Over UEA weekend, the Utah Shooting Sports Council offered a free concealed weapons training classes to teacher and other school employees. As a result of this, it came to light that in Utah, not only is it legal to have teachers with guns in the classroom—concealed, of course—but according to the Utah State Office of Education, individual school districts can’t even ask teachers if they have a concealed weapons permit, let alone if they are carrying a gun into the classroom. This was a tough one for me to choose a side, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that if we are going to have a law allowing teachers to have guns on school grounds in Utah, keeping the identities secret of those who do have them is the right way to handle it.
Before I get started on this topic, I think a big reason it was hard to come to a decision on this one is because as a former high school teacher, I believe teachers with guns in the classroom is a super bad idea to begin with, and that opinion was clouding my judgment of the issue at hand.
People like to argue that a shooter is less likely to go into a school if they think the teachers are armed. I would agree that might be true if the shooter is an adult who is going to try to escape, but that doesn’t typically seem to be the case.
More often with school shootings, the shooter is a student at the school. In 2014, a CNN report looked at shootings in the United States in the 18-month period between the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and the shooting at Reynolds High School in Oregon. CNN detailed 15 incidents in that time period which they labeled “Newtown-like.” Of the 15 they listed, 11 involved students carrying out the shootings at their own middle schools, high schools, or university campuses. In the case of a random lunatic entering a school with intent to kill, maybe teachers with guns would be a deterrent—again, if the shooter didn’t already have a death wish—but for all those other cases, I don’t think it would matter.
Most of these kids probably already knew whether their school had someone armed on the campus, whether it happened to be teachers with guns, a local law enforcement resource officer, or campus security. But I don’t think many of them care. Shooters often die in the incident, leaving behind no explanation for their motives, but for those who either don’t end up killing themselves or being killed—or at least leave a suicide note behind—the motive is often revealed to be vengeance.
I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but as a former troubled high school student myself who hung out with the kids on the fringes of social acceptance, I think that just beyond the fantasy of exacting retribution for a perceived wrong, many of these kids are already either visualizing suicide or going down in a hail of bullets, a fantasy which would actually be reinforced if they thought there could be teachers with guns.
As a teacher who has taken part in both lockdown drills and an actual real lockout, I will agree that if the threat was detected in advance—like seeing a student coming up to the building with a gun drawn—and any teachers with guns could safely get the children out of the line of fire and then position themselves at the ready, that would be a good situation.
However, when you see the reports of a student suddenly drawing a weapon in the halls or even a classroom, I don’t think adding another weapon and more flying bullets from a panicked teacher is going to make things better. When discussing this with my teaching colleagues, the only thing I could think of was, What if I accidentally killed an innocent student? I don’t care how many targets you’ve practiced on, I’ll leave my “keeping levelheaded in a fearful situation” to law enforcement… like that armed school resource officer.
So I don’t think teachers with guns are a good idea to begin with. But here we are in Utah with a law allowing exactly that, and the question comes up as to whether parents should know exactly who these teachers are, with the idea being that parents could either decide they did or didn’t want their children in that classroom.
Similar to the case I made during the last legislative session for the firing squad even though I don’t necessarily agree with capital punishment, I’ll say that if we’re going to allow teachers with guns in Utah classrooms, we’d better do it right. And the right way to do it is to keep it secret for one big reason: A troubled student who might not otherwise have access to a gun doesn’t need to know that there’s at least one already in his or her school and where to find it.
You might say, “But the parents should be able to make that decision.” And to an extent, I agree. Honestly, I’m not sure which parent I would be if I found out one or more of my daughter’s teachers carried a firearm in class. Would it make me feel safer? Or more afraid for her well-being? Sounds like I may not ever be in the position to make that call, which admittedly makes me feel powerless, something no parent likes.
The problem with letting parents know is that people talk. Oh sure, maybe you wouldn’t talk. But some people talk. And kids listen, even if adults don’t necessarily think they do. And sometimes kids listen when parents don’t even know they’re listening, like from the other side of closed doors. And if you don’t have kids or haven’t worked with them, let me just tell you, they’re even worse at keeping those types of secrets than adults.
Most Utah school districts attempt to mitigate the possibility of a student getting a hold of a teacher’s gun by requiring it basically be kept on the teacher’s person at all times (or at least “within the employee’s immediate control” per the Granite School District policy); however, again we come back to the whole teacher training versus law enforcement training issue.
All it would take would be one student who knew about one of the teachers with guns on campus, a teacher who just happened to be walking down the hall or sitting at their desk with their back to the door, distracted by lesson planning or an IEP meeting or essay grading, when the aforementioned student came up behind them with a heavy blunt object, and next thing you know…
But if a student doesn’t know, this doesn’t happen. In fact, I would even be willing to cede the possibility that students not knowing which teachers might be packing could potentially at least reduce the chances a student would pull out a weapon in class, if only for the fact that the student might realize they would be stopped in their tracks before they could carry out a destructive rampage.
Are teachers with guns going to ultimately deter those students from carrying out such a serious act once they have decided that’s what they want to do? Probably not, but maybe it would force them to approach it differently, in a way that would allow for a little more preparation, something along the lines of one of those drills where a teacher could safely get the children out of the line of fire and then position themselves at the ready.
In a situation that I don’t necessarily agree with, maybe that at least would be a good thing.
Thoughtful and thought provoking. On a little broader basis the whole issue brings three things to mind. First, teachers are in no way immune to the stresses and otter maladies that drive people to the brink. Fact is, like all of society, some people.should not.be allowed around firearms…teachers are no exception. Second, without training, an armed teacher might, at the moment of.truth, hesitate to take down one of his or her students. In that moment things could escalate significantly. Finally, if it is known that teachers may be armed, could this make them the first target in a rampage ?