Don’t Militarize Our Schools

After the tragic Valentine’s Day shooting in Parkland, Florida, President Donald Trump vowed to make our country and schools safer. He began by ordering Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into a ban on bump stocks, a device used in last year’s Las Vegas shooting that allows a non-automatic weapon to simulate the abilities of a fully automatic firearm. Trump then suggested that training teachers in the use of firearms would allow our schools to have an effective first line of defense. Under this plan, teachers would volunteer for specialized training in the use of basic firearms; they would receive a marginal bonus for their new service.
President Trump’s claims, and the statistics behind them, don’t leave me with a good feeling in my stomach. According to a New York Times article written last week, Trump suggested that 20 percent of teachers should receive firearm training. If his proposition comes to fruition, about 700,000 teachers in both public and private schools would have guns in their classrooms. This figure accounts for nearly half of America’s actual forces on active duty. According to a related Washington Post article, if teachers are given the intensive and specialized training required for carrying guns, the bill would slip past 1 billion dollars. Another option proposed by gun supporters include placing six to eight specially trained armed guards in schools. This proposal would add approximately 12-15 billion dollars to the already inflated budget annually. And in Florida, the arming of teachers is already a reality: just last week, the Florida State House Appropriations Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee passed similar versions of a bill funding a “school marshal” program, which allocates 67 million dollars to train ten teachers per school to carry guns, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Participating teachers would each receive a 500 dollar bonus.
I am all for bonuses for teachers. As the son of an elementary school principal, I understand the rigors that come with jobs in education. Teachers come to school every day ready to deal with fussy parents, kids, and fellow employees. But I would bet that not a single teacher gets out of bed in the morning wanting to barricade doors, hide under desks, or physically shield students from bullets flying through their classrooms.
Furthermore, no amount of training could possibly prepare a teacher to handle a gun in a responsible way. Basic military training takes months, and even the most thoroughly trained teachers are still human, meaning they can make mistakes. On top of everything else teachers deal with every day, some people, like our President, think that adding a weapon to their list of duties is a good idea. Though many Americans like to tout our education system as the best in the world, we are firmly in the middle of the pack. Instead of adding more firearms to our non-existent national gun registry, we need to focus on eliminating easy access to  military-grade weapons used to kill children in their classrooms. We need to allow teachers to do the jobs they signed up for: teach our children.
If the educators at Connecticut College were allowed firearms in the classroom, I would be profoundly uncomfortable. The notion of one of my professors having a loaded weapon in the room as they lectured me is nerve-wracking. I get the same feeling walking around Times Square seeing New York’s finest armed with lethal weapons. Now, I understand the motivation for added security in Times Square. It’s a huge tourist destination that is a potential target for terrorists, but this logic should not apply to schools. Places of learning should not be added to the list of locations where it is acceptable to carry a gun. Think about the message it sends to the school’s students. It is absolutely a message of power and intimidation directed towards any potential school shooter, but this message also finds its way to students, who might be wary of an imminent attack on their lives. Potential violence in schools is not something anyone simply gets used to. Guns in schools are abnormal and should be treated as such.
So, in the wake of Connecticut College’s own walk-out against gun violence in schools, let politicians see reason. Do not give weapons to our teachers. The militarization of our schools would not only add to the stress-filled lives of hardworking teachers across the country, but would also give students the impression that their lives are constantly at risk. This country needs to get its priorities straight and realize that the issue is not a lack of security at schools, but rather the guns themselves. Follow the example of our high school brothers and sisters at Marjory Stoneman Douglas and demand that our lawmakers address the root of the problem, guns. Our lives depend on it.