Arm the Teachers

If the best we can do to protect school children from mass murderers is to put more police officers in schools then let’s do that.

However, that’s not the best solution. The best solution is to allow teachers to voluntarily obtain firearms proficiency and a standardized certification that allows them to carry a firearm on the job. The arguments against this are the same as those used prior to states like Oklahoma and Texas allowing employees to have guns in their vehicles on employer parking lots.

“That will cause an epidemic of workplace shootings!” they cried.

It didn’t. Workplace shootings declined instead.

In every state that passed constitutional carry, gun crime decreased, despite democrats and progressive republican fear mongering that it would cause more gun crime.

Mass shootings that end with an armed civilian stopping the shooter terminate in an average of 3.6 innocent deaths. Mass shootings terminated by law enforcement end in an average of 16 innocent deaths.

The gap is actually much wider, because individuals intent on mass murder are sometimes stopped by armed citizens after killing or injuring only one person, and the killing is not classified as a mass murder due to a singular victim, therefore it is left out of the data pool. The real number is likely less than 2 victims per mass shooting stopped by an armed civilian.

Perhaps using revenue to create a voluntary training and certification program for armed teachers would be more effective and even more affordable than putting police officers (who may or may not have incentive to accept extreme personal risk…ahem, Uvalde) in every school. Teachers have more personal motivation to protect their students and themselves than anyone with the exception of parents.

A similar strategy has become widespread in churches over the last decade. It is quite common in states like Texas to have a group of armed church members who meet and train regularly to respond to potential active shooter events. There have been several cases over the last few years where mass shooters have been stopped by these armed church members.

I am not against putting police officers in schools. I’d just rather have teachers who have passed a psychological and professional firearms certification packing heat instead.