Atlas: Teachers are clear -- don't ask us to carry guns

IndyStar
Encouraging chalk art lined the sidewalks around Noblesville West Middle School as students returned to school for the first time since the May 25, 2018 shooting.

SALT LAKE CITY— Last month’s school shooting in Noblesville wounded 13-year-old Ella Whistler and science teacher Jason Seaman. Seaman bravely tackled the 13-year old shooter -- his own student -- and stopped the mayhem before anyone else could be injured.

Noblesville was the 23rd school shooting this year. President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association advocate arming teachers as a way to stop school shootings. What do teachers think?

For the past week, I’ve been here with hundreds of high school teachers reading 325,000 Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics Exams for the College Board. In a very unscientific survey, I asked about a dozen of these highly motivated educators to share their thoughts on guns in the classroom.

The men and women I spoke with teach in public and private high schools in Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. Some are young and some have been teaching for decades; several are also coaches at their schools and a few have served in the military.

None of them supported the idea of arming teachers in the classroom. “That’s a completely different skill set,” noted an AP government teacher from Maryland. “Many teachers are already under extreme stress, and now you want to add a gun?”

Another educator said that what schools really need is more counselors and psychologists, and stronger efforts to identify and treat troubled youth.

An AP teacher from Ohio noted the ethical dilemma of being armed. Teachers are responsible for the development and well-being of their students and are often expected to act as surrogate parents. But once armed, they would then be expected, in a crisis, to shoot or even kill one of their charges. This would be an untenable situation.

Then there were the scenarios. “If I’m carrying,” said a teacher who is an Army vet, “I’ll probably have a 9mm. A pistol is no good against an AR-15.”

Another raised the possibility of accidental shootings or a student taking the gun away, noting that “some students are a lot bigger than some teachers.”

A Florida educator said, “What if I’m the armed teacher and I hear gunfire in another classroom? Do I leave my kids to go find the shooter? No way.”

Another teacher, responding to this scenario, asked, “Imagine how the public would react to a teacher who abandoned his students when shooting was taking place in another classroom? What if there was a second shooter and his own class was then attacked? Or, how would people react if he did stay with his students, but then students were killed in that other classroom?”

Proponents say that armed teachers would receive training on the use of deadly force. But this was rejected as ludicrous. “Look at how much training police officers get before they’re put on the front line,” said a high school government teacher. “And even then, they don’t always make the right decisions.”

Another told me that the teachers at his school who are most opposed to guns in the classroom have military or law enforcement experience.

Everyone I spoke with supports the presence of armed and properly trained School Resource Officers as well as other security measures to make schools safer. A Texas teacher observed that there are rural districts in his state that are 20 to 30 minutes from the nearest first responders. But he added that this was an argument for armed security, not for armed teachers. Someone else quipped that, while his school’s SRO wore body armor, an armed teacher in the classroom would not — and the teacher would now become the first target.

Interestingly, none of the teachers brought up gun control in our conversations, and a few told me they were gun owners. But all were unanimous: arming teachers is a bad idea. The takeaway was clear. Leave the security to the security experts, and leave the teaching to the education experts.   

Atlas is professor of political science and director of The Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian University. Follow him on Twitter: @PierreAtlas.