Another mass shooting this month put the nation back in mourning. It also placed lawmakers in a scramble to see who can find a Second Amendment friendly solution the fastest.
State Rep. Will Ainsworth from Guntersville believes he’s found it.
Ainsworth, a candidate for lieutenant governor this year, proposed arming certain teachers — creating a diligent army prepped and ready to take out a threat. He’s working on a bill that would allow teachers, coaches or other faculty who want to arm themselves during school hours to do so.
This idea is absurd.
An active shooter situation is a horrible and chaotic event. The shooter often turns out to be someone known to the victims, whether a fellow classmate or colleague, adding to the mass confusion of the situation.
In school shootings, teachers, coaches and faculty already have the tremendous responsibility of gathering their students, getting their rooms locked down and seeking a safe evacuation route.
Active shooter training, such as programs offered at Auburn, provide lessons on barricading doors and working on evacuation plans. Only as a last result do they ever mention confronting the shooter.
To switch the script and put a gun in the hands of teachers, giving them the task to find and take out a shooter, is an unreasonable and dangerously ardent plan of action.
Ainsworth’s bill would provide training for these teachers to equip themselves to take out a shooter. Although spending on K-12 education is low and teachers aren’t provided with up-to-date textbooks or basic supplies like pencils, Alabama will somehow find the money to train a homeroom militia.
Granted, if this plan was airtight and able to save children’s lives, then there’s no price tag that would be too much to pay. But the funding for training isn’t nearly the biggest flaw with this plan.
Arming teachers would place an immense amount of trust with them. But, as mentioned before, the actor in an active shooter situation often turns out to be someone known to the victims.
In 2010, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville opened fire on her colleagues, killing three and injuring three more. Adding more guns to an equation does not guarantee they end up in the hands of a “good guy.”
Further, adding more guns to the situation creates more confusion for law enforcement when they arrive on the scene. There’s no cheat sheet for who the shooter is and who is just a teacher trying their best in a situation.
A law enforcement official responding to the situation needs to be able to quickly identify the shooter and remove them from the situation. Armed teachers roaming the halls needlessly complicates this objective and can have tragic consequences.
Supporters of a bill with these measures may argue that teachers should be armed to deter a would-be school shooter, not necessarily to stop one. They hope a shooter will think twice about opening fire against students if they believe they’ll be met with a physics teacher who’s packing.
This hope requires the mind of a school shooter to be rational, able to look at the risks involved with their despicable action and determine whether it’s smart to carry it out.
School shooters don’t think like this.
Often, active shooters recognize they’re going to die or be arrested following their actions. Adding another deterrent by way of hastily arming the first adult who volunteers to carry a gun would not effectively prevent their crime.
Even if a school never experiences an active shooter situation, guns still have no place in any learning environment. They can add volatility to heated situations and make students feel unsafe.
Measures need to be taken to prevent a school shooting from happening in the first place. This means improving and funding the structures we have to deal with mental health problems and implementing common sense gun safety legislation.
Believing this epidemic is one you can shoot your way out of is a flawed mentality and one that could lead to more deaths.
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