In response to the recent school shootings, Frank Lasee, a Wisconsin state assemblyman, has suggested arming teachers and other school employees. According to Lasee, quoted in USA Today, “To make our schools safe for our students to learn, all options should be on the table. Israel and Thailand have well-trained teachers carrying weapons and keeping their children safe from harm. It can work in Wisconsin.”
Lasee’s idea is fundamentally sound. The ban on carrying weapons on school grounds is a “victimless crime” law that makes the ridiculous assumption that a murderer has respect for the law. Such laws only make violent crime easier, as they guarantee that law abiding citizens-in this case, school faculty-will be unable to protect themselves from criminal violence. The law should be replaced by one that allows certified faculty and other trusted adults the ability to carry firearms on school grounds.
Armed faculty, though violating the law, have already stopped at least one school shooting spree. In 1997, assistant principal Joel Myrick used his pistol to stop Luke Woodham after Woodham shot nine of his classmates at Pearl High School, killing two.
We must be willing to trust teachers with our children’s well-being. Not only do teachers provide the education each person needs to thrive in our society, they inevitably play a role in their student’s moral and social upbringing. Teachers, through both lessons and example, influence students’ views on morality, self-respect and life in general. In allowing teachers to spend hours a day with students, we put complete trust in the teachers over the students’ lives. Allowing them to carry firearms in school requires no extra trust, allows them to defend the students’ lives directly and provides a deterrent to would-be attackers.
Also, school employees should not be stripped of the chance to defend themselves simply because they work with children. Not only do they have a right to defend themselves, but the shootings and the sensationalist media coverage that follow can demoralize and drive away current educators and discourage new ones from entering this vital field. Given that the education system already suffers from a lack of qualified teachers, armed teachers may alleviate such fears and encourage those too frightened to teach to reconsider.
Arming teachers is not a panacea for the school violence problem, nor should it be done haphazardly. Schools should also provide better student counseling and enough teachers to ensure that each student gets the attention he or she needs. Students should be taught that all human life is precious and that firearms should never be pointed at people.
Not all teachers will be qualified to handle a firearm, particularly in a school setting. Since we already allow police officers to carry weapons in schools, whatever training the police undergo is a reasonable baseline for the training and tests that an armed teacher must pass.
Also, since open carrying seems unwise, as an attacker would easily be able to identify potential threats, the teachers should undergo concealed carry training and certification. To avoid giving away which teachers are armed, reduce the chances of an accident and not frighten students, teachers should only draw their weapons in life-or-death situations.
While armed faculty can protect students from outside threats and other students, what if a teacher is unstable and dangerous? Of course, given the trust we already put in our teachers, the current system should disallow such people from becoming teachers.
However, some dangerous individuals will always slip through, especially given how desperate the system is for teachers. Regardless of whether teachers are armed or not, teacher pay and benefits should be raised high enough that there is an excess of quality teaching applicants-allowing the schools to pick from the best available and reducing the chances that a school will have to settle for someone who might be a threat to the students, with or without a gun.
Any teacher choosing to carry a gun should undergo additional psychological review to ensure that they are even-tempered enough to carry a firearm. Ironically, the presence of other armed teachers will provide both a deterrent and a defense against any teacher who presents a threat to the students or other faculty.
Arming teachers creates the chance that accidents may occur with the weapons. The teachers’ weapons should be chosen specifically to minimize such accidents. Any violation of the safety rules should disqualify that teacher from carrying a firearm. Teachers should also undergo repeated certification, perhaps annually. Even so, there will likely be an accident, particularly among inexperienced teachers. Ultimately the question is whether accidents or shootings harm more students.
Arming teachers also opens up the possibility that a student may attempt to take the firearm from the teacher. Police and concealed-carry training address this issue, but as an additional measure, some teachers could carry fake, concealed firearms. A student attempting to take a teacher’s gun would give themselves away harmlessly by taking the decoy.
Even though firearms represent the ultimate counter to armed assault on students, they require extensive training and certification to be safely deployed and make some parents and faculty uncomfortable. Other less lethal weapons such as mace, Tasers or stun grenades deployed by a panic switch, can also provide some measure of defense and deterrence for schools that are unwilling or unable to allow armed teachers. Even so, they also require training and will not be as effective against a firearm-wielding attacker as a firearm itself.
Assigning police officers to schools is also an option. However, officers are not trained to deal with students, do not know the students as well as teachers and give schools a prison atmosphere. While officers could focus their training on becoming more teacher-like, officers are less likely than teachers to be compatible with school duty, and few departments could afford to train and deploy student-conscience officers.
Since teachers are necessary for the school, armed teachers are much more cost-effective than training and assigning full-time officers to the boring and unrewarding duty of protecting against an attack that is unlikely to come.
School shootings are an unpleasant reality. No defense other than providing armed personnel to guard the students seems effective. Given that we trust educators with our children’s lives, why not allow them to protect those same lives from a brutal ending?