Armed Educators? One Future Teacher Says 'No'

I understand during times of crisis, especially when we feel like nothing is going to change, we try to come up with new solutions. One I keep hearing in regard to America’s gun violence problem, is that teachers should be armed. As a future educator, I am here to give you 10 reasons why that’s not a reasonable suggestion.

1. The idea that we can reduce gun violence in schools by bringing even more guns into schools is factually incorrect. Nineteen armed officers standing outside Robb Elementary were too afraid to go inside. Sometimes police or military personnel freeze, or run, or forget everything they were taught, and this is their job. One of my professors, when discussing this very issue, said she ran and hid behind a bush during what she knew was an intruder training exercise. She panicked, and was gone from the school, without any students, before she even realized what she had done. She literally blacked out from fear, without it even being a real incident. This is a reality of being human. In actual times of crisis, when the gunfire and the fear is real, even the most qualified and trained people sometimes freeze, or react poorly. So someone who hasn’t gone through extensive military or police training is even more likely to have their flight or freeze instinct kick in, rather than their fight instinct. The “good guy with a gun” argument was made by the NRA 20 years ago, and has since proven time and time again to actually not be true at all. (Roughly 75 percent of recruits reportedly drop out of Navy SEALS training because they cannot adopt a “survival mindset” and are not mentally prepared for the emotional and physical stress of training.)

2. There is no funding for weapons, ammunition, tactical training, safety courses, holsters, safes, or survival mindset training, for every teacher. One out of four teachers spend more than $750 out of pocket on classroom supplies every year, because public schools are not properly funded by the government. Pre-covid, most public schools were not able to offer universal free lunch. Teachers, who already make less than other college-educated professionals, and are the only professionals paying for their own supplies, would be forced to contribute even more of their own money to purchase expensive firearms and ammunition, as well as to learn how to use them. This is not a reasonable thing to add to teacher expectations.

3. This will not make kids or teachers feel safe. Not everyone is comfortable around guns. Not everyone has guns at home. Students should be focusing on schoolwork, not wondering if someone is going to grab the gun off their teacher’s hip, or if their teacher might accidentally fire their gun in the classroom. Many students will not feel safer at all this way, and it will only amplify anxiety. (Gun-Trained Teacher Accidentally Shoots Gun In Calif. High School Classroom : The Two-Way : NPR)

4. There are nearly 500 unintentional deaths by firearm every year. These incidents are often children fatally harming themselves or someone else in their home. Having a gun in every single classroom full of kids is not going to make this number go DOWN, it’s just going to add schools to the list of places children accidentally hurt themselves with guns. And if your response is to teach kids gun safety at school, again I ask, with what resources? And what do we cut? Many schools have already lost “specials” like art or music, and cut down drastically on recess. How many of our education hours do we dedicate to firearm training in public schools?

5. We aren’t even trusted with how to do the jobs we are trained to do half the time. Some legislators and parents want to pass laws that violate the privacy of students and teachers so they can watch a classroom camera all day, because they don’t trust that we are doing our jobs well. There are states that want to control what history we teach, what books we read, what conversations we have. They don’t trust us with choosing a book, knowing the curriculum, or properly teaching history. We can’t talk to our student about her trip to the coast with her dads, or about systemic racism, because these topics make some people uncomfortable. Hell, many parents don’t even like the way we do math. Do you really think they trust us to have a loaded weapon all day around their children? I really do not think so.

6. The liability to schools would be HUGE. One moment of human error or student that is stronger than their teacher, and the school has now placed a firearm into someone’s hands on school grounds. Again, where is the funding coming from to cover outrageous insurance that would be required for this?

7. Often these violent incidents happen in mere minutes. But one of the main tenants of gun ownership is to keep your guns securely locked and unloaded. So either we are suggesting teachers literally wear loaded guns on their hips all day like police officers, or the suggestion falls apart the moment we have to take time to get our securely locked firearm and load it. And if the suggestion is to wear a loaded gun all day, then what next? Handcuffs too? And then our schools are prisons, and we are not free.

8. Healthcare in this country is lacking. This is universally agreed upon by those who do and those who don’t support universal healthcare – our current system isn’t good. Cops and soldiers know the possibility of combat trauma when they sign up for those jobs. Unfortunately, America already drops the ball hard on getting mental healthcare for those professionals when they experience trauma and suffer from like PTSD afterwards. Where does the funding come from to cover teachers’ mental healthcare after a traumatic event? Another out of pocket expense for someone who can’t afford it.

9. In the event of a school shooting, if every single adult in the building has a firearm on them, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for police to secure the scene. Impossible. How do they know who is safe and who isn’t? How do they know who to take down and who is trying to help? This just turns an already dangerous situation into a literal war zone, and even more innocent lives lost when no one knows who else is safe. (On Veteran’s Day 2018, Jemel Roberson was working as a security guard at a bar in the Chicago suburb of Robbins. Roberson was armed with a license to carry. He apprehended a gunman while on the job, had clothing on which identified him, and an officer still shot him despite witnesses shouting at them that he was protecting them. Arming teachers could easily create similar incidents.)

10. Most importantly, educators as a whole do not want this. People who suggest this have often never asked a teacher how they feel about it. Obviously we are not a monolith, and you’ll find a teacher here or there who supports this idea, but they are the exception, not the norm. This is not what we signed up for. We got into this line of work to teach, not to also function as police officers. We want to do science projects, and make long division less intimidating, and read Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, and help kids understand the implications of Jim-Crow era laws. We did not sign up to have to decide in a moment of fear and crisis whether to take someone’s life. We are not cops; we are not Navy SEALS. School shooters are often students or former students. Asking a teacher to look at a kid they once taught the state capitals and decide to take his life, violently and in front of other students, is not only unreasonable, but also cruel. Most of us would never mentally recover from having to make that choice.

The bottom line is that arming teachers is not a reasonable alternative to talking about common sense gun laws. We are already at a critical level in the teacher shortage in America as people leave the profession in droves due to extreme Covid-related burnout. 55 percent of educators now say they plan to retire early. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), around 600,000 teachers in public education quit between January 2020 and March 2022. Some schools have untrained substitutes running classrooms. Some schools have combined classes into unreasonable sizes to make do. Some schools have National Guard members who have no educational training whatsoever “teaching” full time. Public education is essential to the individual and collective well-being of our nation. Without informed and engaged citizenry, no democracy can exist and flourish. An uneducated society cannot prosper, and a society with as much class divide as America must be able to offer an education that is public and free. We are already in crisis mode. Adding the expectation to be armed would only amplify this in a way that would cause public education to crumble under the weight.