Arming Teachers Is Not the Answer
By Kathryn Quigley
I want to throw up from anxiety and horror.
My oldest was 6 years in 2012 when the Sandy Hook school massacre occurred. My youngest is now 7 and last week, there was a similar dreadful elementary school shooting in Uvalde, TX.
Nothing has changed since Sandy Hook. Not even the firmly-held and very-mistaken belief that arming teachers is the answer. It is not.
I have been teaching college for nearly 20 years and know that will not work. But try telling that to many people posting on Facebook however about the Uvalde shooting. Here is one example:
“Want to stop school shootings…arm teachers and staff. Train em…gun safety…how to use them!”
I am not anti-2nd Amendment. Guns have a place in this country for police, soldiers and hunting. But you can not convince me that the average 18-year-old teen dude needs multiple AR-15 style weapons. Nor do I.
Let me list the ways in which “arming all the teachers” is a ridiculous and stupid notion:
· It will not stop a determined, murderous gunman. This shooter got out of a crashed car with a rifle, wearing body armor. He barricaded himself in one classroom, killed the kids and teachers and exchanged gunfire with officers before finally being killed.
· I am not trained to use a gun. But if I were, society now wants me to be able to shoot and kill an intruder. In addition to engaging with students, writing on the board, answering questions. I need to be ready at a minute’s notice to whip out a gun. And shoot to kill.
· As a teacher, society already expects me: to teach my students, get them internships and jobs, and help them deal with mental illness, which was rampant during the pandemic. In all my years of teaching, these past two have been the worst in terms of my students dealing with anxiety, depression, and illness.
Let’s speak about mental illness. We had three suicides at Rowan University in 2019. It was awful. Then another suicide last Fall. I am not going to specify the method of the suicides except to say they were not by guns.
There are more than 1,800 faculty members at my university. Now imagine we have just armed all 1,800 faculty and added that number of weapons into the mix on campus. How is that going to make things SAFER? Many mass shooters experience feelings of suicidality before their attack.
Let me tell you what I think the solutions are:
· Better health care, especially MENTAL health care for young men. Most school shooters are men. Most experienced a mental health crisis prior to the shooting.
· Stricter access to AR-15 style rifles and ammunition. The shooter in Uvalde legally purchased two AR-15 style rifles a week ago, the day after he turned 18. He also bought 375 rounds of ammunition.
· No more “thoughts and prayers.” Save them. They don’t work.
I love being a teacher. I will teach my students, mentor them, and keep in touch once they graduate. But I will not carry a gun in class because you think it will protect us. It won’t.
Poet Amanda Gorman wrote this on Twitter last week. Let me end with her words.
Schools scared to death,
The truth is, one education under desks,
Stooped low from bullets;
That plunge when we ask
Where our children
Shall live
& how
& if
It takes a monster to kill children. But to
Watch monsters kill children again and again and do nothing isn’t just insanity
-it’s inhumanity
The truth is, one nation under guns
What might be if only we tried
What might we become if only we’d
listen
Kathryn Quigley is a professor and a freelance journalist.