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This image reminded me of the article about rural communities not having access to security guards, and therefore saw armed teachers as a solution in the event of threat.

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Isn't it hard enough for teachers to teach?

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Isn't it hard enough for teachers to teach?

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This article does not provide any new information or arguments than what I have already read. However there is the closing line that states, " Isn't it hard enough for teachers to teach?", and it stuck with me.

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What would our schools really be like if teachers carried guns in their classrooms? If, as President Trump first suggested at this week's White House meeting with families who have suffered school shootings, 20 percent of teachers were armed?

He repeated the idea in tweets the next day, saying, "20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to ... immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions ... Far more assets at much less cost than guards. A 'gun free' school is a magnet for bad people. ATTACKS WOULD END!"

Some people at the meeting seemed to approve of the president's idea; many did not. The president repeated his message to acclaim before the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

In the world beyond the Oval Office, David Hemenway at the Harvard School of Public Health, an expert on gun violence, calls the president's idea, "a crazy proposal," according to NBC News. And many teachers took to social media to say they're infuriated by the idea.

But 42 percent of Americans told a Washington Post-ABC News poll that they believe gun-bearing teachers could have deterred last week's school shootings in Parkland, Fla.

I've tried to imagine how pistol-packing teachers might change the nature of a school, and the relationship between students and teachers. Will students now advise one another, "Don't get caught text messaging in physics class! That teacher is locked and loaded!" Will principals who hire new teachers now say, "Well, his college recommendations aren't strong. But he's won marksmanship medals." And will teachers now tap a bulge under their coats and admonish students, "OK, class, do I have to remind you what happens if I don't get those essays on Gwendolyn Brooks by Friday?"

The valor and devotion of American teachers is beyond doubt. In one school shooting after another, teachers and staff have risked and even given their lives to protect their students, including geography teacher Scott Beigel, football coach Aaron Feis and athletic director Chris Hixon, just last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

But would strapping guns on teachers make them educators, or armed guards? What happens if and when a teacher's gun is left unlocked or is stolen or gets wrestled away from a teacher by a disturbed student? Would giving guns to teachers make students feel safer - or even more on guard, when they should be open to learning? Isn't it already hard enough for teachers to teach?

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It's Hard To Imagine How Armed Teachers Might Change Schools

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What would our schools really be like if teachers carried guns in their classrooms? If, as President Trump first suggested at this week's White House meeting with families who have suffered school shootings, 20 percent of teachers were armed? He repeated the idea in tweets the next day, saying, "20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to ...

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Teachers trained to use guns in rural communities

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Teachers trained to use guns in rural communities

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Reading about how different communities view gun ownership and usage in schools is shifting my perspective a bit.  I learned that that some rural communities are more vulnerable because they rely on local law enforcement in response to active threats. The idea that teachers should be in the best preparation to respond to violence or threat is understandable. However, teachers with guns could lead to even more incidents of violence or danger to students. I think that a major factor in this thought process stems from the pro-gun culture that exists in many of these rural communities. These articles are very polarized in terms of how group interests are represented. As future educator, I am having difficulty figuring out what I agree with.

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(Photo: George Frey/Getty Images)

This week last year, a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and sparking a familiar debate: Is the best way to prevent violence in schools more guns or fewer?

In the wake of the February 14th, 2018, shooting, more than a dozen states decided it was the former, introducing legislation to arm teachers or other school employees.

Federal law generally prohibits anyone other than trained law enforcement from carrying firearms on school property, but after the Parkland shooting even the White House threw its support behind programs to arm educators. President Donald Trump said last February that providing teachers with weapons would make schools "hardened targets," and Betsy DeVos, Trump's secretary of education, floated the idea of using federal funds to support programs that arm school employees.

Parkland: One Year Later

1. What Would a National Emergency Over Gun Violence Look Like?

2. A Year After Parkland the School Security Industry Is Booming

3. Gun Violence Spreads Like a Contagious Disease. Can School Shootings Be Cured Like One?

4. Democrats Used to Disagree About Gun Control. The 2020 Candidates Don't.

5. The 116th Congress Is Refocused on Gun Control in the Wake of Parkland

Before Parkland, 10 states allowed school employees to carry firearms on school property. One school district in Texas began arming staff more than a decade ago. Another rural district in Ohio launched a program to arm school administrators after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Wyoming passed a law in 2017 leaving it to individual school districts to set their own rules for armed staff.

