In April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into their former school, Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado holding for guns and 30 homemade bombs. After killing a teacher, 12 students, and wounding 24 others, the duo committed suicide. At the time, it was the most awful mass shooting ever recorded in the United States (Kleck 1447). Approximately two months ago, on the February 14 2018, an ex-student of Douglas High School, Parklands, Florida walked into the school and unleashed a gruesome rifle assault that left 17 students dead and 17 others wounded marking it one of the deadliest school massacre in history (Kennedy 22). Due to the increasing attacks and killings of innocent individuals in various institutions, the debate on whether to arm teachers has intensified as shall be discussed in this essay.
Overview
There have been school shootings since the 1700s, typically motivated by unreciprocated love or revenge against a teacher or the actions of students with poor judgment. The recent form of mass shootings has led to increased concerns. A shooter walks into a faculty kills some students and teachers then kill himself (Nedzel 429). The Second Amendment gives people the right to own guns. However, the could left some decisions in place that prohibited people from carrying loaded guns on public places such as schools and government buildings, for instance, the 1990 Federal Gin-Free Zones Act (GFSZA). Most of these laws have failed schools in the U.S. and as a result, different institutions have begun to teach students and faculty members on the ways of defending against gun attacks. For instance, potential victims are advised to run away from the adversary if probable, hide in the locked room, and distract or try to disarm the attacker (Asis School Safety & Security Council 6).
Although tackles have been successful in disarming people in the past few years, they cannot prevent mentally incapacitated armed man from entering a building. In many cases, help does not arrive in time. When the shooter has a semiautomatic machine gun that discharges one bullet per second and it takes a security officer four minutes to arrive at the scene, within that period, the assailant could have shot approximately 60x4 = 240 bullets (Nedzel 429). Additionally, even if the police are trained on ways of handling such incidents, there is no guarantee that any would be willing to put their lives in danger immediately by engaging an active shooter. Thus, a better approach should be employed to try to stop as well as discourage armed individuals with bad intentions from entering the school (Shepherd n.p).
Donald Trump came up with the decision to start arming teachers, which has since born numerous controversies.
First, the idea of carrying guns to school is not new. States such as Texas and Utah allow teachers with specific caveats to carry guns on the school compound. However, the president’s proposal comes few days after the Parklands mass shooting. Why should more guns be allowed in schools? (Bardes, Mack and Steffen 30).
More guns could lead to more deaths. There is no concrete research on whether arming teachers or having more security forces would reduce the rate of shootings in schools. This is an indication, that the policy in particular may not be evidence-based. However, there is sound evidence that increasing the number of guns in school will worsen the situation. According to the Kristof, “the US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times that of Sweden, and nearly 16 times that of Germany. The gun deaths are a big reason America has a much higher overall homicide rate, which includes non-gun deaths, than other developed nations.” The problem with the U.S. is the high number of guns already in circulation. According to Harvard School of Public Health, the number of guns owned per civilian stands at the ratio of 88.8 guns/100 individuals. The second was Yemen, an already failed state with 54.8 guns/100 people. Conversely, the U.S makes approximately 5% of the global population yet owns at least 42% of the world’s privately held firearms. Therefore, a simple conflict can rapidly lead to gun violence. Hemenway support this view by indicating that more guns in a community could lead to an increase the rate of homicide (p. 61). Adding more guns to the already existing ones could result to more violence in schools.
Arming teachers is a sensible strategy only if they are prepared and given proper and constant training, for instance, after every three months. Such training can include target practice, ways of approaching critical situations, and crisis management. When have several people owning firearms in the school, it will dissuade shooters seeking easy targets (Elliott 523). Nedzel also supports the idea by indicating that repealing the GFSZ Laws will reduce such crimes because identifying the people carrying guns would be difficult for potential shooters. (p. 433). At the moment, the security surrounding politicians, banks, airports, and movie stars cannot be compared with the one in schools hence the need to arm teachers.
Uniformed forces can provide any form of armed security in the school premises. The local police are trained in law enforcement and ways of screening and tackling potential criminals. In Israel, each school has at least an armed guard who undergoes training on a quarterly basis. None of the teachers is armed and there have been no shootouts in school for decades. If the government allows multiple people to own guns, it may also be difficult to identify the real assailant in an active shootout (Nedzel 434) Leonard supports this view by stating that rural schools or places that lack dedicated police officers may be disadvantaged since in such a scenario, they could respond from distances. Taking more time to arrive at the scene means more casualties.
