Students skip school to protest Tennessee law that would allow teachers to carry guns

Students in Tennessee walked out of school on Monday to protest a bill that would allow teachers to carry concealed firearms in the classroom. Mark Strassmann has the story.
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[@oliviakathryn8444]

Districts will not be responsible for the firearms that are misused!!!

[@voulathomacos-lagonas8445]

Fear is a two way street.....

[@SeattleSam-ul5hr]

When I grew up in TN schools, it was ok to bring your gun to school, but you had to leave it in the truck. I had a history professor who (as part of Civil War class) discharged a black-powder revolver IN CLASS!!! I’ve forgotten most things I’ve learned, but never forgot that!

[@andreperez1715]

These kids are some of this generation’s major wimps . If you cant trust your own teachers to have the ability to protect you? then just stay home and never go outside

[@cherylsaxon243]

Great report Mark!! Tennessee lawmakers are in the process of a firearm bill that would allow teachers to carry firearms. There’s mixed opinions about this firearm law for teachers and some feel it could protect people while others feel it’s not appropriate nor safe.

[@Idontgetoffended]

I give you credit for staying unbiased. Rare these days.

[@martytube821]

Who is telling these kids to skip? At least bad people will have to think that teachers will be armed and that alone may deter a lunatic.

[@paulstevens7528]

The students are from Hume-Fogg high school, which is part of the Nashville public school system and is a few blocks from the legislative plaza. There is a history of some teachers at Hume-Fogg giving students excused absences to "observe the legislative process" when democrats need protestors at the legislature. This bill requires that a teacher get approval from their director of schools before they can be armed, and the Nashville director of schools had already indicated that no Nashville teachers would be getting authorization to be armed. Those students are putting on a show, protesting a bill that they already know will have no impact on them, because their school system will not participate in the arming of teachers.

[@jakeobryan12obryan32]

While she screams into the babies ears😂

[@milhouse14]

Only in America

[@buzza2077]

😂 like that's supposed to be a bad thing

[@ivan_14_]

@@buzza2077 It's such a "good thing" that 99% of the rest of the world do not do this. 🤔

[@Not_Lewis]

The aspect of this law that everyone seems to miss is that a teacher wanting to exercises this responsibility, they have to get approval by the school administration and their local law enforcement, They also have to pass a 40 hour handgun class. That's 5 days of instruction for 8 hours each day. For comparison, United States Marines will undergo 3 weeks of firearms training. Also, it is completely optional and solely at the discretion of the teachers themselves. If you don't want to carry in schools, that's on you! If your PE teacher wants to then they have the right but NO ONE is forcing them to.

[@tmn8547]

I see both sides of this argument.

[@user-bm4ic4kx2w]

What do you mean

[@stevejaffe9543]

And how do we know the teachers will use those guns? Will they be brave like the Uvalde Police?

[@paulstevens7528]

One thing we do know for a fact, is that the teachers currently can't do anything with those guns. The bill would allow the teachers an option of deciding for themselves (and the principal, chief administrator of the school system, and the chief of police, if the teacher can get those officials to give them their approval) if they are brave enough to defend their students with a gun.

[@Idontgetoffended]

I agree. They should get free training multiple times a year just so they can defend the school.

[@paulstevens7528]

@@Idontgetoffended In some states that already allow teachers to be armed after meeting the training requirements, there are at least a few firearm instructors that offer free training to the teachers.

[@CountArtha]

Schools have pretty narrow corridors. One armed teacher could protect a whole wing of a school in the event of a lockdown.

[@paulstevens7528]

@@CountArtha People opposed to this bill aren't likely to understand such concepts. One of the opponents was complaining about how we shouldn't have to be telling students to zig-zag in the school hallways, to avoid being shot.

[@trailmark4504]

The Supreme Court is listening but can they figure it out. What is the meaning of inalienable rights? Inalienable means something that is not transferable or that is impossible to take away (God-given rights). Every constitution provides for fundamental rights which are inalienable rights. In America the homeless have proven that inalienable rights doesn't exist, the government can take away your home whenever they want. It is insane! To make laws against people sleeping or using the bathroom cannot work… People cannot make a choice not to sleep or relieve themselves. The government is sponsoring homeless torture. Bullying to suicide being taught in elementary school puts hate in the soul of God ("I am what I am") today the human race is making the future impossible to live for. Nuclear Armageddon is logical, even AI agrees. laws making reality evil to the human spirit makes survivability impossible. PS. Politics making laws forcing people to spit in the face of reality is how demonic feelings are created, humanity has a need to survive without logic working against it.

[@AmericanTeacher-USA]

Time to take your kids out of public school.

