LETTER: Arming teachers is not the answer

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is a shallow rhetorical slogan which does nothing to advance any remedy in our national firearms debate. Guns do kill people, guns being the instrument by which people kill people. Guns make the job much easier than clubs or knives. Guns have been a core manifestation of our history, culture, the military, and of course our national myths and legends, forever. Guns and gun violence are an on-going staple of the American entertainment industry.

Because of the recent school shooting in Florida, we again revisit proposed responses to this type of disheartening event. One that has much attention currently is the prospect of arming classroom teachers. From my perspective, this is generally a bad idea.

For the most part, the profile of a skilled, confident, capable teacher with a firearm, responding to an unknown assailant in a random set of circumstances, is not a realistic profile. Teaching is a distinct profession. Providing security is also a distinct profession. Both talents require considerable training, but they have few, if any, overlapping skill-sets. Trying to train teachers to become sudden security providers for deployment under stressful circumstances, with little or no communication links, and with the element of surprise against them, is ludicrous. They would know little or nothing about the intruder, his/her weaponry, or his/her whereabouts within the facility.

Schools have lock-down plans for such events. Under those conditions, teachers are usually first responsible for assuring that their students take specific actions. When exactly is a teacher supposed to leave 30-35 students and begin armed security activities? The fact that an armed teacher would be in a defensive position just makes the idea worse. Unless armed teachers are equipped with AR-15’s themselves, I see no increased safety benefit for any student, faculty, or staff member under an armed teacher program.

Do we not want to go back to the drawing board because we know that providing adequate security in our schools and other vulnerable institutions is tremendously expensive? If governing bodies cannot adequately fund school security, perhaps we are left with the idea of arming teachers, but it would invite quite an additional series of problems; legal, social, and professional. Energy and resources need to be directed elsewhere in the gun debate before the idea of formally arming classroom teachers gets traction.

— Tim Benintendi

Anchorage