While various leftists continue to fight against allowing teachers to be armed for classroom defense, John R. Lott, Jr. reports there has never been a shooting during a school day in a school where teachers are armed.
The tension between the views of the left and right regarding arming teachers played out in the United States Capitol on March 30, 2023, when Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat, began screaming in the face of Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, when Massie pointed out the effectiveness of arming teachers.
Massie said, “Did you know there’s never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry?” and Bowman went apoplectic.
Lott, Jr. used an April 24 Townhall column to report that “Twenty states already allow teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns.” In two of those states, Utah and New Hampshire, “any teacher with a concealed handgun permit can carry.” In the other 18, school boards at the districts in each state make the decision.
But throughout those 20 states where teachers are allowed to be armed attacks have not occurred.
“In the thousands of schools where teachers are permitted to carry, no one has been wounded or killed in an attack during school hours,” he wrote.
Other reasons cited to keep teachers disarmed, “such as students getting a hold of the weapons or teachers losing their tempers,” have “never actually occurred” in schools were teachers are armed for classroom defense, he noted.
Sadly, there have been a few instances where armed resource officers were not able to stop a school shooting.
For example, Scot Peterson, the Broward sheriff’s deputy assigned the role of resource officer at the Parkland high school on February 14, 2018, allegedly waited outside the building in which the attack occurred instead of going in to confront the shooter.
Lott suggests not only that armed resource officers are not enough, but that their uniforms make them stand out as targets to be eliminated so an attack can continue smoothly. However, if teachers in plain clothes are armed–and students do not know which teachers are or are not armed–then would-be attackers have a completely new level of security they must breach before an attack can be carried out.
RELATED — WATCH: Hawkins on Kamala Harris Remembers Sandy Hook Shooting with Gun Control Push (Or Why a Sheriff Changed His Mind About Arming Teachers)
ahawkins
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at [email protected].
