KTTH Freedom Series: Guns and our children

On April 24, inside the Edmonds Center for the Arts, KTTH’s Jason Rantz, Todd Herman, KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross, and King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht debated gun control and the safety of our youth.

The nearly two-hour long event included honest discussion about the nation’s hottest topic. The hosts also took questions from the audience.

Click here to listen to the entire debate.

Arming teachers in schools to deter shootings or fight fire with fire was an idea debated among the group.

“If you have a school that’s willing to volunteer than absolutely this should be part of the conversation,” said Rantz. “The community has to be behind it as well.”

“One of the things that I would hope to happen through this process is we’d find a way to work better together with the schools to have more consistent placement of school resources officers in the schools,” said Sheriff Johanknecht. “When it comes to arming teachers, administrators or other folks in the schools, I’m against that. … When an event happens, it’s very difficult to tell friend from foe.”

“The fact is teachers are armed now,” Herman responded. “They’re armed in cities in Washington state, they’re armed in districts in Texas and there have been no incidents. … It’s that last minute or last second that you have this one chance to save somebody and that can be worked on with colors of the day, it can be worked on with IDs — there are ways to do that to mitigate. But I don’t think we take away the ability of a responsible, trained adult in the two seconds between a kid getting killed and a kid getting saved and to say we can’t figure out the details on that.”

“If arming teachers is the solution and the only one that works, that’s fine,” Ross conceded. “My hope would be that we would find some way to be able to guarantee safety short of having to do that.”