Originally Posted by selena

Let's imagine for a moment that I support the idea of guns in schools, which I do not.

I don't understand it from a logistics standpoint.

My local school is small. As in around 100 kids per grade. The entire thing, K-12, is in a single locked-down campus. You can walk through it all and not go outside. I'm guessing that on average, it is a lot smaller school district than many in the country.

So let's say that we decided that an armed guard was the route to go. And he's there, and he's over in the wing where the kindergarten is. Way on the other side of the school, a high schooler comes in tardy, buzzing in through the only entrance they can come in. The office buzzes him in, he enters, takes his gun out, and starts firing into the nearest classroom.

How has having someone armed helped? Yes, the guard will eventually get there. But enough time will have passed that lots of kids are going to dead. And the guard may well take out the shooter out, and prevent more deaths.

But I can't see how that makes it better for the kids that got killed in the time that it took for the guard to get there.

I have considered that the idea of an armed guard being there might deter the shooter in the first place. But is that realistic? I don't know that people who go in to do a mass shooting think rationally, or if they do, have real expectations that they will come out alive and get away.