Guns in the classroom - Texas quick on the draw

IT IS doubtful if the profession of teaching would be enjoying a new popularity — as revealed by this week’s CAO figures — if those studying to become teachers knew they would have to carry a gun in the classroom.

Yet that is what will happen later this month in the small north Texas community of Harrold. Teachers will carry guns to deter school shootings, in what appeared to be the first development of its kind in the US.

On April 16 last year Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded many others in a gun rampage at Virginia Tech. The massacre remains the deadliest by a single gunman in US history. Twelve years ago 16 schoolchildren were killed in the Scottish town of Dunblane by an insane gunman.