The teacher-student relationship is also of utmost importance. Their purpose is to impart knowledge and not to carry weapons. For instance, if an active shootout, will a teacher focus on confronting the attacker or taking children to safety zone? For these reasons, most teachers are skeptical about the issue of conceal and carry because their pupils may feel unsafe. On the other hand, Buerger and Geoffrey affirm, “teachers could have more control and flexibility over their security.” Therefore, having dedicated resource officers at the school premise would sound inefficient.
The prospect of carrying a firearm would pose ethical and legal issues. It may become a challenge if a school has no security officer and none of the teachers is willing to carry a gun. Furthermore, during hiring, some schools may base their decisions on the willingness or ability of the employee to carry a gun; thus, it may pose claims of discrimination if only some employees are selected based on the attribute. Additionally, in schools with high teacher turnover, replacing the ones already armed may be a mammoth task (DeGrazia 2).
Nedzel also asserts that besides quipping responsible adults with guns, limiting media coverage of mass shootings is highly effective. The media’s relentless and invasive coverage of such tragedies glorifies shooters. However, if a law were drafted limiting media coverage of such issues without infringing into their freedom would discourage potential shooters from committing massacres since they would not get the postmortem fame they always need (p. 434).
Arming teachers could lead to an increase in insurance liability and premiums. For instance, a student finds or steals a teacher’s gun and uses it, a teacher uses the firearm inappropriately, or a teacher uses the gun during a shootout and accidentally shoots a student, another teacher or a police officer. Such cases could result into increased liabilities hence higher insurance costs (Weiler 54).
The budgets in public schools are overstretched already while others have been cut significantly. Initial and constant training of teachers calls for adequate resources, which are not readily available in such schools. Parents will be disgruntled when they realize that the scanty resources available in the school are being used for other projects such as paying bonuses and retraining teachers (Nedzel 434).
In conclusion, arming teachers may have its benefits but it is not a viable options. Taking into account the number guns already in circulation, adding more would create a hostile environment for the staff and children because the likelihood of violence occurring will increase.
Works Cited
Asis School Safety & Security Council. “Active Shooter.” Asis International, 2014
Bardes, Barbara, Mack Shelley, and Steffen Schmidt. American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials 2009-2010 Edition. Cengage Learning, 2008.
Buerger, Michael E., and Geoffrey E. Buerger. "Those terrible first few minutes: Revisiting active-shooter protocols for schools." FBI L. Enforcement Bull. 79 (2010): 1.
DeGrazia, David. "Handguns, moral rights, and physical security." Journal of moral philosophy 13.1 (2016): 56-76.
Elliott, Rebekah. "The real school safety debate: Why legislative responses should focus on schools and not on guns." Ariz. L. Rev. 57 (2015): 523.
Harvard School of Public. “Harvard Injury Control Research Center.” Harvard Injury Control Research Center
Hemenway, David. Private guns, public health. University of Michigan Press, 2010.
Kennedy, Mike. "Different This Time?." American School & University, vol. 90, no. 5, Mar. 2018, pp. 22-25. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=128694767&site=ehost-live.
Kleck, Gary. "Mass shootings in schools: The worst possible case for gun control." American Behavioral Scientist 52.10 (2009): 1447-1464.
Kristof, Nicholas. “How to Reduce Shootings.” The New York Times, Feb. 2018
Leonard, Robert. “Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America.” The New York Times, March 2018
Nedzel, Nadia. "Concealed Carry: The Only Way to Discourage Mass School Shootings." Academic Questions, vol. 27, no. 4, Dec. 2014, pp. 429-435. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s12129-014-9459-7.
Shepherd, David. “How should you respond to an active shooter?” Elsevier, Oct.2015
Weiler, Spencer C.1, [email protected], et al. "Safety at Schools: Identifying the Costs Associated with the Necessary Safeguards for Arming Educators." Rural Educator, vol. 39, no. 1, Winter2018, pp. 54-58. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eft&AN=128963514&site=ehost-live.
