Part 2 of 3 Gun Safes in Schools (My apologies for the length of this thing.)

From what I have read thus far, a few folks have already addressed this problem to a certain degree. Good. Glad to see there are others on here thinking clearly. For the sake of reinforcing their points, they will be included in this post so that all relevant information will be consolidated into one place rather than scattered about the thread. Let’s get the obvious problem out of the way first…

COST - I am not an accountant, nor do I have any exact figures to provide on how many schools there are in the U.S. to be equipped with gun safes. Nevertheless, it does not require a genius in economics to quickly grasp the idea that the cost of such a venture would end up being damn near astronomical. How many millions of schools are there? How many safes would be required for each school? And, speaking of safes, what type should be used? Allow me a moment to expand on that…

Type of Safe Necessary – Although I am definitely no expert on the subject, I think we can all agree that kids (particularly teenagers) are especially curious, mischievous, and crafty. (I was both a kid and a teenager at one time in my life.) And in an ideal world we like to think children/teenagers would NEVER attempt to gain access to a firearm they KNOW is in the room with them. If we were in that ideal world, though, we obviously would not be having these discussions. Therefore, any type of safe installed in a classroom for gun storage would have to be permanently and SECURELY mounted (either embedded into the wall structure or – at the very least – heavily bolted to the floor and/or wall). On top of that, the safe itself would have to be of a high quality comparable to bank style safes. Your typical Walmart style or local sporting goods store style gun safes will NOT be suitable. And I don’t know how many of you have checked prices on such safes lately, but I promise they are not cheap. Hence, we are back at how much it will cost to install millions of such safes all across the country. And remember, we are talking about many school systems that can BARELY pay their teachers a reasonable salary and are scraping by on the bare necessities for teaching due to lack of educational funding. Now let’s discuss combination lock or key lock…

Combination or key? – To put it bluntly, both options SUCK.
Keys: Can easily be lost, stolen, and copied. People are human (teachers included). We forget things and lose things. Teacher Johnson gets to school that morning and checks his pocket and realizes, “Aw, crap. Where is my safe key?” Whoopsie. No big deal, though, right? How many faculty members in the school have access to the same safe? Meaning there are that many more keys floating around to potentially fall into the hands of unauthorized personnel (i.e. Students). Substitute teacher day because Teacher Johnson is off sick or on vacation. Do we give the sub teacher a key to the gun safe? (Rhetorical question.) Certainly, I totally agree there are exceptions out there who are incredibly responsible and take their assigned tasks/responsibilities very seriously. I would like to think I would be one of them. However, they are the EXCEPTIONS. And no matter how incredibly good they may be, they are still human and subject to the same human lapses and mistakes.

Combination locks: The gun safe in installed and Teacher Johnson places his chosen firearm inside the safe (Unloaded, of course, for the sake of those who are “safety conscious”. *rolling eyes*), closes the safe securely, and goes on about his days/weeks/months teaching his class. Show of hands: Anybody here ever been in a hurry trying to open a combination lock because you are running late for class or something? Personally, I know it has sometimes taken me two or three tries to get into my school locker under that very scenario. Matter of fact, I have two or three combination safes here at home I regularly open for various reasons. And even with that, it sometimes takes me a moment to remember the combinations and a couple of attempts to open them (that is without any stress whatsoever). So, imagine you are Teacher Johnson (who maybe opens the safe only a couple of times a month… maybe) teaching a class one afternoon and suddenly shots ring out down the hallway from your classroom door. Initially, there is a delay of several seconds while the brain attempts to process exactly what you just heard. (Average Joe does not like believing bad things can happen to him, and attempts to find alternate explanations.) Next, once you finally realize, “Oh, shit. Those were gunshots,” there is a brief moment of panic within yourself, along with all the yelling and screaming that will be coming from your students. First reaction after that will be a natural instinct to calm the students. Finally, you remember, “Oh, yeah, I have a gun in the safe.” By now, many, many precious seconds have been wasted. But, wait! It gets better! Now, in the midst of all the panic, yelling, screaming, and gunshots, you have to remember the safe combination and then successfully work the combination wheel in the proper manner to get the safe open. (Good luck with that, by the way, as your fine motor skills almost completely vanish during such high-stress situations.) Assuming you are lucky enough to get the safe open in time, you then have to load the weapon, chamber a round, and then find a place on your person to put your spare magazines so that they will be easily accessible if needed. Chances are, however, you will never have to worry about that, because by now you are probably already dead anyway. Why? Because it is very likely the shooter will already know exactly who the teachers are who have gun safe access and would be going after them as first targets. ( Keep in mind, we are assuming the teacher is even in the classroom at the start of the shooting and not on break, at lunch, or in the bathroom taking a piss. Same applies for key safes.) And, as with the keys, how many people have the safe combination? Do they have super memories, or is the combination written down somewhere? Well, I think we all know the answer to that. And whenever something like that is written down, you can rest assured it can be accessed by unauthorized personnel (i.e. Students). What if the regular teacher quits? Now you have a gun safe in a room just sitting idle, unless the school hires a replacement teacher who is authorized to handle a weapon. And then it would only be prudent to change the combination.(Or key)

Oh, and for those of you who may be thinking they could use the electronic keypad combination safes…. There is no way in hell I would rely on one of those things in a modern day classroom with the tech-savvy kids we now have. In my opinion, might as well leave the thing wide open. Not to mention what do you do if the bad guy is smart enough to cut the power before starting the party? Battery backups? Who maintains them throughout the year(s)? For that matter, who will pay to have the safes regularly maintained in general?

I could probably go on about this a good bit more, but as is evident, the logistics alone are enough to be mind-boggling. And the lack of practicality is downright scary. Now try applying these things to the millions of schools across the country. While at first glance, on the surface the gun safe idea may seem like a reasonable concept to those who have no experience with critical high-stress situations. In my opinion, though, the concept is just sheer madness and foolishness.

Edit: I would like to make a correction to the number of schools I mentioned in this post. After a quick Google search several days after posting, I learned there are actually only roughly 130,000 schools (not counting colleges, trade schools, universities) and just a little over three million teachers distributed among those schools. My apologies for the exaggerated numbers in the post.