Lake Larsen | Digital Media Manager
Never in my life did I think I would have to worry about being shot while at school. But my senior year of high school, a student came into my school with a firearm and, right after lunch, proceeded to shoot themself in class.
While this was a suicide and not an attempt on other lives, just the thought that someone at my own school came in with a loaded firearm frightened me. I always believed my school was safe, yet now my high school is on a list where someone has lost their life due to guns being within school walls.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, an idea has been circulating that hopes to put an end to gun deaths in schools: the arming of teachers with firearms. At first, the ever present yelp of “good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns” seems to fit, but does this actually work? Does a teacher with a gun stop a school shooter? I’d like to call into question this good over evil mentality and the impact that giving teachers firearms would really have.
The first step in arming teachers would be to select which teachers you want to carry firearms and to train them. For argument’s sake, let’s say there are a number of volunteer teachers ready and willing to carry firearms. If you want a teacher to react in an emergency situation like a police officer, train them like one. However, the basic idea of training already brings a dilemma: a teacher’s time.
Being a teacher, you have to put genuine time and effort into each lesson you teach. Planning lessons, grading homework and tests and even just responding to emails takes a lot of time. So, on top of all the work teachers are already asked to do, they then have to train for an active shooter situation so they can effectively try to extinguish a threat.
If you skip over the potential cost to schools needing to supply this training to teachers — which is already a huge thing to overlook — you have to ask: would this time spent training be paid? If it is, that means teachers would be more inclined to carry, as it is a more fiscally responsible choice. In many school districts across the country, classrooms are severely underfunded and staff grossly underpaid. That means if a teacher either wants to make enough money to afford living or have extra money to fund their classroom with basic necessities, they have to moonlight as a pseudo-police officer.
However, what if training is volunteer based so the time is unpaid? That means you’re only drawing from teachers who have enough time to adopt a sort of second job. This job being one that takes away time from an educator trying to impact a students life for the better and instead devotes it to trying to be a hero during a mass shooting. Already, the idea of arming teachers means asking underfunded schools to divert funds away from educating our youth to instead supply firearm training to underpaid teachers. It is either this or making teachers pay for their own training. Or, even worse, just treating a school like the wild west and letting untrained teachers run around freely with guns. None of the options seem too great.
The next issue faced would be the selection of a firearm. If a teacher chooses some variant of a rifle or shotgun, that means it would need to be stored in a locked desk or safe — if you want the weapon to be stored safely, that is. In the event of an emergency, the teacher would have to go to the gun safe, unlock it, load the gun, then locate and stop the threat, resulting in precious time lost.
However, I believe the most likely firearm for a teacher to wield would be a semi-automatic handgun, due to their compactness making them easy to conceal. But just because the gun is hidden, doesn’t mean it’s safe. Having a gun on you at all times means at any point in time you could accidentally discharge the weapon — something that has already happened in a school this year.
Last, the main point in teachers carrying guns is to protect the students in the event of a shooting. During an active shooter situation, the armed teacher would be expected to react in a way to stop the threat.
In the high stress environment of an active shooter situation, the teacher would need to remain calm, find the shooter and take them out. Expecting them to stop the shooter would mean the armed teacher would need to abandon their class full of students, potentially putting them in danger. A simple misidentification of someone as a threat means the teacher could kill an innocent person. But if the teacher were to stay in their classroom, then that means the shooter is free to continue causing harm.
The general notion of having any faculty member on a school campus carrying a weapon is not only dangerous, but fiscally irresponsible. I do believe there are teachers out there capable of stopping a threat, but this comes at much too high of a cost.
At face value, you might think a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun, but this is just flat out wrong. A police officer with excellent training stops a bad guy with a gun. If you want school campuses to be safe, maybe it’s time to consider gun control that doesn’t force firearms into the hands of teachers.
Contact the author at llarsen13@mail.wou.edu
Photo by: aadl.org
