Arming Teachers: Is It Worth It?
In early 2018, a gunman opened fire in Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. In the wake of the horrific shooting, Florida legislature established the Guardian Program, which aimed to protect students by allowing trained school staff, excluding teachers, to carry guns in school. To the Republicans of Florida’s legislature, however, this wasn’t enough to reduce school shootings. They proposed, earlier this year, to extend the program to include teachers as well. The proposal was, however, met with backlash from House Democrats in the minority, who argued that it would prove to be not only ineffective but also a danger to minority students. After a long, heated debate within the Florida State House, the proposed bill won approval and was put into law this October.
The idea of arming teachers to protect students isn’t an entirely bad idea on paper. Republicans imagine a disturbed, psychotic person entering a school with a gun and consequently being gunned down by a teacher who cares for his or her students. Surely bringing more guns into the equation will stop or at least deter people who hope to terrorize our schools, right? However, Republicans have misplaced their faith in the abilities of America’s teachers as secondary “first responders” to put even a dent in the problem we now face. They forget that some states already arm their teachers and they haven’t done much to reduce school shootings. Moreover, as the Florida House Democrats argued, the law could have unintended negative consequences for minority students, who could suffer a much more lethal form of discrimination by teachers. Given the observed ineffectiveness and potential counter-productivity of arming teachers, America should move on from this debate and think of alternate approaches to the problem of gun violence in its schools.
There are already 14 states that allow teachers to be armed: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington. Texas, which has had one of the largest numbers of school shootings since 1970, has been arming its teachers for over a decade. And the results are underwhelming. After 2007, the year Texas began procedures to arm its teachers, the state’s rate of school shootings began to dip but later rose way above the averages of the other 49 states. Republicans cannot claim that armed teachers have reduced the number of casualties, either; the rate of casualties in Texas school shootings has also rested above the averages of the other states and has shown no sign of decreasing. If this hasn’t proven to be a wake-up call for Texas’s legislation to find an alternate solution to the problem, I’m not sure what will.
The problem of arming teachers goes deeper than the effectiveness of adding more guns. There’s also the question of whether or not teachers can be trusted with guns. There are a number of factors that affect the decision-making process of armed teachers in a dangerous situation–in this case, a scenario in which an armed intruder enters the school: stress, impulsiveness, the affiliation of the armed intruder with the school (e.g student, former student, no affiliation, etc.), accuracy with a gun, ability to quickly and properly assess the situation, etc. Military and police officers undergo years of extensive training with not only guns but dangerous situations like an armed assailant. They’re taught, significantly longer than teachers, to be aware of all of the circumstances mentioned earlier. Compare that to the procedures teachers undergo in order to legally carry a gun in school: a measly two-week training session that scratches just the surface of proper shooting techniques and situation assessment.
In addition, there’s little reason to trust teachers with the responsibility of protecting their students. They may be closer shields than the police, but their under-training makes them a heavy liability. Compared to most military and police officers, teachers have a very limited capacity to keep their cool when chaotic situations arise. With guns, they may make impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decisions that can yield bad results. This can be explained by the phenomenon known as the “weapons effect.” In 1967, psychologists Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage ran an experiment that consisted of one hundred male university students. All of them were told that they would receive, randomly, either one shock or seven shocks by a peer. Afterwards, those who received the shocks were told they could administer as many shocks to their peer as they wanted.
The portion of students who were placed in the presence of guns generally gave the most shocks (of that portion, half were told that the gun belonged to their peer). The results, which were successfully replicated in 56 other experiments, supported Berkowitz and LePage’s hypothesis: guns make people more aggressive. Now, imagine a stressed, nerve-wracked teacher with a gun and very limited training in the event of a school shooting or even a fight. The knowledge of the teacher that he or she has a gun as well as the suspicion by a student that the teacher may have one may amplify any perceived threat to dangerous levels. There’s an impulsive, fatal mistake by either parties just waiting to happen.
That’s not the only factor that could affect the lethality of such situations. When a minority student is put into the equation, things could get worse. Racism hasn’t ended since the Civil Rights Movement and is still prevalent in our schools today. According to data collected by the Department of Education, African American students, who make up 15 percent of the student body, make up 35 percent of the students who receive one suspension and 44 percent of those who are suspended more than once. Moreover, according to a report by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), minority students said they had comparable or greater experiences of harassment, threats, and even being hit. Given this data, we can reasonably expect minorities to be the targets of racist teachers who make spur-of-the-moment decisions in a bad situation.
When the Florida legislature discussed arming teachers, Republican Representative Byron Donalds of Naples argued a similar point: “…the one thing that we have to acknowledge — as unfortunate as it is — is that when a psychotic person enters a facility, a school… the first responders, the real first responders, are the school staff that love our children.” It’s true that many teachers in America are compassionate for their students and that they want to protect them when the police cannot. But let’s not get carried away and treat them like secondary cops. That’s not what they are. Additionally, given that handing them guns has had little effect on the rate of school shootings, it’s time for us to come up with another solution.
ahntkd99
carahall
andrewbecharaa
athenapup4
bane1900
bestbaker123
bmdpiano
comp0327
compclass8
cynicalwordsmith22
doglover441
drippydoughnut
drpaleontology
gcatt310
givemeclouttokens
hershey515
iamsleepy01
imagination4421
influenza123
jackso23
Jayv23
kraemercali
lazybear8
lelebxby
lg102015
lovericeandnoodles
lucbe219
morra2024
mpsj13
roses0102
Sub2MigzFilms
smellycat23
tenere84
thefrontbottom
voxpopuli75
whosyourcookie22
yankeefan25
Newspaperlessness 
I revised my Op-Ed, addressing just about every one of your points about my first version. I hope I improved a lot, argument/phrasing-wise?