Of the 14 states that introduced legislation related to arming school staff after Parkland, only Florida was able to quickly sign a bill into law that provided funding for a "guardian program" that arms staff. In the year since, 25 Florida school districts began participating in the program, according to the state's department of education. In many other states, teachers lobbied against the bills, stalling the legislation.

One rural Virginia school board serves as a good example of how the debate played out at the school board, district, and state level, where the interests of rural communities often contrast those of the state. In Lee County, Virginia, school board officials had been mulling over options to beef up security at the district's 11 schools for some time, when the Parkland shooting and a middle-school shooting in Indiana in May of 2018, in which a teacher was injured protecting students, convinced the board the time for action had come.

"We'd already added buzz-in entrance controls as well as cameras, and we'd done some other things to move toward a safer environment for students," says Brian Austin, the superintendent for the Lee County public schools. "And then of course Parkland happened in February."

In Lee County, allowing teachers to carry the guns they already owned and operated onto school grounds seemed a natural way to increase security. "Firearms are something in our community that a lot of people are familiar with because we're a rural, agriculture-based community, so how to handle a firearm for some people is just part of the culture," Austin says. "In our community we have several employees who have to make an effort not to carry on school property."

In July of last year, the school board approved a program that would allow teachers-only those who passed extensive background checks, drug tests, psychological exams, and firearms-proficiency evaluations-to be armed on school property. Austin says the program was widely supported by community members and school staff. But it was not by the state. Virginia's attorney general rejected Austin's application to register as an armed special conservator of the peace, which would have allowed him to carry a firearm on school property, effectively blocking Austin's efforts to implement the program.

The Lee County School Board is now suing the state, a suit which is sure to be a test case for the debate playing out between rural communities and states about arming teachers. But gun-control advocates are certain the idea is a poor one.

"Allowing people who don't have the training and the experience of professional [law enforcement] to carry guns in schools is a terrible idea," says Adam Skaggs, chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "There's the risk of children accessing guns; there's the risk that the gun is accidentally or unintentionally discharged, potentially resulting in serious injury; and then there's the risk that an undertrained teacher or administrator might misperceive a threat. These policies decrease rather than increase the safety of students."

The role of an educator, Skaggs says, is fundamentally at odds with the role of an armed security guard. Many educators seem to agree. In 2018, the National Education Association, one of the nation's largest teachers unions, conducted a survey of its members and found that 82 percent were opposed to carrying guns in schools. NEA President Lily Eskelsen García called programs to arm teachers "ill-conceived, preposterous, and dangerous."

But for a growing number of school districts-many of them small and rural-arming staff members seems like the only viable option to protect students.

For many rural school districts, the time it takes for first responders to arrive can be substantial. One 2017 study, for example, found that emergency medical service response times in rural parts of the United States were nearly double the national average, "with nearly 1 of 10 encounters waiting almost a half hour for the arrival of EMS personnel," the study authors wrote.

"One of our fears, being a small, rural school, is that we don't have a police force," says one Ohio superintendent, who asked to remain anonymous because his district's armed-response policy requires that the participating schools and staff remain confidential. "We used to, but due to budget cuts we now get our police services from the sheriff's office and the sheriff's station is 20 minutes away from our school. So we're kind of vulnerable."

According to Joe Eaton, the program director of an Ohio-based program called FASTER (Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response) Saves Lives, which provides first-aid and firearm training to school staff, more and more school boards are coming around to his view that violence in schools should be treated like any other school emergency. "If you have a kid that falls into a swimming pool, are you going to stand at the side of the pool and dial 911? That's ridiculous. You're going to jump in the pool, you're going to pull the kid out, you're going to start saving lives while you're still waiting for the professionals to get there," Eaton says. "That's where the biggest mindset has changed, is that schools realize, no matter how much they prepare ahead of time, if violence starts there is always going to be a certain period of time when they are 100 percent on their own, because until that first 911 call is made, nobody is coming to help."

