It took almost thirty years to enact at least some form of concealed carry in every state in the nation. Of course, even with carry laws, most states designated their schools so-called “gun-free” zones. Over the last few years though, measures allowing licensed and trained good guys to carry in schools have expanded greatly. In fact, in just the last two months, three more states have enacted these policies, helping to keep kids safe.
Prohibitions on guns in schools came about during the 1980s “War on Drugs.” In the decades prior to that, no doubt many of our older readers can remember school rifle teams practicing and competing after school. I brought my Ruger 10/22 in for a gun safety presentation in my Speech Communication class in high school. Yes, in Illinois. The teacher asked that I bring no ammunition and take it back out to the car after class. No big deal, right?
Today, certainly cultural issues remain, working against efforts to allow good guys to carry in schools. Of course, the legacy media remain staunchly opposed. Time Magazine had this to say about teachers and guns:
Teachers Are Overwhelmingly Opposed to Carrying Guns in Schools, Says Survey
Nearly 75% of teachers oppose the idea of being trained to carry guns in schools, a new survey finds.
According to an online Gallup survey released Friday, 63% surveyed strongly opposed the idea of arming teachers, with 10% somewhat opposing the measure. Only 11% strongly favored the idea, and 7% were neutral. Yet just 18% of the teachers surveyed said they would go through training to carry a gun if their district or administrators provided it.
Meanwhile, six in 10 teachers think schools would become less safe if educators armed themselves, though seven in 10 think it would in effective in stopping the next mass shooting.
But even some of those traditionally opposed to gun ownership recognize how guns save life. They know how the only thing that stops a bad person with evil in their hearts is a good guy with a gun. Even Time Magazine acknowledged that 70% of educators believed armed good guys in their school would help save lives from a spree killer.
As we have seen in just the past week, armed good guys in schools have prevented or ended two school massacres. Unlike Parkland, Florida, a Dixon, IL school resource officer engaged a would-be mass murderer.
The bad guy walked into the Dixon High School gymnasium at a graduation rehearsal. Cops say Matthew Milby brought a handgun to the early morning event and began shooting. Officer Scott Dallas challenged Milby and shot down the attacker as they traded gunfire. A few days later, Officer Dallas received a lengthy, emotional standing ovation from the graduating class and parents.
Unfortunately, in Santa Fe, Texas, it took a few minutes for two good guys on the school grounds to engage the killer. However, once they arrived, the spree killing stopped. By providing armed resistance to the Texas shooter’s spree, they no doubt saved many additional lives. Of course, if more teachers had guns, the Texas story might have looked more like Dixon’s.
In the past two months, Wyoming, Georgia, and Florida have begun allowing school staff to carry. Applicants usually complete a selection process by their local school boards and law enforcement. Upon selection, they typically receive additional training before carrying on campus.
If your state doesn’t yet have provisions for school staff and administrators to carry, it’s time to contact your state officials. If your state does allow campus carry, but your local schools still prohibit it, it’s time to lobby your school board. The lives you save might be your kids’ or grandchildren’s.
The teachers at my wifes school here in CA are asking about guns. And they’re coming up against the cold hard reality of laws that they supported that enable mass murders.
One of the tenets of self-defense, et. al,, training is to practice situational and environmental awareness. Based on what has, and continues, to happen in your state is an example of the voting public buying into California’s elected politicians’ much-repeated myths surrounding the benefits of “gun control” (e.g., the laws passed that were supposed to further the safety, etc. of you and your fellow statesmen). As a state, California’s passing of law and law and regulation after regulation does little, if anything, to protect your schools but does support the state’s policy and hopes to disarm California’s citizens. When such happens, the educators responsible for the schools’ students will have few, if any choices and chances, to defend themselves and the children reporting daily to class.
When after a few questions I’ve managed to crack open the head of a parent or teacher opposed to school carry, I learned something interesting:
They will say at first, “we shouldn’t have guns in school”, but what they really mean is “bad people shouldn’t have guns in school”. Fine. We all agree on that.
