By Massad Ayoob, director of the Lethal Force Institute in Concord, N.H., which trains police officers and military personnel in self-defense techniques.

T he echoes had barely faded from the gunfire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., before the gun-control lobby began shouting for more restrictive laws, a chorus that is sure to grow in the wake of yesterday's shooting in Conyers, Ga., in which six students were wounded.

This week the Senate responded, approving a measure that would require handguns to be sold with child-safety devices as well as mandatory background checks for gun sales at gun shows and pawn shops. What will these bills do to prevent a mass murder like the one in Colorado? Not much. But one of the few immediate steps that could stop killers in the school yard is deemed beyond the pale. I'm referring to arming schoolteachers.

To many people, that suggestion sounds absurd; gentle molders of young minds should not carry lethal weapons. Yet there is good precedent for the idea. In Israel armed teachers are common, and terrorist attacks at schools nonexistent. Indeed, it was only during a 1997 visit by Israeli schoolgirls to the "Island of Peace" along the Jordanian border, in which the teachers had been asked to leave their weapons behind, that an Arab gunman took advantage of an easy opportunity to open fire, killing seven children and wounding another six.

Similar precedents exist in the U.S. In 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham entered Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss., armed with his estranged father's hunting rifle and dozens of cartridges. When Woodham opened fire, vice principal Joel Myrick sprinted to the parking lot, grabbed a Colt .45 automatic pistol from his truck and forced the gunman to surrender by pointing the gun at his head. This limited the casualties to two students killed and seven wounded. In 1998, Andrew Wurst, 14, opened fire on an eighth-grade graduation dance in Edinboro, Pa. The owner of the banquet hall where the dance was being held grabbed a shotgun from his office and quickly confronted Wurst, who dropped his gun. The toll was thus limited to one slain teacher and two wounded students.