[@DavidCB420]

SAY IT LOUDER BRO

[@leroyjenkins322]

It's been that time for 30 years, too many Catholic priests in the school system

[@doebuck9708]

They should have schools with guns and without. Then we'll see the statistics .

[@NessaEllenesse]

Mine will be going to the one with. That said, I will want to have my parent teacher conference at the local gun range.

[@beckykent6674]

I have been saying this for years!!! This is what they need to keep the students safe. Stupid kids don't know this is too save them!

[@DavidCB420]

Those “stupid kids” you are referring to, may have trauma and don’t want to be anywhere near a gun, even if it’s placed in the safest of hands

[@dori7965]

@@DavidCB420just because a student has trauma doesn’t mean to stop protecting the rest of students who aren’t

[@paulstevens7528]

"Skip school"??? Hume-Fogg high school is a few blocks from the legislative building, and there is a history of some teachers at Hume-Fogg giving students excused absences from class to go to the legislature when democrat politicians needed people to show up and voice support for their causes. About a year ago, there was a large protest at the legislature in support of gun control, and a youtuber was doing man-on-the-street interviews with protestors. He talked to one high school student, and she started off by stating some of the sound bytes she had heard, but then he started asking questions, and she could not answer a single one of his questions. She excused herself by stating that she had to get back to her friends, then ran away.

[@CountArtha]

A smart person would assume that the students were not thinking for themselves.

[@alexg5457]

I hope this law gets passed. It doesn’t force a job on teachers at all. Instead, the bill opens the door for those who are willing, responsible, and capable to defend other should a situation arise.

[@al-bot1094]

You all need to realize that amendments can be repealed, and you are creating generations of people who hate guns. Teachers never needed guns before. Try to figure out why. Stop dreaming for an excuse to shoot someone.

[@paulstevens7528]

@@al-bot1094 Teachers didn't need guns before, because as recently as the 1980s, Tennessee high school students were allowed to have guns in their vehicles in the student parking lot. That ended when Congress passed the "gun-free school zones act". Did making schools "gun-free" result in the schools being safer (fewer shootings), or more dangerous (more shootings)?

[@al-bot1094]

@@paulstevens7528 so you are saying that teachers didn't need guns because students had guns. What a joke. I hope you understand that Amendments can be repealed.

[@paulstevens7528]

@@al-bot1094 Yes, amendments can be repealed. This is illustrated by the amendment that banned alcohol in the US, then after that amendment resulted in a large increase in organized crime, instead of the claimed goal of getting men to quit degrading their morality by indulging in alcohol, it was repealed by another amendment. A well-intentioned ban, resulted in the opposite of its stated goal and people had the sense to repeal that ban. How many school shootings have there been in the US, since the "gun-free school zones act" was passed by Congress?

[@paulstevens7528]

@@al-bot1094 In high school, a teacher asked to borrow my knife, because he needed to cut something and didn't have a knife of his own. I thought it was ridiculous that he didn't carry his own knife, when so many of us students carried knives, but I let him borrow it.

[@bentleyraiford5188]

Say what now?

[@creative-ray-music]

Guns at school. Better safety😮? Omg, You're just not on track. Bunch of cowboys but this is known worldwide. There are better safety measures. Take example from European standards. We may be smaller in country. But in terms of wisdom, Europe has been far ahead for years.

[@A_Legal_Immigrant_1776]

Good!!! 🇺🇸

[@Wizardof]

The SRO has a weapon already....Just make sure you don't mess up this situation.

[@paulstevens7528]

Nashville, TN elementary school principals objected to the police department assigning SROs to their schools, a couple years ago. They said police would only be allowed at their schools if the officers were unarmed. Police rejected the idea of being unarmed security, so the Nashville school system created the position of "safety ambassador" - an unarmed guy who walks around the school checking that all the doors are locked and closed. The Nashville school system has already publicly stated that no Nashville teachers will be allowed to carry guns, if the governor signs this bill.

[@tj11r]

If trained cops was hiding behind walls in Ulvade because the were scared of bullets and the had body armor. If a teacher should engage in gun man! How many hours in weapons combat should teacher get? Now will the gunman go direct after the teacher instead.

[@paulstevens7528]

The training requirement laid out in this bill is actually higher than the number of hours of training for a SWAT officer certification in this state.

