In the wake of several school shootings in the past few months across the nation, Wisconsin state Assemblyman Frank Lasee (R-Bellevue) proposed a measure that would allow teachers, with the proper training, to carry firearms on campus. While many have dismissed the idea as out of hand, a serious look at this proposal shows it does have some merit.
Bringing firearms onto school grounds is not without precedence. Before the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990, which prohibited firearms within 1,000 feet of a school campus, many schools had rifle teams, with both teachers and students keeping firearms locked in their cars.
In Thailand, the government relaxed its otherwise strict gun control policies for teachers in the wake of several school shootings in 2003 as well as an Islamic insurgency that began in 2004 that targeted several schools. At least one teacher in Thailand has escaped death at the hands of gunmen by shooting back at them while making his escape. And after the Ma’alot massacre in 1974, Israel placed armed guards inside schools. Since then, the only instance of outsiders killing Israeli schoolchildren was in 1997, when a Jordanian soldier gunned down seven Israeli schoolgirls as they visited the Jordanian border.
While Israel and Thailand face more extreme circumstances than those in Wisconsin, their responses show that arming teachers or placing guards on campus is a viable option. Even in the United States, a principal with a handgun accomplished what multitudes of gun control laws could not: He successfully stopped a school shooting in progress. During the Pearl High School, Tennessee shooting in 1997, in which student Luke Woodham killed two and injured seven other students, principal Joel Myrick violated federal law by keeping a handgun in his truck; Myrick retrieved the weapon and subdued Woodham before he could harm anybody else. Myrick didn’t even need to fire a shot.
Even though merely brandishing a gun at a suicidal attacker may not persuade him to surrender, having one on hand at least allows teachers to defend both themselves and their students. Having a firefight in a school hallway is not much of an improvement over a massacre, but it accomplishes two things that not having armed teachers does not. In the event of a school shooting, having armed teachers or other personnel engaging the attackers would buy time for students to escape. Obviously, these teachers would need extensive training as outlined in Lasee’s proposal, not just in how to handle a firearm and accurate shooting but proper tactics on how to employ them. For armed teachers to be useful, they would need training on how to make quick tactical decisions to best protect students with or without the use of a weapon.
Additionally, the weapons used by school faculty must minimize the risks of collateral damage in the event they are actually used. To this end, teachers might be restricted to firearms such as handguns loaded with frangible ammunition — which breaks up into small particles upon impact with a hard surface — to reduce the risks of ricochets or passing through walls.
The most important point of having armed staff members on a school campus is to deter a school shooting from ever happening. Criminals are far more likely to attack a defenseless target, and all the gun control laws in the world will not prevent a criminal from breaking the law and bringing a firearm to a campus. Having a credible armed presence, not a security guard who fires in the attacker’s general direction and flees — like during the Columbine High School shooting — would provide an effective deterrent against anything short of a suicide bomber.
The most important question to consider, of course, is whether the security risks at American schools justify such a response. Even with a string of recent school shootings, it is clear that while the chances of a suicidal gunman or student walking into a school are fairly low, the threat still exists. Arming teachers with the right training and weapons may provide a solution.