Then I will delve deeper and find that what really bothers them about having an armed teacher isn’t the fact that they will be armed (they are, after all, the Good Guys) but that they specifically object to NEEDING a gun… because this would be a wonderful world if we never needed to fight for our lives. Again, we are in perfect agreement.
“But that isn’t the world we live in,” I’ll remind them, “We live in a world where evil is a real and common thing. Denying that or wishing it were not so will do nothing to prepare us for dealing with evil when we find ourselves confronted with it. So if you choose to remain disarmed in the face of an attack, that’s your choice to make – but perhaps you could agree that another teacher’s desire to arm herself is just as valid of an opinion to have and to get out of her way of doing so?”
🤠
Completely agree with your post. Oddly, I look at the chart and it indicates that carry in schools is allowed in NYS. My kids district won’t even let me in the school as a working LEO!!
What would happen to the govt. run communist indoctrination system if everyone stopped sending their children and grandchildren to them every day? If they’re not there they can’t be shot. Until most of the teachers in your children’s school are armed and know what to do your children’s safety is at risk. Remove them from the system and use a private school that has an adequate security system in place or home school them yourself. Much safer and much better education! Win-win!!!
What’s the difference between “allowed” and “in place” on the map?
Some states have only recently allowed teachers to carry a gun. Others have had a carry policy in place for several years now. Utah has allowed teachers to carry a gun for I think 15 years now.
The answer below mine is a good one. However, I will add more. I see that Kansas is listed as allowed. What is really allowed is that the districts are allowed to allow.; or, may allow. This is different than Utah, where the district may not forbid.
Back to Kansas, while the districts, “may allow,” the insurance carrier for the states schools says, “no.” As such, it is still forbidden.
In Massachusetts you can have a gun on campus with the permission of the administration which will NEVER EVER give you permission. So it’s allowed but it’s not reality. If you are not a cop assigned to that school, you are not going to be armed there.
Back in the 1990’s teachers were also against becoming social workers. But that was forced onto them.
Now some of them are going to have to become “armed guards”. Even though most don’t want to. But at least there are people that will volunteer as teachers to carry weapon.
This is the price we pay for an open society, where morality has changed since the 1950s.
This is the way it is for just about any public sector employee in an “open” building now. Speaking from experience the job you’re hired to do is the last thing you’ll do in any given day. It’s all social work and navigating crazy people. Then they added first aid/CPR/AED training. Then they added crisis management training. Then they added deescalation training. Now it’s GSW care and armed intruder response seminars.
Basically, if you work for a government office you’re a cop without a gun and you don’t get the early retirement.
Where it really starts to suck is when you’re the only person in the department who actually likes the training and takes it seriously while everyone else complains about the added responsibility or is too scared to act so when anything happens it’s always on you and you alone to deal with it. But I kinda like that too.
No teacher will be forced to carry a firearm, even if they do so outside of the classroom. That’s never been on the table and never will be. Still, for those who would carry, it’d take the financial burden off trying to hire a flock of either LE or vets. Schools are already under water on funding. (Well, mostly because someone who doesn’t teach decides to spend money on things other than what used to be traditional education- you remember- how to read, write, figure, think…)
The problem I always had with the uniformed SROs (and they are alway great guys and gals who like kids) is that over time they become chummy with the kids, and any cretin who is determined to shoot up the joint will just walk up and shoot the uniform first. I would. Then I’d have an extra firearm, ammo, taser, pepper and all sorts of goodies.
IMO- and I taught for 40 years in some of the cruddiest large schools in IA- there absolutely must be armed people in every building unknown to just about everyone else. I wouldn’t even let other staff members know if I were armed, I don’t on the street, I wouldn’t at work.
As all too often, the problems likely begin with the very way the quoted survey has been designed. There’s a huge difference between arming teachers and allowing teachers to arm themselves.
I am strongly against arming teachers, in the sense of making them carry. Pushing a teacher, or basically anyone for that matter, into arming themselves is neither sensible nor an example of personal liberty.
Not prohibiting teachers (or other law-abiding folk) from arming themselves is both a good idea and quite likely something the sutvey did not bother with.
I’m a carrying teacher myself and while I’m glad I live in a country where I can be one, I would answer “no” if a survey asked me about mandatory firearms training or such. Yes, I do realize too many journalists confuse the matter on purpose. But the optimist in me hopes that enough people can be helped to understand the difference.
