Protect our students; arm our staff

By Sawyer KoettersFew on-campus issues stir as many emotionally charged arguments as the question of arming school teachers and staff. I would like to take a step back and look at the situation from a logical perspective. Most of you have probably heard the expression “the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” This thinking needs to be looked at logically in the context of school shootings. The evidence is clear: teachers and school staff must be trained to safely carry and store weapons on school campuses because having armed staff prevents mass shootings. Despite the repeated school shootings occurring since Columbine, no mass shooting has ever taken place on a campus where teachers and staff are allowed to carry weapons. 18 states have already started to allow K-12 teachers to arm themselves on campus to varying degrees. Despite the doomsday scenarios trumpeted by anti-gun rights activists, when guns have come on campuses, the campuses have become safer. In fact, excluding public safety classes, only one weapon has been accidentally discharged on a K-12 campus by a teacher. The incident took place after school hours in a Utah elementary school restroom in 2014. No one was shot. Additionally, no teacher or staff member has ever lost control of their firearm. Understanding this, studies show police officers are strongly in favor of giving guns to school staff members. In 2013, PoliceOne, a 650,000-member police organization, conducted a survey of over 14,000 officers and found that 77 percent supported arming school teachers and/or staff. General law enforcement personnel clearly believe their jobs are made easier when assisted by armed and trained school staff. Perhaps the most compelling case for arming school staff lies in the notion that increased protection at schools will deter a shooting from actually happening. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, a conservative think tank, so-called “Gun-Free Zones” have been targeted in over 98 percent of all mass shootings since 1950. This is no coincidence. Shooters choose targets where victims are defenseless. In 2016, Islamic State sympathizer Khalil Abu-Rayyan was planning on shooting up one of the largest churches in Detroit before the FBI was able to foil his plan. Abu-Rayyan was recorded on the phone saying, “It’s easy, and a lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church.”Additionally, especially in rural areas, armed school staff could respond to threats exponentially faster than police could. Pennsylvania State Senator Don White explains that in his district, it takes police between five and ten minutes to respond to threats on a school campus. If this response time could be cut by having armed staff already on the campus, it could potentially save lives. Walking around campus talking to teachers, I learned that there is far from a consensus on how this issue should be applied to Samo. Math teacher Kelly Okla disagrees with the notion of arming teachers, saying, “School is a hallowed ground and should be treated as such.” Okla said. “I don’t want to be put in a position where I have to take someone else’s life.” Others, such as social studies teacher Robert Alvarado disagreed. Alvarado said, “The Second Amendment is a fundamental civil right and is absolutely the most important right we have. Many states have allowed [staff to be armed] so as long as teachers are properly trained, and that seems like an interesting idea.” Complicating any analysis of the issue is the fact that statistics about mass shootings are notoriously inconsistent.  No one agrees on a single definition of a mass shooting, nor is the concept of a “Gun-Free Zone” clearly defined. Different interest groups manipulate these statistics and definitions to serve their own needs.  Nevertheless, school shootings continue, and deterrent measures need to be adopted by campuses across the country. And yet, strangely, nearly all gun control advocates fervently continue to promote “gun free zones.” In fact, these are not safety zones, but targets. The evidence and logic strongly suggest we should arm school teachers and staff. Yet we are apathetic.