Gun lobbyists like to promote the notion that the best way to deal with gun-toting madmen is to arm everyone else.

Experience says otherwise —in households, for instance, guns are vastly more apt to harm a family member than any armed intruder.

Which is just one reason why it was startling and disappointing to see the Little Compton Town Council, by 3-2 vote, take a stand against bills that would overturn state law that allows anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring a gun into a school.

Asked about his vote, one of those three councilors pointed to 115 letters that the Town Council had received in opposition to those bills. Had he read those letters, though, he must have realized that most were duplicates of a letter authored by the RI Firearm Owners League and only six of the signatures slapped on those form letters were of Little Compton residents.

The opinions of those out-of-town gun enthusiasts apparently matter more to these councilors than those of their police chief, his predecessor, and their town’s school committee. And their stand puts them at odds with virtually every other Rhode Island town and most other states which forbid guns in schools except in the hands of law enforcement.

Police don’t buy for a second the idea that there might be benefit to having some armed teacher on the inside to help take out an intruder.

Their training teaches them that frightful things happen in the fog of crisis, even for trained professionals. They know that good outcomes are unlikely when a terrified teacher, armed with a wildly inaccurate handgun and surrounded by panicked schoolchildren is forced into a split-second decision.

And police also dread what they might encounter — is that individual suddenly facing them in a hallway, gun in hand, a killer or the librarian?

It may go well in the movies but seldom in real life.

Welcoming guns into school is an invitation to tragedy.