but her views that guns should not be banned from schools make a lot of sense.
criminals with any degree of intelegence only only rob, steal, attack, or kill people who cant defend themselfs.
if somebody wants to attack and kill people in a high school, a high school where the teachers and students are UNARMED victems is an ideal place.
allowing teachers and students to have guns will change this and make any criminal who wants to shoot up a school think twice.
arizona daily star
sat, october 23, 1999
Brewster: Arm, teachers educators: Say what?
PHOENIX (AP) - State Rep. Barbara Blewster says teachers should be allowed to bring guns to school.
But state officials and educators say allowing concealed weapons in classrooms is not the way to reduce school violence.
"I can't imagine anything more disturbing," said Penny Kotterman, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. "We have been focusing on creating a safe environment that is completely absent weapons and guns-"
Arizona law generally bars possession of deadly weapons on school grounds. Exceptions are allowed for storing unloaded weapons in an adult's vehicle and those being used in a schoolapproved program.
Blewster, R-Dewey suggested during a conversation with other legislators before a school-safety meeting in Prescott this week that having armed people inside a school- would make it less likely that a shooter could walk in and open fire.
Some gun-rights advocates advocates said Blewster's idea has merit.
Teachers with concealed weapons permits and training firearms use could deter or even attack, said Terry Allison, a Scottsdale retiree who is president of the National Rifle Association's state affil late.
"If someone has the ability and means to stop an attack on schoolchildren, I would consider them morally '10 reprehensible not to it," Allison said.
Spokeswomen for Gov. Hull and state Superintendent Public Instruction Lisa Gralam Keegan said each opposes ing teachers to carry gun school.
"If we have to resort to teachers to get kids to we've lost the battle a long ago," said Keegan spokeswoman Laura aura Penny. "There must be measures we could take other than arming teachers."
Ideas being considered by a state commission studying how to prevent and combat school violence include:
Designing schools with fewer entrances.
Decreasing class sizes.
Developing programs to detect violenceprone students, prepare emergencyresponse plans and increase the number of police assigned as school resource officers.
Blewster's statements "just run contrary (to) what works in terms of reducing school violence," said Sen.Chris Cummiskey, a Phoenix Democrat who is cochairman of the com- mission. "It's such a bizarre statement that ... isn't very constructive. "
Blewster, a first-term lawmaker and John Birch Society member, previously made headlines for comment s considered outrageous by some.
In February, she wrote an email putting homosexuality in the same class as "bestiality, human sacrifice and cannibalism."
Other lawmakers said Blewster later told a female colleague that she didn't look Jewish because she didn't have a hooked nose, and suggested to a black colleague that slavery wasn't that bad and American Indiansweren't very smart.