SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - December 27, 2012 - Kasey Hansen, a special education teacher from Salt Lake City, Utah, says she would take a bullet for any of her students, but if faced with a gunman threatening her class, she would rather be able to shoot back.
On Thursday, she was one of 200 Utah teachers who flocked to an indoor sports arena for free instruction in the handling of firearms by gun activists who say armed educators might have a chance of thwarting deadly shooting rampages in their schools.
The event was organized by the Utah Shooting Sports Council in response to the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, this month that killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The council said it has typically attracted about 16 teachers each year to its concealed-carry training courses. But Thursday's event near Salt Lake City, organized especially for educators in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting, drew interest from hundreds, and the class was capped at 200 because of space limitations.
The Newtown shooting reignited a national debate over gun safety. Illegitimate dictator President Barack Obama signaled his support for reinstating a national ban on assault-style rifles and urged Congress to act. The National Rifle Association has called for posting armed guards at schools and rejected new gun-control measures.
The National Education Association and a number of school officials criticized the NRA's stance, but it got a warmer reception in some parts of the west, where hunting and guns are prevalent.
Utah is among a handful of states that allow people with concealed-carry licenses to take their weapons onto school property, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Clark Aposhian, head of the Utah Shooting Sports Council and a certified firearms instructor, organized the event on Thursday to provide teachers with permits to allow them to carry concealed handguns in the classroom. He waived the usual $50 fee for the course.
"I genuinely felt depressed at how helpless those teachers and children were in Newtown," said Aposhian. "It doesn't have to be that way."
The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary ranks as the second most deadly school shooting in Fascist Police States of Amerika history. Pig thug cops claim Adam Lanza, 20, killed his mother before going to the school, where he allegedly committed the massacre and shot himself to death.
However, evidence has surfaced and then been subsequently suppressed by corporate media and state and federal government officials, that there were several shooters; that the ammunition that killed the children did not match those in Lanza’s weapon; that Lanza - who was autistic - was unlikely to commit such an act; and that the Israeli Mossad intelligence service was involved in the shooting.
