William Voorhees
April 3, 2014
I do not believe that having a no-concealed-carry sign on every door will have any effect on RB. This doesn’t mean that the signs shouldn’t be there. In a legal sense, they have to be on every door so that people know the law. From a logical standpoint, there is no situation where these signs will change anything. If somebody happens to have a gun concealed on their person and is about to enter the school, it will either be A) for some form of criminal intent or B) because they can carry their gun just about everywhere else and they didn’t notice the signs. The target demographic for these signs does not exist. This (non-existent) group would be the people who carry a gun, but then notice the signs, read them, and then say to themselves, “Gosh, I was not aware of this law. I’m glad I took the time to read that sign or I would have committed a crime. I’m going to go put my gun in my car.”
Minor changes like this do not affect our safety. This includes the inane suggestion that security guards should have guns in the school. The notion that “the only way to fight a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” has no merit at all, especially when it is applied to a school setting. There is probably a greater risk of an incident happening if RB’s security has guns. To me, there is a much larger chance of security personnel in the building losing a gun or having it stolen then there is of somebody bringing a gun in.
All in all, we shouldn’t be wasting so much time and money on such matters. Yes, it is important to have good security for the safety of the school, but the steps being taken to improve it are trivial and most of the ideas are unrealistic or would have no tangible effects. The chance that somebody brings a gun into the building is already slim and the chance that somebody would bring a gun into the building with the intention of using it is pretty close to zero. It’s great to have policies or plans set in place to protect the school, but the reality is, if somebody wants to bring a gun in (whether or not they intend to use it), there is nothing that will physically stop them from doing so.