Tuesday 2/5/13 / Bias

Number One:

Pro-Arming

Number Two:

Anti-arming:

Nancy Flanagan could be said to show bias in her opinion: No, we should not arm school custodians. However, she also says that we should not arm teachers either. Why? Because neither are strictly qualified to handle weapons as police officers. To me, she shows minimum bias in saying that nobody should be armed because they are not trained. But of course, that does not mean that some are not trained. Some ex-officers do become teachers and some teachers are from a military background. Who is to say that they are not qualified to handle a gun? She is very opinionated in favor of careers: she believes a teacher should teach and an officer should protect. She is not vulgar in her opinion or downgrading other views. She does specify alternate ways to solve the violence issues (such as "talking" down the gunman" ) but she does not give any alternate reasoning as to why arming teachers may be helpful. She sticks solely to her view. She completely omits that there could be other viewpoints and also how truly effective these alternate solutions are. Flanagan feels that the majority of staff do think first in protecting students, but arming gun amateurs is not the way to go about true protection.

One thing that did surprise me being as her argument was one against arming for non-qualifications is that she did not bring up putting armed officers in the school. Many people with similar opinions feel this is the best solution.