Do teachers really want to carry guns?

>>> welcome back to "the ed show." thanks for stay with us tonight. gun clubs in utah, ohio, and texas have gotten a lot of new business since the massacre at sandy hook elementary school . they claim they're training hundreds of teachers to carry guns at school. now, we know that gun clubs are training people for free, but none of them can tell us just how many trainees are teachers. in fact, my staff spent the entire day trying to find one teacher in any of these states who would talk to us about this. hundreds of teachers are supposedly getting gun training, but we couldn't find a single teacher who would talk about it, not one. it's a little strange, isn't it? here is something we do know. more school districts are buying into the nra 's so-called solution, armed offduty police officers are patrolling the middle school and elementary schools in marble bro, and last night staten island passed a resolution to post armed guards at schools there as well.

>> i've heard some of the comments tonight, people say we're putting guns in the schools. we're putting trained professionals. in the schools.

>> administrators say there will be no armed guards in any new york city public schools . but districts in other parts of new york disagree. police have stepped up security in westchester county . and in arizona, sheriff joe arpaio has put together armed volunteer posses to patrol around schools.

>> we're not waiting for new laws or the bureaucracy. we're taking immediate action.

>> here is what the nra won't tell you. out of the 62 mass shootings in the last 30 years, not one single killer was stopped by a civilian using a gun. not one. the risk of keeping guns around children are very real. 32,163 people were killed by firearms in 2011 . 851 were killed by accident. here is something else the nra won't tell you. if americans keep buying firearms at the current pace in which they are, we will have more guns than people. guns will outnumber american citizens in just two years. as the number of guns has gone up, mass shootings have also gone up. it's not a coincidence. we hit an all-time low in 1994 when the assault weapons ban was passed. isn't it time to get real? we have to decide whether arming teachers and posting guards in every school will really protect our kids and our society. i'm joined tonight by randy weingarten, president of the american teachers federation. it's good to have you with us tonight.

>> it's great to be with you, ed.

>> this is absolutely absurd, but we're trying to verify how many of these teachers, especially in ohio, are taking this training. and the gun clubs are being very coy about just how many teachers are involved. can you tell us anything about this? do you know of teachers in that state? we heard a number of up to 900 are getting firearms training that would be proficient enough for them to carry guns in schools if the school dribs would allow them.

>> well, look, number one, you know, you know and you've heard it like i have that people are scared. but if the advocacy that i'm hearing from my members all across the country is any indication, teachers do not want to be armed in schools. there is an issue about whether or not we should have an uptick in police presence in and around schools, and we have had, frankly, in our schools around the country about a third of our schools have some police presence for a variety of different reasons. but the issue here, and you got to the -- you got to the heart of it, ed. the issue is this is not -- it is a real mistake to think like the nra thinks that all you need is a good guy or a good gal with a gun to deal with a bad guy with a gun. the assault weapon that lanza used in newtown , you could shoot six bullets a second with that assault weapon . i don't care what one tries to do in terms of civilians whose job it is to teach kids. you cannot possibly think that putting an army -- putting a gun in that person's hands is going to stop a bad guy with a gun. we saw that in columbine.

>> yeah.

>> why don't we actually try first to get these large magazines off the streets? why don't we actually try first to get these artillery weaponry off the streets? why don't we try first to close the gun show loophole, or to try to do gun safety laws like other countries have done? why don't we try to do those things first so instead of doing this --

>> i agree with all of, that randi, but what we're going to see right now is conversation in district after district across the country, this conversation should our teachers be armed in the classroom. your union and other unions in the national education association , where do you stand on this, and how do you push become against this kind of conversation?

>> so we do not believe that teachers should be armed in the classrooms. and, you know, this is the irony, ed. just last year, we're having a conversation about whether teachers should actually have latitude to teach as opposed to test, whether they should have collective bargaining rights. so some of the very same people who have stripped teachers of their collective bargaining rights or any latitude to teach now want to arm them. teachers do not want to be armed . we do not want schools to be armed fortresses. we want them to be safe sanctuaries.

>> you would be in favor of a greater police presence?

>> in places. you know, this should be done on a school by school or case-by-case basis. for example, you can imagine that why people in newtown would want a police presence in and around schools, because right now they're scared, and they want to have that police presence. it's the schools in newtown , for example are, in remote areas. it takes the cops about ten or 15 minutes to get there. but a place like -- but there are other places where you can imagine that you don't need a police presence in and around the perimeter. and the other thing we should be doing is if we have police presence, as we have had in the past during the clinton administration , let's make sure the police are actually really engaged in schooling, like we did with the d.a.r.e. program.

>> all right. randi weingarten . we appreciate your time tonight. this story is not going away.

>>> root canals and koch roaches still more congress. bob shrum and howard fineman are here on congress's abysmal approval ratings.

>>> florida's rick scott is cooking the books to deny care to the poor. hear why this is nothing new for the governor.

>>> aig thankious for bailout.

>> thank you, america .

>> thank you, america .

>> thank you, america .

>> right before a trip to court. william cohan takes us inside the insurance giant's proposal