Teachers should not be asked to carry guns
A healthy discussion about guns has resumed after the latest school shooting in the United States.
Issues of gun control, policing, mental health are all top of mind after 17 people were killed, and several others wounded, by a teen gunman wielding a semi-automatic rifle at a Parkland, Florida high school.
In the aftermath, as the world watched, President Donald Trump suggested a solution: Arm a portion of teachers at American schools.
The proposal is completely shocking. Who could imagine sending their children to school where the teachers or other staff carry guns? Then we learned that there are indeed schools where staff already carry concealed weapons.
There is a divide when it comes to gun culture. For the most part – and there are exceptions – Canadians do not consider carrying guns to be part of their daily routines. To generalize, one could say that teachers especially are not the type of people who would want to carry a weapon during class time.
This brings up so many obvious concerns.
Mainly, in the case of an incident at school, a teacher could very well find themselves in an altercation with a student, either current or former. How much training would be required to calmly and rationally engage in an armed conflict with a student, while considering the safety and wellbeing of dozens of other students who are in the vicinity, or worse, caught in the crossfire?
These teachers should and are training to better educate and guide young students, not to be armed soldiers.
The reality that a person could be both teacher and armed guard is pretty slim.
We also raise the point that public school teachers in the United States, in general, are poorly paid compared to teachers in Canada. To ask them to take on an added risk of carrying a firearm in a teaching environment is ludicrous.
The solution, as so many have been saying, is to reduce the number of guns in any given environment, to reduce the risk of violence. The youth themselves have been so eloquent and mature in speaking out about what happened at their school. They are telling their own government that the answer is to take the weapons out of the hands of children.
The issues around guns are complex and we are not immune here in Canada. We too have a gun culture of sorts – a tenuous grasp on public safety, secured by gun control laws and a dash of common sense.
Even Trump this week is advocating for tougher gun controls, advocating for raising the age limit on purchasing certain firearms. Wouldn’t it be ironic if he were the one to positively influence the NRA into backing down on gun reform?
