Armed Teachers

                Like everyone else, I watched in horror as events unfolded in the Midland Odessa area. Then a friend of mine asked me as a retired soldier and current teacher if I supported the idea of arming teachers in classrooms to protect against a mad gunman or similar situation. I do not support such an idea. I believe it to be doomed to failure for the reasons listed below. There are other reasons, these are just the ones that come quickly to my mind.

                I am a teacher. I am a teacher that also happens to be a veteran. I do not have time to adequately prepare for duties as a school marshal; no teacher has that kind of spare time. All teachers struggle to prepare for and execute their classroom duties. We do not have time to add to that burden. Serving as a school marshal implies obtaining and maintaining an extremely high degree of proficiency in marksmanship and armed intruder tactics. Those skills perish very quickly, requiring extensive commitments of time and ammunition for maintenance. Muzzle awareness, trigger control, identification friend or foe, and situational awareness are only a few of the skills required for success in armed conflict. Without proper and continued training an armed teacher is simply another out of control factor in an already chaotic situation and is more likely to inflict additional casualties. Additionally, how will school systems, already strapped for cash, find the funds required to ensure that teachers are adequately armed and continually trained. This is another duty and pressure we do not need as teachers.

                What about the need to adequately secure weapons? Sooner or later a teacher will take a short cut and toss a loaded weapon into a drawer or purse. Then, some inquisitive student will find it and play with it. Once unleashed there is no recall or cancel function of a bullet. How will we explain to the parents and loved ones of the wounded or dead from just such an accident? How will the teacher live with the guilt incurred by such an incident? I carry scars from the lawful and expedient things I did in combat. I am blessed, they do not impede upon my life in a limiting fashion; however, they remain and are an ever-present fact of my existence. A thoughtful examination of the statistics shows that schools are one of the safest places for children. Why add to the existential peril by adding in the factor of unsecured hand-guns.

As a combat veteran of multiple deployments in a variety of locations, I understand the confusion and chaos of armed conflict. No one knows who they will react once rounds start going back and forth in earnest. No amount of training, no number of hours spent in simulations adequately prepare you for the intensity of that moment. Some of us summon the courage to act appropriately. Some run and hide. Others lose the judgement and ability to make well reasoned rational decisions and then act upon them. Arming teachers assumes that they will make good and sound decisions in the heat of the moment. We have no such guarantee. While I trust my fellow teachers, I do not want them wandering the halls during an emergency. Most handguns will put a round through sheet-rock walls with hardly a decrease in velocity. A locker will slow them down, perhaps even stop them, but bullets kill indiscriminately. A policeman once told me that in all the shooter incidents in our nation no one behind a closed and locked door had been shot. It seems to me that a better strategy would be to teach everyone to turn off the lights, shut and lock the doors, gather their students in an unobserved spot, and wait for relief by appropriate authorities. An even better strategy would be a critical cultural examination.

The time is well past for us to set aside our enthrallment with guns and violence. We need to spend time and effort divesting ourselves of the love of armed might in all its guises. I know that many of my friends will drag out the second amendment leaning heavily on the phrase, “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” I understand. I would encourage those that hold that phrase up as sacrosanct to look at the first half of the amendment which reads, “A well regulated…” Evidently, the framers had some idea of the right to bear arms being well regulated. I would propose that they did not envision our nation as an armed camp that regularly degenerated into a combat zone where women and children regularly suffered life-changing and mortal wounds. Finally, I spent several years in combat zones, places where I had to go about armed and wearing body armor. I do not want to spend my remaining years watching my nation turn itself into some dark parody of a cyber-punk dystopian western.