On Thursday, President Donald Trump tossed out a characteristically jarring idea: Arm teachers. His original statements were less than clear, so at a White House public forum he clarified: “I don’t want teachers to have guns, I want certain highly adept people that understand weaponry, guns—if they really have that aptitude.” The president also suggested schools could offer incentives for teachers to arm: “You give them a little bit of a bonus, so practically for free, you have now made the school into a hardened target.”
Gun control proponents reacted with outrage, but we don’t fault the president for offering unconventional ideas to address an intractable problem. There are more than 300 million guns in circulation in the United States; “banning” or somehow getting rid of them is not a realistic option. Addressing the problem of school shootings will require us to deal with the situation as it is, not as we wish it were, and the idea of arming teachers and school administrators shouldn’t be scorned just because it’s unusual or scary.
Even so, the president’s idea is far more problematic than its fans may appreciate.
Let’s begin with the matter of cost: The president called for arming “20 percent” of U.S. public school teachers. There are currently about 3 million of them in the U.S., so we would be looking at arming 600,000 of them. (By comparison, there are currently fewer than 500,000 people in active duty in the U.S. Army) The cost of arming and training (and continually retraining) so many teachers should make any conservative blanch. That the president also called for “bonuses” for teachers packing heat would compound the problem.
That many guns in that many classrooms would guarantee accidents. One solution would be to mandate the gun be kept in a locked box. But school shootings require quick, accurate action, not fumbling for the keys to a locked box.
Another problem: Many trained shooters can hit a target with no problem, but the stress and uncertainty of an active-shooter situation tends to make people far less accurate. A lot of panicked Barney Fifes firing guns around children doesn’t sound like the safest solution.
Yet another problem: Some of these guns would end up stolen—either by older students, adult staff, or other thieves.
Advocates of arming teachers point out that many mass shootings occur in areas deemed “gun-free zones.” That’s true, but school shootings are different from other kinds of mass shootings—virtually all of them are carried out by either current or former pupils with an axe to grind. The attacker doesn’t case randomly for targets.
It’s important to note, too, that Parkland High School, the scene of the latest atrocity, was not a gun-free zone; there was an armed police officer on duty there. Evidently he hid outside, but the point remains: An armed guard did not deter the shooter. The same goes for Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and many others.
States and municipalities may wish to try different policies, but arming so many teachers across the nation would increase the danger, not alleviate it. School shootings are a problem, but the odds of any one school being attacked is still, thankfully, minuscule. Put a gun in the classroom, and it might well become like Chekhov’s gun: Eventually, somebody’s going to use it.
