If there was no such thing as a driving test and someone came up with the idea today there would plenty who would say it was impossible and that no one would sign off on someone's ability to drive in case they would be sued later.

Even if you deem a psychological test for everyone is too burdensome, you could instead target it towards those who have a flag come back on a background check that wouldn't necessarily stop them from buying a gun (maybe those who has been convicted of a violent crime are banned from owning a gun and those arrested for a violent crime need to do a psychological test). Everyone else does similar as is needed for a driving test - take a certain number of classes, have to do a test regarding gun safety, pass a test on a gun range.

There is always a reason why doing anything regarding gun control would be difficult and by god those who owns guns like to point out every single wrinkle there might be as to why not to even try.

well seeing as the police couldn't get through the door, I wouldnt need a gun would I?

Would I want the massive additional risk of carrying a gun into a PRIMARY SCHOOL every day of my life and the higher of chance of something bad happening than ever being in that situation in the first place

Then no

The same reason I wouldn[t get a gun for home protection and most dont either, because you will increase your chance of dying if you do

Home intruders using a person's gun against them is relatively rare, though obviously a much bigger danger than not having a gun at all.

Nevertheless, students or other faculty may take someone's weapon and use it during an argument. Faculty might use their own weapons in a rage (yes, this has happened). Accidental discharge, misplacing or dropping a weapon is common.

Suicide is the big one though. I'll go back to that same old one. Having access to weapon increases your risk of suicide death dramatically. I highly doubt that any teacher who would carry a gun in school wouldn't have one at home, but it's reckoned anywhere from 25 to 50% of all suicides are spur-of-the-moment. Having a gun on your belt is an obvious risk.

In terms of whether having a gun would give one even an outside fighting chance, the data suggests no; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25910555/

Your odds of being injured, killed or robbed when faced with a criminal are virtually the same whether or not you're carrying a gun.

if your kids steals your gun and shoots someone, then off to jail with you, you can share a cell

there are only so many guns in the gun stores to sell out, what then

You start now, it could take 20 years to change it

ALL that will happen is that the teacher (that easy to pick out adult amongst a load of kids) will get targeted first.

If a crazy killer armed with several guns and a load of ammo goes into a school to kill people, he'll shoot the obvious danger to himself before going about his task of killing the unarmed. Any adult will just be shot.

"Arm the teacher" is a load of crap.

Just make efforts to not arm the crazy killer in the first place.

Hey, like I said in a previous post, I'm not against psychological testing. I just think it might be a bit impractical. I like your idea about someone being tested if they are flagged. That makes sense.

I'm always in favour of safety training when it comes to guns. I think it should be mandatory.

We have some common ground.

this is as stupid as locking your home defense weapon in a safe

look you have run with this for a while, you know its stupid, like fighting fire with fire

Far more feasible to bring in such laws than to "fix" broken people and broken cultures. What's clear is that whatever America and Republicans think is being done to "fix" the mass shooting problem, is at best not helping at all, but in all likelihood is making it worse.

There are no easy fixes here, but there are things that can be done with literally no more than the stroke of a pen.

The US spends nearly a trillion dollars every year on their military.

They could use half of that money to introduce tougher gun laws and go in hard on enforcement and still have the largest military budget in the world by a large margin.

There is nothing difficult about better gun laws in the US except for the scumbags standing in the way of it.

The adult firearm ownership figure in the US is likely higher than that quoted figure of 31.9% as many people will own a gun and not admit to it.

Any gun licensing system should have a "black card" system whereby certain qualified individuals can make a protected disclosure that they are concerned about a gun owner's state of mind. This would result in the owner's licence being instantly suspended and their weapons confiscated pending a review.

A "qualified" individual obviously not being any randomer, but a cop, doctor, psychologist, parent or child, etc.