Donald Trump likes the idea of teachers bearing arms in the K-12 classroom. “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools — you have to,” the Republican nominee told a crowd at a campaign rally in Burlington, Vt., in 2016. “My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”
More than a year later, nothing has changed. After a monster killed 17 people in a Florida high school on Valentine’s Day though, calls for arming teachers have increased. “There is an interim solution against murderous assailants: shoot back,” a Wall Street Journal editorial concluded. “There is evidence it works.”
That last point is controversial but somewhat accurate. When an evil man with a gun opened fire on a small Baptist church in rural Texas last November, it was a proverbial good guy with a gun who stopped him but not before 17 were killed. Why, Second Amendment advocates ask, couldn’t that work at school?
What’s stopping teachers from bringing guns to work right now? The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. Sponsored by then-Sen. Joe Biden and signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush the law makes it illegal for anyone “to knowingly possess a firearm” within 1,000 feet of a school zone.
And what’s stopping Trump from following through on his campaign promise? For starters, 47 Democrats, two independents, and a couple of Republican senators. If Trump wants teachers to be able to lock and load, this law would need to be reversed in Congress
As recently as last January, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced legislation to do exactly that. It was referred to committee before being quickly forgotten though.
Is there support for this among voters? Yes. After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which left 20 dead, a Quinnipiac University Poll found that 64 percent of Republicans supported “allowing more teachers and school officials to carry guns in schools.”
Could the Supreme Court overturn the Gun-Free School Zones Act? Maybe. They did it before. Five years after passage, the court declared the law unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. But Congress amended the bill and President Bill Clinton signed it back into law ins 1996. The Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue ever since.
Does this mean that teachers cannot carry guns on campus? Not in all cases. The Gun-Free School Zones has exceptions. A teacher can bring a gun to school “as part of a program approved by a school in the school zone.” Currently, there are at least 18 states which allow armed adults on school property with relatively minor conditions.
A 2013 NBC News investigation found:
- Alabama (which bans possessing a weapon on school grounds only if the carrier has “intent to do bodily harm”)
- California (with approval of the superintendent)
- Connecticut (with approval of “school officials”)
- Hawaii (no specific law)
- Idaho (with school trustees’ approval)
- Iowa (with “authorization”)
- Kentucky (with school board approval)
- Massachusetts (with approval of the school board or principal)
- Mississippi (with school board approval)
- Montana (with school trustees’ permission)
- New Hampshire (ban applies only to pupils, not adults)
- New Jersey (with approval from the school’s “governing officer”)
- New York (with the school’s approval)
- Oregon (with school board approval)
- Rhode Island (with a state concealed weapons permit)
- Texas (with the school’s permission)
- Utah (with approval of the “responsible school administrator”)
- Wyoming (as long as it’s not concealed)
Do teachers want to bring their own guns to school? Union teachers don’t. A poll of National Education Association members found that 68 percent opposed allowing their colleagues armed.
