By Gianna Akter ’25
On Tuesday, April 22, 2024, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons into school (with administrative permission) to prevent school shootings and gun violence from rising. According to an article by Newsweek, Tennessee is one of more than 30 states in the U.S.A. that currently allow teachers to carry approved firearms in schooling areas. While some Republicans argue that armed teachers would keep schools safe by providing a way for staff to defend themselves and thus discourage shooters, my opinion from a liberal perspective is that teachers should not be allowed to carry guns in school because the majority of educators disagree with that decision, it will enable students easy access to firearms, and it does not solve the issue of gun violence as a whole.
The passing of these bills allowing for degrees of gun carriage for educators is actually frowned upon by most teachers/staff, parents and children alike. The majority of teachers disagree with carrying guns in school, expressing that doing so would make schools less safe, not more. Kenneth S. Trump, President of the National School Safety and Security Services (NSSASS), states in an article by NSSASS, “The vast majority of teachers want to be armed with textbooks and computers, not guns.” According to a survey by the RAND Corporation, a research organization, only around 20% of educators said arming teachers would make schools safer, and 26% were neutral on the issue. The remaining 54% expressed that the change would make schools less safe. A similar study conducted by the Washington Post found that 7/10 teenagers, 8/10 teachers and 7/10 parents opposed arming teachers in the classroom. All this evidence goes to show that most educators and people involved in schooling disagree with the passing of these gun laws.
The reasoning behind the widespread opposition amongst teachers to possessing guns in school is because of the safety risks it poses to children in the classroom. When a firearm is in a school or potentially left somewhere unattended, students can easily access it. This was demonstrated in a specific case reported by the Giffords Law Center at Ingram Middle School in Texas. In this instance, a school resource officer misplaced a gun inside the restroom, leaving it unattended—a student found and located the gun, alerting the school administration. Another case was reported in the same district—at Ingram High School in Texas—in which the vice principal left a firearm in another restroom on campus, where it was then located by school staff. While no shots were fired and no one was injured in either case, circumstances such as these have the potential to result in catastrophe. They are ultimately avoidable if the variable of guns is removed from the situation. Thus, firearms should not be allowed to be carried by school officials due to the access students can have to them if the gun is misplaced or lost.
While some argue that most children don’t know how to operate a gun, there are still situations in which younger children are capable of setting off a gun if they get access to one.
One such instance was in Virginia, according to NBC News. A 6-year-old shot and injured his teacher at Richneck Elementary School because the child obtained the weapon from his mother. “This was not an accidental shooting,” Newport News police Chief Steve Drew commented for NBC. In another example, a 7th-grade student brought a gun on campus at Achievement First Summit Middle School in Hartford, on May 1, 2024.
Based on the reasons provided by important figures involved in this discussion and evidence described from a variety of sources and newspapers, teachers should not be allowed to carry guns in school due to the negative impact gun usage has already had in schools. Students and staff alike already grapple with the fear of shootings daily; if you choose to bring guns into schools where gun violence is already a problem, you are gambling with life and death.
The Raider Press 