Martin,
Whether or not the survey questions were somewhat misleading, the survey results indicate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 11% to 18% of the teachers would get training and presumably be armed at school — which is very close to the percentage of people in the general populous who have concealed carry licenses (or carry concealed under constitutional carry).
All this survey reveals is that school teachers who do not support armed self-defense actually oppose it, whereas the general population who do not support armed self-defense are more-or-less indifferent and do not oppose it.
My son is a high school teacher in NJ. He and five other teachers (gun owners all) approached the principal about carrying in school. The problem is, even though your map shows permitted in NJ, getting the CCW is virtually impossible. We are the “May Not” issue state.
To be fair it seems a good 75% of teachers don’t want to do lesson plans or intact with pupils/parents or work more than 3 hours a day or report abuse/danger signs or train for anything or teach or…
As usual just leave it to the other 25% and aides (who shouldn’t be needed in most cases) to get anything done.
Maybe the 63% of teachers that strongly oppose arming teachers are in opposition because they think their co-workers aren’t mentally stable.
half of them it may also be the case that they dont feel they are stable enough so they project that onto everyone else, just like most leftists seem to do
I can only assume that NJ, CT, MA, and NY are on the “allowed” list is because the liberal politicians destroying those states aren’t yet aware that there are no laws prohibiting it.
Forgive my cynicism if I’m wrong.
What’s up with West Virginia? It’s a Constitutional Carry state. You’d think they wouldn’t ban teachers from carrying.
We spend all the education money on creating “free (as in unsustainable)” educated work forces for Virginia, Ohio, PA. I guess there’s nothing left for implementation, training, lobbying (if there was a desire to).
Although folks may be scared to arm the people that turn a top 40 (per student) education spender into a consistent 50th by test results.
WV is a paradox . For many years it has been run by social conservative democrats and only recently have we seen a drift towards republican conservatism . The people here are deep rooted traditionalist , battle hardened supporters of unions and seemingly always trying to overcome an image of inbreeding portrayed in movies like Wrong Turn and Deliverance . We are humbly proud , if you can imagine such a thing . We send more of our young men to war than any other state , we are strongly independent people , having deep ties to Scott Irish heritage and Presbyterian values . We are the only state entirely in Appalachia and most of our land is in the hills and mountains . Our feet move involuntarily to the sounds of fiddles , banjos and mandolins and many of our near ancestors survived on cash from some of the finest corn recipes ever to come from the lowlands of Scotland . We have beautiful streams and rivers and some of the finest stands of hardwood forest in America , and stands of old growth red spruce Luthier’s from all over the world covet. As portrayed in film and writ our politics have often been marred by corruption and poor ethics , from vote selling to ruthless intimidation , we compete with the finest of the lowlife . Our politicians have tried to rub shoulders with the stiff shirts in DC for years , wanting to tell the elites that our state is progressive and modern , but our people are old fashioned and backward in all the good ways , and perhaps some of the questionable ways . We hunt and farm , preserving our own harvest , we build our own homes , fix our own breaks and support each other in our tragedies . We’ve endured devastating natural disasters , had our natural wealth stolen from below our feet and had our forest raped time and again by poor choices and politics , we’ve wept together as we buried our football team and celebrated together as we rose from despair . We sit atop a vast supply of oil , coal , and natural gas and our timber is as good as any in the world and we may be turning a political corner . I know there are teachers that carry and could be fired for it , but I believe you will soon see WV colored blue as we slowly cast off our progressive pretensions .
Part of the resistance to teachers carrying is the lack of training. I’m a HS teacher in Utah and I’ve carried at work for 2 years now. For 2 years I’ve been looking for some sort of training for armed teachers on what to do in case of an active shooter and I’m yet to find anything.
NRA, USCCA, someone needs to put together a training course to train armed teachers on what to do in case of an active shooter.
As it is now, if there were an active shooter in my school I don’t know exactly what I’d do. I have real concerns about getting shot myself by the police when they come to clear the room. Thats why we need training, and preferably training with local police so they know which teachers are armed and not to shoot them.
