Recently, debate has arisen in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. regarding whether or not to arm teachers in the case of a crisis situation. President Trump has supported the thought, however there has been severe backlash by democrats and republicans alike.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION by Angelique Inchierca / Photo Editor
In my opinion, giving teachers guns would be an extremely unsafe and risky situation, as well as a waste of government funding and tax dollars. However, I imagine it’s extremely unlikely that congress would vote on this legislation given it’s controversy.
After the Parkland shooting, there was a large outcry for gun control by the general public, and Trump has endorsed the idea of arming a small percentage of school teachers.
In a tweet, the president stated that his intentions are to give “concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience.” He goes on to claim that 10-20 percent of teachers are “very gun-adept.” According to a story done by Vox, however, this is untrue.
Only a small amount of teachers have a background in military training, meaning only a miniscule percent of teachers would end up `armed anyways. As a result of this, a student hoping to harm others would obviously know which educators are armed and which aren’t, and therefore would go to areas where an unarmed teacher would be.
In addition, although arming teachers may help in the event of a crisis, the risk of something going wrong on a daily basis is too big to weigh out the benefit of the possibility of assistance in the event of a school shooting.
It is far more likely that there would be an honest mistake or mishap in the classroom if teachers were required to carry firearms within the classroom.
This idea seems to have too many flaws to be worth spending millions of federal dollars arming and training school teachers just for there to be more negative effects than positive ones.
The way I see it, bringing more guns into the school system is not the best way to keep students safe; in fact, I believe it would have the opposite effect.
I personally wouldn’t feel any more or less safe if the professors here were armed, but there is a larger chance of something going wrong on an educator’s side, such as a mistake or a student accessing a teacher’s gun, than the chances of an armed teacher actually having the opportunity to assist in the event of a crisis situation. This seems to me like a waste of federal funding, and an overall flawed piece of legislation.
Although this is a bad idea in my opinion, I’m not particularly worried about these laws taking effect at the federal level. According to an article in the Washington Post, approximately 50 percent of Americans are against the idea of arming school teachers.
Because of this, members of congress would not be attracted to this piece of legislation because so many oppose it, and it may hurt their chances of re-election. In addition, if something were to go wrong regarding an armed teacher, this law would be too traceable, and congress would be blamed.
Consequently, I don’t believe this idea will turn into any direct action by the government. In my opinion, it’s more likely that congress will vote on increasing the firearm sale age or begin strengthening and reinforcing older gun laws.
Zoeann Day can be contacted at zday@kscequinox.com
