In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, the idea of arming a small proportion of teachers has been floated by the President and others in the thrall of the gun lobby. This is wrong on multiple levels. For example:
Kids are not stupid, part one. It wouldn’t take much effort to figure out which teacher is packing heat. If a student wants to create mayhem, he (and 99% of mass shootings are committed by males) can do so in another classroom.
Kids are not stupid, part two. A firearm can easily be appropriated from a purse or drawer when the teacher is not paying attention. Or a student could overcome a teacher with a “concealed” firearm when the teacher is washing hands or using a urinal.
Gun carriers can be careless. Less than a week after the Parkland shooting, a police officer visited a kindergarten class. A child came up behind the officer and managed to discharge the firearm while it was in the holster. Luckily, nobody was injured. Why the officer didn’t make sure that the firearm was unloaded before he went into that classroom is beyond me.
Arms asymmetry. Someone with a handgun doesn’t have much of a chance against another person with an assault weapon, regardless of how good a shot s/he is on the firing range.
Liability issues. If a firearm discharges by mistake and kills an innocent bystander, who pays? The teacher? The school district? The state? The NRA?
While the “good person with a gun can stop a bad person with a gun” concept may sound good as a television plot, it fails miserably in real life, especially when our children’s lives are at stake. Arming teachers is the wrong way to protect students.
Addendum: An editorial in, of all places, The Weekly Standard agrees with what I wrote above. This may be the only time such an alignment occurs.
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