Dwight and Bridget Schmidt: Arming teachers is a bad idea
Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 1:22 p.m. Last
Modified: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 1:22 p.m.  As public
school teachers we express our heartfelt sympathy to those who
lost loved ones in the recent school shootings. It is indeed
time for a national discussion on gun control when our children
and the sanctity of our schools are so attacked. There are those
in our country who say one solution is to begin training and
arming teachers. Absolutely not!  Society today demands teachers
be many things: mentors, counselors, care-givers, parents. But
they are not nor ever should be police officers. How can we
claim that children will feel truly safe by turning our schools
into armed camps?  There are those who say gun control laws have
not statistically lessened homicide rates, at least not in the
U.S., and so banning assault weapons is not a solution that will
save lives. A distinction however needs to be made between
general acts of homicide a