That's just the kind of preparation that FASTER provides: not just practice time on a range, but first aid for traumatic injuries, tactical exercises, role playing-a crash course in the kind of training that lawenforcement officers get. FASTER is meant to prepare teachers not to replace first responders, but just to hold their own until law enforcement can get there.

"Firearms are the last resort to stop these situations," Eaton says. "We teach the staff how to safely remove themselves and groups of kids from an area of danger; how to barricade in a room; how to deal with large chaotic crowds, and all the trauma and medical training to provide compression bandages, chest seals, airway management, to start immediately rendering the medical aid. That way when the professionals get there you actually have patients to transfer to them instead of victims"

The Ohio superintendent credits the FASTER program with giving administrators in his district the tools to prepare for the worst-case scenario, should it ever arrive. The district's armed response team conducts active shooter drills with key school staff and the sheriff's department after hours, and once a year all staff and students participate in a lockdown drill, which is mandated by Ohio law.

In some states, students themselves participate in active shooter drills. It's all but impossible to measure how much harm is avoided by these drills, but researchers suggest that they could do some psychological harm of their own by leaving kids with a heightened sense of risk and, as one 2015 study found, more afraid.

When asked how often FASTER-trained school employees have used their training to avert an incident, only a couple examples come to Eaton's mind: in one, a school principal in eastern Ohio allegedly drew his firearm on a student off school grounds, prompting the student to immediately drop a weapon he was carrying. But Eaton takes the rarity of such incidents as a sign the program may be working as a school-violence deterrent: "We hope that we never have any additional stories beyond that because one thing that we encourage schools to do is that, if they adopt this program, to be public about it," he says, "because announcing publicly should have a certain deterrent effect."

Meanwhile, Skaggs has a running list of more than 50 incidents in schools in which armed teachers, administrators, and even security guards mishandled their firearms. In one incident at an elementary school in Florida, a substitute teacher was doing cartwheels with students when a loaded gun fell out of his waistband; in another in California, a teacher accidentally fired a gun in a classroom and one student was injured by shrapnel; in Maryland, a staff member left their gun behind in a bathroom. "Some of those incidents involve professional law enforcement," Skaggs says, "and to the extent that we see folks with better training, with more experience, and we still have some problems when we introduce a gun into an educational environment, imagine how much more likely those kinds of incidents will be with less training."

Rather than arming teachers, Skaggs believes that addressing what he says are the "root causes" of school shootings-chiefly the accessibility of military style weaponry and large-capacity ammunition, a lack of mental-health services for those at risk of violent behavior, and inadequate policies to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people-will be the most effective way to put an end to violence in schools.

But the Ohio superintendent believes that something has fundamentally changed in our society that's beyond the purview of a legislative fix. "I don't think gun control is going to solve this problem, and until this problem is solved, I believe having an armed person to protect your school is absolutely necessary," he says. "I'm not willing to watch my kids be murdered waiting for someone else to come."

For the one-year anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, Pacific Standard looked at gun-violence solutions coming from the federal government, and, in lieu of those, the efficacy of a variety of local and non-governmental proposals.
What Would a National Emergency Over Gun Violence Look Like?

A Year After Parkland the School Security Industry Is Booming

Gun Violence Spreads Like a Contagious Disease. Can School Shootings Be Cured Like One?

Democrats Used to Disagree About Gun Control. The 2020 Candidates Don't.

The 116th Congress Is Refocused on Gun Control in the Wake of Parkland
With the exception of the 113th Congress, the 116th Congress has introduced almost three times as many gun-control laws in their first month as any other recent new Congress. Read the story here.

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Should Teachers Carry Guns? In Many Rural School Districts, They Already Are.

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This week last year, a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and sparking a familiar debate: Is the best way to prevent violence in schools more guns or fewer?