[@tj11r]

@@paulstevens7528 Do you really believe that teachers have the time to first initiate an entry training that is more than SWAT, and then maintain this level year in and year out? What is the average age of SWAT? The average age of teachers? Consider for yourself a bit that they are old and don't move like men in the prime of their lives, like a teacher aged 40-65 years old. SWAT has body armor to protect themselves. Perhaps a gym teacher can achieve the mobility that a police officer has. Think again and watch the video from Uvalde! The police officers crawled along the walls, and as soon as the perpetrator shot, they ran back into the hallway. Everyone was 'fully' armed with all protection. Adult men in their prime who have been in shootings before and they knew the risks and reacted accordingly. SWAT and other police officers train for this daily and handle these situations daily as well. They don't need to immerse themselves in school materials, spend time grading exams, talking to students, planning outings, exams, tests, etc. What will happen is if a perpetrator enters, the teachers will be the first targets, as a natural act. Because the perpetrator knows that teachers 'might' be armed.

[@buzza2077]

Always an excuse with you people. In almost all school shootings teachers had confronted the shooter unarmed. Least this makes the teachers a defensible

[@user-tc3my5ic2o]

We need our young people to be the voice for all generations. Great job on voicing your beliefs.

[@paulstevens7528]

They are voicing the beliefs their teachers told them to voice. Their turnout for this has been remarkably weak, compared to past incidents. Hume-Fogg students must be getting lazy and not willing to walk the few blocks to the legislative building, when their teachers offer them an excused absence from class if they will go stand outside the legislature.

[@Idontgetoffended]

Kids these days have no idea what's good for them. They show outrage over the dumbest sh!t. They yell about carbon dioxide when it's great for plants but have no problem with eating out of plastics and people spraying their foods with chemical fertilizer. Why? Because they're not told to be mad at those things.

[@GarrettGuerra]

So you want a new generation to speak for all generations? That's delusional

[@Stank18]

They don’t even know what there protesting💀🤦🏼

[@0gdiosa-fi5is]

Get you minds right .... its called a metal detector

[@paulstevens7528]

The same group that is opposed to this bill, has also opposed measures such as metal detectors. They quite loudly opposed measures to improve the physical security of school buildings, last year, claiming that it would be turning schools into prisons. Somewhat ironically, they were making this argument just weeks after there had been a shooting at a private school in Memphis, where the shooter was unable to get into the school building because of a recent upgrade to the doors at the school entrance.

[@cybrfriends5089]

Let's not pay teachers a decent salary but make them be cops for free. Sounds like a GOP idea.

[@paulstevens7528]

Nobody is making them do anything. This bill only applies to teachers that VOLUNTEER to do this.

[@cybrfriends5089]

@@paulstevens7528 you know they will be pressured to volunteer, dont try to be dumb

[@mahaffer71]

@@cybrfriends5089 Schools that are majority believing in leftist ideology. You think they will force a teacher that have to jump through many hoops.

[@paulstevens7528]

Try not to be so clueless. The director of schools of the largest city in the state has already indicated that no teachers will be getting authorization to be armed, and the bill requires teachers that volunteer to be armed to get the approval of the director of schools for their school system. The people that have been fighting the hardest against this bill never had to worry that their kid's teacher might be allowed to be armed. The main group fighting against this bill is a group of parents of private school students, and private schools were already given authority to set their own policy on whether or not to arm teachers, a few years ago. The people that are the most angry over this bill passing, are not going to be impacted by it in any way. They are angry because other people are being given an option to choose something other than what they have chosen for themselves.

[@mahaffer71]

@@cybrfriends5089 Majority of schools are leftist you really believe that

[@AaronBleess-yz4cw]

Every person who works at a school should be required to carry a gun anytime they are on school property. Making schools gun free zones clearly doesn’t work. It’s time to actually protect students!

[@AmericanTeacher-USA]

Prediction: Do that, and the exodus of teachers will accelerate !

[@paulstevens7528]

@@AmericanTeacher-USA Over the last two decades, a lot of people have moved to Tennessee. Honestly, we would be happy if many of them participated in an exodus from our state, because all they seem to do is complain about how things were so much better where they used to live.

[@ln14517]

Data shoes more guns equals more gun violence, it’s common sense.

[@alexg5457]

It is easy to say “data” and call it a day . Which data? Reveal your reference.

[@paulstevens7528]

Chicago has some of the strictest, if not the strictest gun control laws in the US. How many shootings has Chicago had in the last week?

[@mahaffer71]

According to The Hill. They found that 157 out of 440 were stopped. That’s a rate of 35.7 percent. We found a rate of 41.3 percent for 2022 cases, and that goes up still further to 63.5 percent when gun-free zones are excluded. Seems good person with a gun is the answer according to the data

[@AmericanTeacher-USA]

​@@mahaffer71 Unfortunately, police can't tell the difference.... between "good" and "bad."

[@mahaffer71]

@@AmericanTeacher-USA Yet its doesnt seem to happen. Probably cause the one shooting everyone, including the cops stands out

[@diegoramos4195]

Our kids would be safer