Steve… For 2 years I’ve been looking for some sort of training for armed teachers on what to do in case of an active shooter and I’m yet to find anything.
I don’t make it a habit of making recommendations but will make an exception due to your need and would be more than willing to share a contact with whom we’re very familiar and may be able to assist you. If interested, reply here re: “Interested” and we’ll figure out a safe means to get the info to you.
Interested
If it helps I am on The Firing Line forums, you could send me a private message. My user name there is falcon642.
Thank You.
Steve, I see you are in Utah. Contact Lt. Jeff Pledger at the Webber County SO. He runs the Student Safety and Protection Training Program. It is a course and he is running a session this summer. I had to back out because I am required to be at another training during those weeks this summer. I hope to get a seat next year.
The best training available is at Frontsight in Pahrump, NV. As I recall they offered to train such folks (teachers, pastors,etc.) at no charge but don’t know if that is still in place. When we took the 4 day defensive handgun course several years ago, a member of our group actually taught the armory courses at Camp Pendleton to his fellow marines. Also members of various police forces were there and claimed they were taught far more capably than their original police training. I highly recommend the courses at Frontsight.
I 2nd Steve’s motion.
Even tho it’s out here in the Midwest flyovers, Nebraska’s kind of a shit state for guns, it wouldn’t honor my states right to carry.
“Nearly 75% of teachers oppose the idea of being trained to carry guns in schools, a new survey finds.”
Of course they are. They’re terrified of guns. And it is insane, and a losing proposition, to phrase the argument as “training teachers to carry guns.” This is a horrible idea.
A much better idea would be to “allow Citizen Protectors.” Stop prohibiting personal carry for those who are already trained and licensed. Don’t scare the pearl-clutchers; they would be useless in a fight anyway. Leave them alone. Drop the whole “arming teachers” argument — instead, allow “Citizen Protectors.” I predict it will be much better accepted.
“Meanwhile, six in 10 teachers think schools would become less safe if educators armed themselves”
Of course they think that. It would logically follow that 60% of teachers are non-gun-owning liberals, who are terrified of guns, and who are terrified of what they would do with a gun.
Poll the prospective “Citizen Protectors” whether the school would be less safe… I bet you’ll get 0% saying that.
Well- allowing the other 25% of teachers to pack every day on campus would be a great thing. It would be a percentage much higher than that of permit holders or carriers in Constitutional Carry states who go armed “on the streets” every day.
I say GO FOR IT!
What’s up with North Dakota and Nebraska?
South Carolina doesn’t allow teachers to carry ? That one surprises me.
In Nevada, state law prohibits “campus carry” unless authorized by the school principal. When the state board of education learned that principals could authorize this, they took that right away from them.
The University of Nevada provides for concealed carry on campus with permission of the campus police. This almost never happens.
In practice, all Nevada campuses are gun free zones.
What it comes down to is that Campus carry for teachers is significantly less permitted than the map attached to this article would lead one to believe. Myself, I would be happy to see better researched articles on this site, even if that means less overall articles.
I am on a school board in KS where we tried to arm the teachers. We had most of the board and most of the local law in agreement with us. There is just one problem, insurance laws. We can’t insure with an out of state company and our insurer will drop us if we follow through with it.
As a teacher in Kansas this is what I found too. that is why I mentioned the comparison between the laws in Kansas and Utah. The reason for picking those two states is that, while I teach in Kansas, my home and family are in Utah (yes, I probably just outed myself).
Below is a quote from my previous post in this thread:
I see that Kansas is listed as allowed. What is really allowed is that the districts are allowed to allow; or, may allow. This is different than Utah, where the district may not forbid.
Back to Kansas, while the districts, “may allow,” the insurance carrier for the states schools says, “no.” As such, it is still forbidden.
You can change your attitude toward this problem. We forget about quality education and internet marketing. I doubt that people are looking for a reason in the education or upbringing of children. You can find more info here . This is an educational resource that will help solve several basic problems.
You can find more info here . This is an educational resource that will help solve several basic problems.
Good https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/more-states-allowing-armed-school-staff/
Comments are closed.