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One of the arguments some of my peers from back home and I discussed is how gun violence in communities and schools are gaining rampant attention, but how many of these issues are not new to many communities. It is obviously upsetting regardless of the community, but this discussion brings up a new argument about when people start to care. In many cases, the issue of gun violence in schools only seems important because of the community that is now being represented in the media as being affected. It calls in to question how policy change is only worked for and pursued when White middle class students are on the other end of the threat. I think this articles shows the frustration of the perceived value of White lives and the lives of "others" in media and politics. There is a frustration to know that there is discrepancy in the way and pace these issues are being tackled locally and at a national level.

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Perspective | The nation is focused on students and gun violence. But kids in urban schools want to know, where's everybody been?

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One of them lost a brother - his twin - to gunfire. Another lost a boyfriend. And a third can count four friends - four - who were killed by gunshots last year. Of course, these kids I talked to are planning to join teens throughout the country as they walk out of class on Wednesday to protest America's rampant gun violence.

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Reasons why teachers should not carry guns in schools

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Reasons why teachers should not carry guns in schools

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I think this articles makes five strong valid points in regards to why teachers should not carry guns. Most of the points center on the idea that schools should be practicing nonviolent school culture and guns misguide these ideas. If the federal government beings to fun programs that enforce gun usage by teachers, this could lead to even more open ended issues in schools. Arming teachers cultivates the idea that teachers are acting as law enforcement, which should not be the case in any circumstance. I think this whole discussion is bringing up how militarized some people want our society to be.

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The death of any child is a tragedy. Even more tragic is when children die in school shootings. Thus, the names Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland will live on in infamy even though research shows that schools are the safest places for children to be during school hour.

Given this fact, it is perplexing that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is considering a proposal to allow states to use federal funds to arm teachers and allow them to carry weapons in schools. Here are five reasons why this is not a wise policy move:

First, what message does this communicate to students and their parents? Is it that violence works? Moreover, do educators wish to send the message that schools are violent places where children are not safe unless they are protected by armed caregivers or guards?

Second is a closely related issue concerning another mixed message: Because educators teach students to use nonviolent, peaceful methods to resolve their differences, does arming teachers demonstrate to children that what they are being taught does not work?

The third issue concerns logistical questions. Who will ensure that teachers are adequately trained to use firearms safely? Will all teachers be armed? Do weapons remain in school overnight or can teachers come to school armed via concealed carry? What if teachers can take weapons home and a group of students attacks a teacher in an attempt to steal the weapon? Moreover, can individuals who have never fired weapons before be counted on to discharge their weapons safely and accurately? After all, it is one thing to engage in target practice in controlled environments, something else altogether to discharge a weapon in crisis situations.

The fourth concern emerges during actual emergencies. What happens when the first police officer arrives at the scene of a school shooting and confronts two well-dressed enough, armed adults both claiming to be educators? Does the officer fire or wait? What happens if the police officer makes the wrong choice?

The fifth reason why arming teachers is a bad idea is how it might change the perceptions of students and parents about educators. Generally perceived as caregivers, is it worth essentially turning teachers into armed state agents akin to the police? Also, might having to be armed result in the loss of otherwise strong candidates who do not wish to be involved with weapons?

Instead of arming teachers, there are two things that educators, policymakers, and lawmakers should consider. First, educators should make sure that they have devised, implemented and practiced comprehensive school-safety plans informing all in educational communities what to do should shootings or other emergencies arise.

Second, because most school shootings involve students who were known to have troubled histories, particularly as at Columbine and Parkland, school boards should work with community mental-health and social-services agencies to provide better professional development. This will help staff members to identify students with psychological or emotional problems in the hope of getting them help so as to avoid these unspeakable tragedies.

In sum, as attractive as the notion of arming teachers is to some, there is no evidence that doing so could, or would, have avoided the school shootings in Columbine, Newtown or Parkland. In fact, as discussed above, devising a policy such as the one suggested by DeVos results in having many more questions unanswered than resolved. Thus, absent evidence that arming teachers would have helped to keep students safer, policymakers, lawmakers and educational leaders must seek to devise proactive means of continuing to keep America's school children safe.

Charles J. Russo, J.D., Ed.D., is the Panzer Chair in Education and a research professor in the School of Law at the University of Dayton.

