FRESNO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA — The Kingsburg Joint Union High School District has voted unanimously to allow select members of the district’s faculty and administration to carry concealed on school campus. Rather than in reaction to some recent tragedy, this was seen as a proactive solution to a potential future problem.
Citing recent examples where teachers and students were left defenseless until police arrived, Kingsburg police Chief Neil Dadian said he was very much in favor of the new measure.
via Star-Telegram
“Imagine if one of those teachers was also armed. They could have stopped that. … The loss of life would’ve been much less,” Kingsburg police Chief Neil Dadian said Monday. “My opinion? If a staff member wants to put themselves at risk like that, I’m all for it. I think what they’re doing is everything they possibly can to protect their students, and God bless them for that.”
While the board’s decision was unanimous, some guardians of children attending the school expressed disappointment in the decision.
“Now we’re going to add something else for teachers to think about? Shooting people, really?” [one grandmother] said. “That’s a difficult thing for a police officer to do who’s been trained to do this, and you have a split second to decide if you should kill this person or not. I wouldn’t want that responsibility, and I wouldn’t want it for our teachers.”
This reflects, if anything, a rising inability to accept the realities our society is presently faced with. Danger doesn’t announce itself and the will of a bad guy must be met with force. However, there’s going to be a lot of people who simply refuse to see that planning for a bad situation in advance.
As the Star-Telegram pointed out in their article, the Kingsburg Joint Union High School does not have perimeter fences or even a police officer on duty at the school. This means that without teachers and faculty members able to mount a defense, they will quite literally be waiting for police to arrive. That time can cost lives — and it’s something the board has rightly decided can be allayed through allowing select teachers to carry concealed in either an inside the waistband holster or similar.
Why wait for a bad situation when you can be prepared for it? That’s the general idea behind carrying concealed.