After reading this thread and reading the news.. I can tell you this, I don't want my son's teachers having guns, I don't want a guard outside his school etc.
My son is not a prisoner, I don't want him going to school in prison. And I find it interesting that small government right wingers are the majority of the ones who want teachers armed and or armed guards at school.
So you are saying that you don't want your child protected if an armed gunman comes to his school.
Tell you what..why don't you just hang a sign on him that says "You can shoot me first. My mom has told my teachers not to protect me. I am expendable." That way, the killers can get tired shooting the children whose parents don't care about their safety, and the parents who do want their kids to survive will have a chance to lock and load, and kill the guy before he gets to their kids.
My son has a better chance of dying in a car wreck should I not drive him in a car?
I will also tell you this, other than the military people here I am probably one of the only posters here who has seen bullet fragments pulled out of their family member's face. My parents did everything to protect us, we lived in a good neighborhood, went to a good school, my mom even had a gun even though my dad is not into guns and my brother was still shot randomly.
It has nothing to do with not wanting to protect my son. It is smart enough to know that even though these incidents are horrible they don't happen every day, and that my son is better off going to school without an armed guard. He has a very very very small chance of being killed at school in this way. Right now he loves school, he is not scared to go to school. But as soon as you put an armed guard there he and others will start asking questions, and then become scared.
The bigger problem today, is children losing their innocence, not the slight chance they might shot at school. Plus if you treat a school like a prison, and treat everyone who enters like a criminal, they are going to start thinking they are a criminal.
To add to that, my brother who was shot is a republican, my other brothers are also republican and none of them own gun except the one who lives on a ranch. The brother who was shot did talk a lot about owning a gun once, he lived with a lot of fear but he still doesn't own a gun.
I have no problem with people owning guns, but I don't want my son going to school afraid. I don't want to give up that kind of freedom.
Then the problem is with your son, not with having an Officer in the school. In my county, St Mary's Co. Md. and surrounding counties in Md, we have, and have had, Community Resource Officers, which are armed and uniformed Police Officers, in our schools for years and the kids are just fine with it.