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Should teachers carry guns in classrooms?

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The death of any child is a tragedy. Even more tragic is when children die in school shootings. Thus, the names Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland will live on in infamy even though research shows that schools are the safest places for children to be during school hour.Given this fact, it is perplexing that U.S.

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This article brings up the issue of allowing teachers to be armed with guns in school. Not only this, but Trump made statements implying that teachers who are trained to use guns could potentially have a monetary bonus for this ability. A principal who was able to detain an active threat because of his ability to use a gun claims that Trump's ideas behind gun usage is misguided. The principal believes that it is a teacher's job to teach not to " be in charge of protecting children." I side with the idea that teachers should not have the capacity to use a gun against anyone, but I also believe that school is a protection for students. This protection could be against active physical threats or from obstacles that cannot be seen. In many ways, educators are protectors, but there has to be an understanding of how this protection is executed. I truly want to believe that those in favor of gun carrying teachers have the student's best in mind. However, I do not believe it tackles the true issue that schools, communities, and students are facing with gun violence.

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Mr. Trump later clarified his stance on how to best protect schools against shooting massacres:

"I want certain highly adept people, people who understand weaponry, guns" to have a permit to carry concealed firearms in schools, Mr. Trump said during his second White House meeting in two days to discuss how to respond to the shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Teachers who were qualified to handle a weapon - Mr. Trump estimated between 10 percent and 40 percent - would receive "a little bit of a bonus," he said, adding that he would devote federal money to training them.

"I want my schools protected just like I want my banks protected," the president said. ...

Mr. Trump said he was not in favor of one measure that schools around the nation have increasingly taken to defend themselves and their students against school shooters: holding drills to practice what to do.

"Active shooter drills is a very negative thing," Mr. Trump said after Pam Stewart, the Florida Department of Education commissioner, mentioned such preparations. "I don't like it. I'd much rather have a hardened school."

Mr. Trump added that active shooter drills were "crazy," and "very hard on children."

In " An Armed Principal Detained a Campus Gunman. But He's Against Arming School Staff," reporter Stephanie Saul writes:

Even before a gunman opened fire at a Florida school last week, killing 17 people, a national effort had been underway to arm and train teachers and administrators to defend against mass shootings.

That effort has gained momentum in recent days. Legislators have moved to permit concealed weapons in schools. Sheriffs' offices have offered to train school staff members in armed response.

But one assistant high school principal who survived a school shooting - after loading his Colt .45 pistol, then chasing and detaining the suspect at gunpoint - says the idea is misguided.

"Teachers have to teach, and that's what they should be doing," said Joel Myrick, the former assistant principal at a high school in Mississippi. "It doesn't matter what a pistolero you are, or think you are. You don't need to be in school in charge of protecting children."

Before Columbine, Sandy Hook or Stoneman Douglas - indeed, before school shootings became devastatingly routine - there was Pearl High School, near Jackson, Miss.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

- Do you think teachers and other school staff should be armed with guns? After considering the different viewpoints from the articles and video, has your initial reaction changed or been reinforced in any way? If so, how? If not, why not?

- Think about your own school for a moment. How would you feel if you knew some adults were carrying concealed weapons?

- Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and a former teacher, says gun training "places an unfair burden on teachers." Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? What do you think a teacher's roles and responsibilities should include?

- In addition to arming teachers, some experts have recommended increasing police presence, hiring more security guards, and installing metal detectors, door buzzers, security cameras and barricades in schools. Others have suggested more proactive efforts, like investing in mental health counseling and peer mediation, practicing active shooter drills, and manning doors and hallways with teachers - not security guards - whom students know and trust. Which of these safety measures do you think your school should implement? Which ones would you not want to see at your school? Why?

- What other solutions would you propose to make schools safer?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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Should Teachers Be Armed With Guns? (Published 2018)

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Mr. Trump later clarified his stance on how to best protect schools against shooting massacres: "I want certain highly adept people, people who understand weaponry, guns" to have a permit to carry concealed firearms in schools, Mr. Trump said during his second White House meeting in two days to discuss how to respond to the shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.