Opinion: Why Arming Teachers is a Bad Idea

The teacher’s job in a crisis situation is to protect students. Dealing the directly with threats corresponds to the authorities.

Online education had an unexpected but positive side effect on the US didactic experience during the pandemic. School gun violence incidence was significantly reduced for nearly two years because most students studied from home. Now that students are returning to face-to-face education, this instance of everyday horror fills the pages of the newspapers again.

On May 24, 2022, Salvador Ramos, 18 years old, entered the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with a rifle and caused the deaths of 19 students and 2 teachers. The incident details, which continue to be revealed, have been reported and analyzed by news media dedicated to such coverage. From this tragic episode arises an issue that concerns every education professional, student, and parent, especially the communities who reside in the United States. 

The legal framework

The US has a very particular history with individual freedom and the right to arms for proper defense and, theoretically, resisting potential tyrannies of its government. This right is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This excerpt from the amendment provides the basis for restricting authorities from regulating citizens’ access to guns. It also nurtures the philosophical principle of the freedom to bear arms and use them in self-defense. While this principle is not applied equally to all citizens, it is rooted in the US tradition.

The conversation becomes more complex when we understand that these freedoms come not only from the Second Amendment, but each state has specific laws that determine how easy or difficult it is to get a gun. Last year, laws were passed in Texas to allow residents to carry weapons without a license or training. Not to notice the correlation between the relaxation of gun control and the recurrence of incidents of mass violence would be naïve. So would it be to argue that restricting access to guns would prevent these tragedies. While it would help, it will not solve the problem, given the vast number of weapons in circulation in the United States (393 million). Moreover, of all the ineffective ideas included in the conversation, one, in particular, could worsen the situation: arming teachers.

The trivialization of combat

One of the weakest points about managing weapons for defense is the lack of understanding that they are not solutions in themselves; guns are tools. The effectiveness of a tool depends entirely on the skill, readiness, preparation, and mental state of the person who uses it. Teachers are not combatants, and those who push for the option of training and arming them do not know how armed clashes work. 

Military affairs reporter and activist Justin King, creator of the social criticism channel Beau of the Fifth Column, spoke from his experience as a former military contractor and tactical training instructor for police and security forces. In a brief seven-minute video, King broke down the particularities of a plan that can be seen as a solution in theory but fails in practice. To know the false effectiveness of the strategy of arming teachers, one would have to ask: Where should the teacher be when a shooter entered the school? Between the aggressor and the students? With a weapon ready for the defense of their classroom? Let’s say yes. How can one ensure that it always works like this? Should I always be at the door watching? If so, can I still teach? Because teaching would distract the vigil, King points out in the video. This critical line makes it very easy to understand the task’s impossibility for anyone in charge of a school group.

“What happened in the first classroom? The one that serves as an alarm for everybody else. Things don’t go that well there, do they? Because in that classroom, miss Jones is bent over a desk helping your child learn to read when somebody walks in, and she has milliseconds to pull that weapon, flip the safety off, get a sight picture, and fire over the heads of scattering screaming children. Miss Jones does not win that engagement..”  

The US analyst paints a complete, raw, and detailed picture of what would have happened if the teaching staff of Robb Elementary School had been armed on the day of the incident. The result would have been no less tragic. King explained that the advantage of a shooter like Ramos in such a situation would be absolute because he would have speed, surprise, and violent action in his favor. These are three fundamental pillars of dominating war encounters, according to combat specialists like the SEALS of the US Navy.

The idea that arming teachers is a defensive option against fortuitous shooters is a fantasy, something we wish we could have done to avoid a traumatic event after it happens, King explains further. However, It is not practical for teaching, nor is it effective as a defensive strategy, especially considering the number of young people who die in the United States by firearms. 90% of the deaths among children 0 to 14 years in high-income countries happen in the United States. According to pediatrician Rachel Moon, gun violence has become the leading cause of death in young people under the age of 19.

More weapons in the vicinity of students do not solve the problem; they aggravate it. Rather than being a means of defense, these weapons could become another danger, falling into the hands of people who, while they may be trained to use a firearm safely, lack the preparation and skills to handle a direct confrontation with another armed person intending to cause harm. Worse, these weapons would be within reach of minors and untrained people who could misuse or accidentally fire them. If this type of violence proves anything, it is that the school is no place for weapons and that while the first duty of a teacher is to protect the students, this function has limitations because defending and attacking are not the same. 

Armed security bodies, such as police and guards, have the duty of direct confrontation so that education professionals can perform the tasks of care and protection. They are two different purposes; they do not mix. The security professionals’ pressuring and distracting those engaged in extreme violence is crucial so teachers can do their share of the work in these situations. It means the difference between life and death, between mortal victims and survivors. 

For this reason, the lack of participation by the authorities during the Uvalde incident led to such tragic results. Half of what should have been done to ensure the safety of students and the educational staff was not performed. Pushing for measures that assign the task of direct confrontation to teachers will not stop anyone with the intention of mass violence; on the contrary, it will make it easier for perpetrators to accomplish their objectives.

There is no single solution to a picture as complex as that of school shootings. We need a multidisciplinary approach to examine all the intersections of the problem: the lax gun control in the United States, the mental health crisis, the preparation of private and public security forces, and school safety. It is not just one issue; it is many. Moreover, it is also vital to have critical analysis skills to discard ideas that do not work. Putting weapons in the hands of teachers would be the first on the list. 

Sofía García-Bullé

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0