Letter: Arming teachers is a worthy step

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 | 7:33 a.m.

I read Henry Schmid's April 7 letter, "Schools should have fewer guns, not more," with great amusement.

If the proposed legislation by Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, to allow teachers to be armed is a bad idea, as Mr. Schmid asserts, then what isn't ?

Fences around the campus? Metal detectors? Does anyone really think such "safeguards" would have stopped Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from carrying out a shooting rampage, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 24 others while police could do nothing more than set up a perimeter? Would this have discouraged Chechen terrorists from their attack on a school in Russia, wreaking bloodied violence on the most precious treasure to any nation or community , children ?

In Israel, teachers are armed because, under the circumstances, it's pragmatic and it works.

Our circumstances are not too different. Our U.S. Border Patrol reports catching people illegally crossing into our country from Mexico who are classified as OTMs (Other Than Mexicans). They come from countries such as Pakistan, Chechnya, Iran and other nations hostile to America. Mind you, this is only what the understaffed Border Patrol was able to apprehend.

I assure you that as sure as 19 Middle Eastern men were able to live comfortably in this country under the umbrella of a broken immigration tracking system, planning and waiting to turn four jet airliners into human missiles, terrorist cells are settled in, courtesy of our broken borders, patiently waiting to attack the most vulnerable targets in a coordinated nationwide attack.

Sen. Beers' proposal may not be the end-all solution to the threat of terrorism, but at least it may facilitate our schools getting removed from the list of vulnerable targets for terrorists. To believe otherwise returns us to the false sense of security that we lived under up to Sept. 10, 2001.

Mark Wilson, Henderson