List of the Pros of Arming Teachers
1. It gives a classroom a fighting chance during a lockdown situation.
If a teacher has a classroom of 20 students who are trapped with an active shooter at their door, the presence of a firearm can help to save lives. Even the knowledge that a teacher might be armed could be enough to stop an uncertain individual from committing an act of violence. If our teachers are trained in the appropriate use of a firearm, then they can take the shot before police officers arrive to contain the situation. Even in a best-case scenario, it may be 2-4 minutes before the first officials arrive at the school to confront a shooter. A teacher could react much faster.
“We’re 20 minutes from any police force being able to respond to an event,” said Ryan Burns, Superintendent of the Northwestern Area School District in South Dakota, to local affiliate KPRY, “so with that in mind is one of the reasons why we decided to move forward.”
2. Arming teachers would bolster school security.
Our schools are not as strong as they need to be from a security standpoint with the emphasis on gun violence that we see each year. Having a police officer on campus is helpful, especially with an active shooter, but a handful of armed people cannot be in every room at school all of the time. After the incident at Parkland, we can also see that our SROs may not be overly reliable either. Having willfully armed teachers in the classroom as part of a crisis response team can heighten security during the day to ensure our kids have a safe place to learn.
3. School districts can save a lot of money by arming teachers.
After the events of the Sandy Hook school shooting which took the lives of 20 first graders and eight staff, the Clarksville School District wanted to hire an extra full-time security guard, but they couldn’t afford it. The cost of one new armed staffer is about $50,000 per year in the United States, but this Arkansas district found that they could train 13 staff for $68,000. They took the latter approach using volunteers and have found that the program is an excellent deterrent.
As Jim Krohn, a social studies teacher for the school district, told local affiliate KTFA, “If we didn’t do this and somebody came into this building or any of our school buildings and harmed children, it would be hard to go to sleep that night thinking what else could I have done, and at least we’ve done what we think is the best thing to protect the children of Clarksville School District.”
4. Parents can still have the final say in most school districts.
If parents don’t like the idea of having armed teachers in the classroom or on campus, then most jurisdictions allow families to work toward putting the issue to a voter referendum. That means if there is a disagreement with a school board decision, then there is a way to override this issue. Before carrying a firearm, most schools require at least 80 hours of training in the use of force, evidence of weapon proficiency, first aid certification, and an overview of legality concerns before going before the school board for approval.
5. We have evidence that this idea works.
According to an article from the New York Daily News (dated February 28, 2018), there have been at least six school shootings that were halted because of the presence of a swift and armed defender dating back to 1997. An armed assistant principal stopped an incident in Pearl, MS. In 1998, a restaurant owner hosting a junior high school dance stopped an incident in Edinboro, PA. An off-duty officer dropping his child off at school stopped a 2001 incident at Santee High School, CA. Law students at Appalachian School of Law stopped an incident in 2002 at their school. A law enforcement officer prevented an incident in 2010 at Sullivan Central High School in Tennessee. Then a 2013 incident at Arapahoe High School in Colorado was stopped by a sheriff’s deputy on duty at the school.
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