LikeLike
P1. You don’t mention that Stoneman Douglas High School is in Florida, Tenere, so readers don’t make the connection between the school and the Florida legislature.
You don’t identify the debate as a partisan conflict between Republicans and Democrats, so we don’t pick up the significance of the strong backlash from Democrats in the next paragraph.
Also, backlash occurs after an event, but surely the resistance must have been part of the debate? So did the backlash come after passage from Democrats who weren’t part of the legislative process?
P2. It’s not at all clear to this reader that arming teachers would reduce school shootings, so it’s peculiar you would grant this point, twice. If you’re going to give it away, you should justify your thinking. For example, the knowledge that teachers might be packing would discourage students from bringing their own weapons into the classroom. If that’s not the rationale, what is?
You introduce extraneous information here where you don’t need it: “However, given the little effect arming teachers has had on the rate of school shootings in states already entertaining such an idea and the danger it could pose to both teachers and minority students, the argument holds little water.” The argument is refuted perfectly well by the failure of test cases to prove their case. Save the “danger it could pose to teachers and minority students” for where it belongs.
P3. Something missing from your first sentence: “According to an article by The Morning Call, eight states already have policies that specifically allow school employees, including teachers.” See what’s missing? You don’t say what’s allowed.
You don’t need to cite a source for “eight states allow.” The fact requires no named source. (You can link to the source with a hyperlink on “eight states” without naming it.) The more consequential “results” does require one.
A critic of your analysis could easily suggest that those “eight states” which account for 20% of all school shootings were the first to arm teachers BECAUSE they needed to enact tough measures to combat a real threat. Your shooting statistics are totals over almost 50 years. But surely the teachers haven’t been armed in those states since 1970.
If the same is true of Texas, then its “armed teacher” policy was in force for just ten years of the 50 since 1970. The REAL statistical value would be in whether school shootings diminished following the arming of teachers.
P4. You don’t need to disparage teachers FIRST before comparing them to career police, military, and security guards, Tenere. You could start by granting that you see the value of an armed guard at the entrance (if you’re granting that). You could broaden that endorsement to mention that they receive extensive training and certification for years like military and police. Then you could balance that against the two-week safety course teachers were given before they were allowed to bring lethal force into the classroom. The implication that they’re under-trained to handle deadly firepower around kids should be enough.
P5. This argument that minority students are at greater risk of being shot because they’re at greater risk of being suspended is good but would be much stronger if minority students are more likely to be physically restrained, struck, or harassed. Once you make your analogy, DON’T suggest that it may be far-fetched. Make your best case and stop talking.
P6. A rhetorical note: You dilute your claims when you use more language than needed. For example
could easily be represented by
In this paragraph you suggest for the first time why teachers might need to be armed. It’s odd that we’re six paragraphs in before you raise the image of a psychotic person entering the classroom with a gun. Rep Donalds doesn’t specify whether the assailant is a student or not. I wonder if it matters to you? Is the threat we’re willing to risk our students’ safety to prevent from a classmate or from an outsider bent on harming students? Statistics would argue, I think, that almost always the shooters are current or former students. The most important question of all is whether psychotic students would ever be deterred from bringing weapons to school by knowing that some teachers might be packing.
My answer, sadly, is that, since the shooters are almost always killed on the spot or take their own lives last, they don’t expect to live and escape, so guns on the premises are not likely to deter them.
Anyway, you’re making a good case, Tenere, despite the difficulty of proving the non-effectiveness of so new a policy. One thing I remember from an early draft that I don’t see anymore is the idea that the mere presence of a gun creates a likelihood of aggressive or violent reactions to mild stimulus. Was that your work? It’s pertinent here, I think. Teachers who know they’re armed, and students who suspect they might be, start unconsciously amplifying slights and perceived insults or threats to dangerous levels that can provoke entirely unintended responses. Said simply: the presence of a gun creates hair-trigger responses to any perceived threat.
LikeLike
I’ll try to address all of these issues to the best of my ability during my revision, Professor Hodges. Thank you. I knew something felt off about my data regarding school shooting rates.
Just for the sake of clarity, that first P3 sentence was a typo. I skip over sentences and finish them later sometimes. I must have forgotten about that one.
I took out that bit about the presence of a gun inducing aggressiveness because I was led to believe, by your critique of my earlier draft, that it was irrelevant evidence (or something of that sort).
Here:
“P4. Love the source. Love the story. But it doesn’t follow from the study that 1) an armed teacher couldn’t intervene and take out an active shooter, or 2) a potential shooter could never be deterred by knowing that the teachers were armed.”
Do you believe it fits now?
LikeLike
It’s still valuable information, Tenere. What it proves to me is that the mere presence of a gun can inflate tensions and escalate the progress toward violence. I don’t remember what you were using the example to prove, but it certainly indicates that guns in a classroom do more than deter violence.
LikeLike
Hey, Professor Hodges. I took your advice to the best of my ability. Do my arguments hold any water this time?
LikeLike