Guns On Campus: Should Teachers Carry Firearms Inside Schools, Colleges?

The question of whether guns should be allowed in public and private schools across the United States has triggered a raging debate across the country.

A campaign group — Every Town Research — has found 160 school shootings were reported across 38 states between 2013 and 2015. According to the findings of the group, 64 school shootings were recorded in 2015 alone. The group was set up after 20-year-old alleged shooter Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six staff members in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 2012. Lanza was believed to have shot himself after the terrible killing spree.

Read: Gunshots Kill 3 Children Every Day In US, Study Finds

The spike in the violence in the schools has prompted advocates on both sides of the gun control debate to speak up for and against the policy. Most conservatives say the right to carry firearms is protected by the Second Amendment. They also support the teachers who want to have their guns when they go to their workplaces.

After the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, National Rifle Association’s Executive Vice-President and CEO Wayne LaPierre suggested Congress should deploy armed law enforcement agents in schools to help keep students safe.

"American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses, even sports stadiums, are all protected by armed security. We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol police officers, yet when it comes to our most beloved innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless,” LaPierre was quoted as saying by the CBS News.

Also, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos had to face considerable backlash from the people when she supported the policy of allowing guns in the schools during her conformational hearing in January. “I would imagine that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies,” DeVos said.

Liberals, on the other hand, have been demanding stricter vetting of gun holders so that the schools and other educational institutes can be made gun-free zones. They have also highlighted concerns that students can manage to access the guns in the possession of school teachers.

“What would save more children’s lives: closing loopholes and keeping deadly weapons away from dangerous people, or doing nothing to stop dangerous people from getting guns but allowing teachers and others to walk around with guns in case there’s a need for a shootout in a classroom? Come on,” Sen. Chris Murphy (R-Connecticut) told the Trace in January.

Nevertheless, an increased number of states are opting to make it legal for teachers to carry guns to school. Pennsylvania State Senate passed a bill June 29 to let teachers and staff members in the schools carry guns inside the premises. However, Sen. Don White (R-Pennsylvania) made it clear the bill did not make it mandatory for teachers and school authorities to carry firearms, but instead gives educational institutions the freedom to choose whether the school districts want to have their educational instructors carry guns.

Read: Betsy DeVos Condemns San Bernardino Shooting After Defending Firearms On Campus

“Teachers have come to me and said I want the opportunity to defend my children and to defend my life and give me something more powerful than an eraser to throw at these people,” White said referring to the bill when it was first introduced in April, Think Progress reported.

However, not every teacher in Pennsylvania extended their support toward the legislation. The Pennsylvania State Educators’ Association, a union of 180,000 teachers, expressed their displeasure in a statement. “Our Association does oppose arming teachers, education support professionals, and other school staff whose primary responsibility should continue to be educating students, not policing school buildings and grounds with firearms,” said PSEA President Jerry Oleksiak in the statement.

States such as Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Texas, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kansas, and Colorado already have the "campus carry" policy in place for the school authorities to carry guns within the premises, Romper reported. Another nine states in the country allow teachers to carry firearms but only in locked cars or the parking lot and not inside the school itself.

Although there is a popular belief that arming teachers with guns will make schools safer for children, a research paper in the American Journal of Public Health has debunked the notion. The study said, "States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."

Another study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health corroborated this finding, which was deemed true for colleges as well: "Proponents of right-to-carry laws that make it legal for individuals to carry firearms, both on and off college campuses, often blame mass shootings on 'gun-free zones' and argue that arming more civilians can deter or stop mass shootings.

"The best available evidence, however, does not support these claims," author Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said in the study.

While the debate on gun control might be never-ending, Daniel Kaplan, a teacher who also possesses a Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permit, offered a much simpler solution.

With many states opting for arming their teachers with guns, the vetting process should be made stricter, according to Kaplan. Instead of implementing a blanket rule where even the teachers, with no training in wielding a gun, are allowed to carry firearms on the school premises under the pretext that they are supposed to act as “protectors” of the students, only educators who have the CCW license should be permitted to carry guns, he posted on Quora. This way they would be ready to protect themselves as well as others.