Sometimes (okay, quite a lot of the time) I really don't like living in Texas.

Harrold ISD in Texas recently put district policy in place that allows its employees to carry concealed firearms.

All righty, let's get the positives in the article out of the way:

In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and have to use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls.

There. That's it. That's the good stuff.

"[...] If something were to happen here, I'd much rather be calling a parent to tell them that their child is OK because we were able to protect them," Thweatt said.

And what you really don't want to be doing is calling a parent to tell them that their child isn't okay because a teacher shot them.

Now, granted, perhaps it's unfair to assume that just because teachers are given guns means that 1) something bad's going to happen and 2) it's going to be the teacher's fault. But here's how I see it: adding more guns to any situation involving guns is a bad thing. It means more bullets and more shooting. And in a room full of kids liable to panic because their classmate is trying to fucking shoot them, it can mostly only lead to bad things.

You also get into lots of other questions. Does the teacher only break out the weaponry when a kid pulls a gun? What about if someone has a knife and threatens a student or teacher with it? Is that a gunnable offense? And it seems to be that if cops can easily be a touch trigger-happy, non-law-enforcementers will be just as bad, if not worse.

I've got my highly-liberal knickers all in a twist over this, it seems.

And if anyone outside the other contributers reads this and thinks I'm jerking my knee a bit in my reaction, well... go shoot some rats, you hick.

Just kidding.