Pakistani Taliban terrorists aspiring to repeat December’s Peshawar massacre, which killed 150 children and teachers, will steer clear of these schools. Via Fox News:

Government authorities in Pakistan’s northwest frontier have given permission for teachers to carry concealed firearms in response to the Dec. 16 attack in Peshawar that became one of the deadliest terrorist strikes in Pakistani history. Many educators reject the idea of arming teachers as reckless and counterproductive, reflecting the kind of arguments in U.S. school systems overshadowed by their own occasional mass shootings. . . .
Mushtuq Ghani, the higher education minister in the Khyber Paktunkhwa provincial government based in Peshawar, says its Cabinet supports the arming of teachers as a logical measure given the reality that the region’s 65,000 police are stretched too thin to provide a first line of defense to nearly 50,000 schools. Terrorists need to know that schools aren’t defenseless, and armed teachers could potentially hold off gunmen and buy time for police reinforcements to arrive, he said.

Predictably, many are opposed to the policy — among them education organizations and other provincial governments. Muzammal Khan, provincial president of the All Teachers Association in Peshaward, contends that “seeing their teachers armed would increase [students’] anxiety unnecessarily.”

Like American opponents of arming educators, Khan no doubt has students’ interests at heart. But one cannot help but presume that however much anxiety gun-toting teachers might induce in students, it cannot be much compared to the prospect of a Taliban siege. For Khan to insist that “pens belong in our hands, not guns,” seems to ignore the fact that sometimes, the pen is, alas, not mightier than the sword.