I have a lot of Conservative Facebook friends. I also post in several Facebook groups where Conservatives post a lot. Because of this I get a clear window into the desires of many Conservatives out there and what they believe is the direction we should take this country.

After the Newtown shootings I have been seeing a lot of posts by those who wish to turn our schools into the wild west by arming all teachers. There are some major issues with this. The first in my mind would be what happens if a teacher freezes up while trying to use a weapon and the weapon goes to the shooter, allowing the shooter to have another weapon and more ammunition.

One of the defenses of this “arm the teachers” movement is a list of several examples where an armed civilian is able to prevent more harm because they either used a gun or showing the gun deterred more violence. These stories are out there.

But if we are going to have an honest and balanced discussion about such stories as proof, we would have to know what happened in all the other times a gunman threatened a group of people and other people had their own guns available. How many times did individuals with guns who were not trained to deal with this sort of situation froze up and were unable to do anything? How many times did the person with a gun just become a victim first because they were incapable of bringing it to bear. How many times was the gunman able to take the gun away and have an additional weapon from that point on?

So yes, there may have been times where an individual was able to protect other innocent civilians from a gunman because they were also armed. However, without the other information there is absolutely no way for us to know if this is the exception or if it is the rule. Until those questions are answered, the proposition by those Conservatives cannot logically be used as a defense for the “arm the teachers” argument.