When children return to school in Harrold, Texas, later this month, they might find some teachers are hauling more than textbooks into the classroom. Leaders of the tiny North Texas school district have given teachers the go-ahead to carry concealed weapons on campus.

The district, which has about 50 teachers and staffers, won’t reveal how many will be bringing a gun to school. The superintendent said he wants to keep that a secret from potential attackers — and students.

“When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that’s when all of these shootings started,” Superintendent David Thweatt told The Associated Press. “Why would you put it out there that a group of people can’t defend themselves? That’s like saying ’sic ’em’ to a dog.”

Thweatt presumably was referring to high-profile school shootings like the one in which a deranged student killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech last year, and a 1999 rampage by two students at Columbine High School in Colorado who killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide.

In 1990, the Gun-Free School Zones Act made it a federal crime to bring a gun into a school zone. But the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 1995, well before the Colorado and Virginia school shootings.

Even while the Harrold school district is putting guns in the hands of public school teachers, an influential Texas state legislator wants to arm college students in the Lone Star state.

Back in July, state Rep. Joe Driver, who chairs the House committee that considers gun bills, said he thinks it’s a good idea to allow college students with concealed gun permits to take their pistols to class.

That would deter bad guys, he said, because they wouldn’t know who’s packing and who isn’t. Texas Gov. Rick Perry agrees. He supports the idea of allowing college students and public school teachers to carry guns to class.

I think this is all very scary.

Putting guns in classrooms from kindergarten to college, I fear, will produce many more violent confrontations than they might prevent. As horrific as the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings were, they are rare events.

For the vast majority of students, this nation’s schools are safe. And schools threatened by violent behavior from students — or by attacks from nonstudents — would be better protected by a trained security force.

School officials and government leaders who want to put guns in the hands of students and teachers shirk their responsibility. Keeping schools safe is their job, and it’s their duty to provide adequate security. Instead, they cloak their nonfeasance in muddled talk of a constitutional right to bear arms.

Such talk can produce good political theater. It also obscures the fact that — as in Texas — school officials and state government leaders aren’t doing their jobs.

If school officials in Harrold want to make schoolchildren more secure, they should give that responsibility to trained personnel instead of pushing it onto gun-toting teachers. Those teachers have enough to do as it is.

And if Perry and Driver see a need to make Texas colleges safer, they ought to use the powers of their office to beef up campus security forces. What they shouldn’t do is back a call for something as random, unpredictable and potentially dangerous as allowing students to carry concealed weapons on campus.