Arming Teachers Is a Bad Idea

UPDATE: A reader points me to this 2014 piece by Russ Moore, a gun owning principal. It's good. 

UPDATE 2: I wrote this before Trump started babbling nonsense about arming teachers. I really didn't think he would actually propose such a ridiculous idea (silly me), but now that he has, there's been a groundswell of opposition. 

When I say below "I know I'm going to get a lot of grief," I'm not at all implying this post is unique. Trump moved this debate from the fringes to the mainstream -- such is the power of the presidency.



I know I'm going to get a lot of grief for this post, but someone's got to say it:

Arming teachers is a bad idea.

I know there are a sizable number of teachers who are licensed, responsible gun owners. No one I know wants to take away your right to have a gun, although plenty of us want greater regulation, as is demanded by the Second Amendment*, than we have now.

But bringing your gun to school so you can take a law enforcement role concurrent with your responsibilities as a teacher is a bad policy, for many reasons:

- Armed teachers are not adequately trained or experienced, and they never will be. Your proficiency with a firearm is not adequate qualification for you to be carrying one at school. You might be able to hit a target every time, but you will never have the training or experience to be entrusted to know which target to hit.

"Oh, I'll train during the summer." That's not enough. Law enforcement officials go out on the streets every day. They get experience every day. They are supervised in the use of deadly force every day. There is no conceivable scenario where you can meet your obligations as a teacher and receive adequate training and experience so you know not just how to use a deadly weapon, but when.

"But I was in the military." Thank you for your service. But military experience is not the same as civilian law enforcement experience. The rules of engagement are not the same. The environment of the battlefield and the school are completely different. And no one ever expected that you could engage the enemy while simultaneously teaching children -- two tasks with extraordinarily large cognitive loads that, if we're being honest with ourselves, no human being can do at the same time.

- We can't afford it. There is no way the American public would ever accept armed educators in the classroom unless they were regularly screened, trained, and supervised (even then, I'm betting most parents would be against it). This costs money -- money we could be spending on school facilities, salaries, curriculum, etc.

You can't expect to arm teachers and not increase their workload. You can't expect to increase their workload and not pay them more. But why would we pay teachers more to partially train them in law enforcement techniques when we could instead pay them more to train them to be better teachers?

- There's no evidence it will work. I'm not going to wade into a long battle over the evidence on gun proliferation and crime. Suffice to say there is an extraordinary amount of junk research out there**, and both-sidesism runs rampant. A large part of the problem is that the Centers for Disease Control has been prevented from engaging in research on the correlation between gun ownership and gun violence.

If you want to ignore the reams of evidence that shows gun ownership does not lead to a reduction in violent crime, I can't help you. But at least show me a body of high-quality research that supports the contention that arming teachers will make students safer. Not anecdotes; not non-peer reviewed hack junk. I'm talking serious, empirical evidence. Where is it?

- It's completely impractical. The premise for arming teachers is that they will have their weapons at the ready on a moment's notice as they will be the first-responders to a gun attack. Which means they will have to carry a loaded weapon with them at all times.

A law enforcement officer's foremost priority is making sure her weapon is secured. A teacher's foremost priority is the needs of her students. These are not the same things. It is very easy to imagine all sorts of scenarios where a teacher needs to focus completely on a student to the exclusion of everything else. But that can never happen so long as that teacher has to put the security of their firearm first.

The more you think about this, the more absurd the whole idea becomes. Are you really suggesting a gym teacher should lead his students in basketball drills with a gun strapped to his chest? A music teacher should conduct a choir with a sidearm? A kindergarten teacher should give a hug to a crying child while carefully making sure that child doesn't touch her gun?

Really?

- An armed teacher will always be suspicious. I'm sure most of the teachers who are calling to be armed are very nice folks who have the best of intentions. But are we sure all of them are?

Teachers are generally stable, moderate people. But they're people. They have bad relationships and battles with addiction and personal demons at the same rates as everyone else. Are we really confident we can screen out teachers who shouldn't be armed? One bad call is all it will take.

The reality is that an armed teacher will always be treated differently than an unarmed one. And if I'm a law enforcement officer who arrives at an active shooter scene and I see an armed civilian firing a weapon around children...


Look, we can have a serious debate about how to protect our citizens -- especially our children -- from the horrific tragedies that are plaguing this country while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners. I have no problem with hunters and marksmen and people who need a gun for their personal protection. I agree that banning all guns will not solve our problems.

But arming teachers is not a serious policy proposal; it is simply a bad idea. If we're going to create good public policy that protects students in schools, we should not waste time considering whether we should arm teachers -- that's a distraction we really can't afford right now.

ADDING: A commenter on Facebook:

I worked with a retired NJSP officer who took a security job at a HS. He said he'd NEVER bring his gun to school because it might be taken from him in a scuffle and there was a HUGE risk of collateral damage in a group situation if he had to use it. He was a senior officer with 26 years' experience.

I'm obviously not a law enforcement professional. But isn't this the reason why corrections officers don't carry weapons when they are in proximity to the prison population? Isn't this why police officers don't bring their weapons into holding areas?

I made an assertion above that I really should confirm with law enforcement officers: when you are issued a weapon, isn't your top priority making sure that weapon is always secured?



* "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

** And if anyone knows about junk research, it's an education policy researcher...