Yes, it has come to this. It’s time to arm teachers.

June 3, 2022

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Opinion writing is an exercise in restrained bias. But personal experience, along with observation and facts, necessarily informs a good column. Writers without some deep life experiences to guide their judgment and form insights don’t usually have much to say.

Thus, my recent suggestion that willing teachers be trained and armed as a deterrence to mass murderers stems in part from a bias formed during my long-ago childhood. My father was both a lawyer and a gun collector, and he made certain through regular tutelage and practice that everyone in our household knew how to properly handle a firearm, how to shoot and, most important, how to keep the safety mechanism locked in place.

“Never point a gun at anyone unless you intend to shoot him,” he often told me. “And never shoot anyone unless you intend to kill him.”

Those were startling words for a girl more inclined toward Barbie dolls, palomino ponies (the plastic kind) and poodle skirts, but I studiously followed directions and learned to shoot as well as anyone in our family. Of course, my brother and I thought Pops was insane, and maybe he was. But as a child of the Great Depression and a World War II pilot, he feared that our generation would be too spoiled and soft to navigate the world he foresaw. Let’s just say, his child-rearing methods — manual labor, harsh discipline and book-reading — ensured the opposite.

I don’t subscribe to everything he said or did, of course. But I’m not inclined to hide under a desk waiting for the Soviets to launch a nuke, as schoolchildren were made to do in the ‘60s — or today, hoping the bullets from an AR-15 won’t find my quivering hide. I’d rather take my chances defending myself — and any children in my care — than die watching my babies being mowed down by a homicidal maniac.

So, there’s my bias. Now let’s talk about yours.

The pros and cons of arming teachers have been bounced around since the Columbine shooting in 1999, and both resurface with each new school massacre. A Rand Corp. report in April 2020 found that as of Jan. 1, 2020, 28 states allowed schools to arm teachers or staff in at least some cases or as part of a specific program. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a law in 2019 following the Parkland slaughter that allows teachers to volunteer as “school guardians,” if they meet requirements and are trained by the county sheriff. In the wake of Uvalde, where police didn’t enter the school for an hour after the shooting began, Ohio has passed a similar bill.

Opponents worry that guns in schools will make children less safe and point to the possibility that law enforcement could mistake an armed teacher for the shooter. (Hint: Listen for the AR-15.) Even trained law enforcement officers miss their target roughly 70 percent of the time. In war, soldiers often die from friendly fire. How do we expect teachers to do better?

I don’t know. Everything depends on smarts, strict adherence to protocols and training comparable to what security officers or police receive. I do understand the opposition’s point of view, which I shared until recently. Even though there are more guns than people in this country, most urban dwellers (other than criminals) have little or no experience with guns. To them, the idea of an armed teacher is obscene. I don’t disagree. It is obscene.

But when a Twitter follower wrote to me recently saying that arming teachers would be the end of civilization, I replied, “We’re already there, my friend.” What could be less civilized than a society that tolerates regular massacres of its citizens, especially of its children?

There comes a time when practicality trumps philosophy.

In real life, my kind and gentle husband has had to kill a couple of coyotes in our yard before they got to our pets or even, perhaps, our grandchildren. We both hated it because we love all animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats and bears. But they don’t get to eat my family.

And militarized psychos don’t get to kill my children.

I’m not a teacher, but if I were, I’d want to have ready access to a gun. Some teachers, God bless them, aren’t up to such a challenge and shouldn’t be asked to be. Others are willing and able. In the absence of anyone else, why not allow them to defend our children?

None of these policies should be necessary, but, clearly, we’re not doing enough. Until we can figure out broad, societal remedies short of cloning my father — a dicey proposition, I’ll admit — I’d feel better knowing my grandchildren were in a school where someone knows how to stop a killer.