The GOP's Only Answer to School Shootings Didn't Help in Uvalde
The line has gone from crisis PR spin to Republican Party dogma. But while the “good guy with a gun” mantra has the ring of tough guy common sense, the empirical evidence suggests armed cops and civilians do less than nothing to deter mass shooters.
Of course, this is Texas. It’s not like potential good guys with guns were thin on the ground in Uvalde. Law enforcement actually engaged the shooter before he got into the elementary school. Indeed, as the Austin American-Statesman reported, it was actually a school guard—a good guy with a gun—who confronted and failed to prevent the shooter’s entry. For years, though, Texas has encouraged teachers to pack heat. In the wake of a 2018 shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that encouraged schools to do exactly what Ken Paxton now demands. It mattered little back then that Abbott was responding to killings at a school that already had two armed guards and a plan to put guns in the hands of teachers.
Last year, a group of public health scholars published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examining 133 school shootings from 1980 to 2019. An armed guard was present in about a quarter of the incidents in the study. Those schools actually suffered death rates nearly three times higher than schools without armed guards. Similarly, a 2020 review of gun policy research by the RAND Corporation think tank found no evidence that the presence of more guns had any effect on gun violence. Criminologists at Texas State University found that unarmed staff or the shooters themselves are far more likely to bring a school shooting to an end than someone with a gun returning fire.So-called good guys with guns fail to effectively deter or end mass shootings for a variety of tactical and psychological reasons.
So-called good guys with guns fail to effectively deter or end mass shootings for a variety tactical and psychological reasons. For one thing, it’s actually very hard to shoot straight in a situation like a mass shooting. RAND analysts have found that even highly trained NYPD officers only hit their intended target in 19 percent of gunfire exchanges. Winning a gunfight with a shooter only becomes more difficult when the perpetrator carries a semi-automatic rifle like an AR-15, as the Uvalde suspect and many others have done. These weapons have a much longer range and are far more accurate than the kinds of pistols typically used by police and civilian concealed carriers, allowing shooters to keep responders far enough away that their own weapons will be of little use. The Uvalde gunman, for instance, managed to overpower two officers whom he encountered on his way to the elementary school.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/gop-school-uvalde-shooting-response-guys-with-guns.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
the USA's emotion-free right-wing sector neglects to mention massive damage to quality education and community building that's done by having weapons and guards present in our schools. That damage is due to fear and suspicion created in children's vulnerable minds, both toward armed personnel and toward each other.
My daughter the fifth-grade teacher says the environment in our schools must be free of fears and be quiet, peaceful and nurturing spaces in order for kids to learn and become caring, functional members of society. You can't do those things in an armed prison.
We need not only much stricter gun laws and regulation, but we also need to rebuild our school facilities so that no weapons of any kind can ever enter learning spaces.
RIP to the innocent little ones in Texas......
KY..............
and completely ignoring the armed school officer shooting at the shooter before he entered the school. Their answer to everything is more guns. If that doesn't work, then more guns. Rinse off the blood and repeat. 
their online loonies are already claiming that school resource officers need to be combat veterans with AR-15 style guns. 
