A local TV station in San Diego tried to find a teacher who approves of Trump’s idea to arm teachers if they are good with guns. The station couldn’t find even one. 

“”Putting more guns into our schools and classrooms is going to do nothing to protect our students and educators,” said Lindsay Burningham, President of the San Diego Teachers Association, the union representing teachers in the San Diego Unified School District. “Our students need more counseling and nursing. Our students need more books and art and music, not guns.”

However, it did find a truck driver who liked the idea.

Randi Weingarten responded in this article to Trump’s proposal to arm teachers: It won’t work. Trump compared schools to airports, but the logical extension of that ill-considered proposal is that every passenger should be armed. Airports are gun-free zones. So is the White House, the halls of Congress, every federal building, and Mar-A-Lago.

Randi writes:

”There are a number of steps we can take right now — including ensuring mental health services are widely available; staffing schools with well-trained resource officers, who may be armed if a community so decides; instituting wider background checks; and banning military-style assault weapons and munitions.

“But one idea that just won’t work is arming teachers, as President Donald Trump suggested this week.

”Educators’ first instinct is to protect kids, not engage in a shootout that would place more children in danger. This good-guy-with-a-gun thinking might give some people the illusion of security, but it only would make our children’s classrooms less safe, and turn our schools into armed fortresses.

“Decades of grim data show that having guns at home greatly increases the chance of them being used in a homicide, suicide or accidental death. The United States has both the highest gun ownership and the highest gun death rate in the Western world, though the states with the strictest gun ownership laws have the lowest rates of gun deaths.

“Introducing guns in schools carries additional risks, and raises pertinent questions.

“How would arming teachers work? Would teachers carry guns in holsters, or would every classroom have a gun locker? Would teachers be expected to regularly recertify, as required of many armed professionals? Are teachers to get their guns or get their students to safety with seconds to spare after an active shooter alert? Would teachers be held liable for their actions or decisions?

“Would teachers get firearms similar to the military-style AR-15 weapons that have been used in many mass shootings, including in Parkland? What’s the risk of a troubled person attempting to disarm a teacher, and use his or her weapon? Who would pay for the billions of dollars it would take to pay for guns, ammunition and training, when so many schools currently lack nurses, guidance counselors, school resource officers and have a multitude of other needs?…

”Schools, airplanes, hospitals and federal court houses are gun-free zones. Why isn’t the president trying to keep schools this way? Why isn’t he taking common-sense steps to end this scourge? A possible reason: The National Rifle Association supports this idea and the gun manufacturers supported by the NRA would make a heck of a lot of money.

”Americans are rightly frightened, outraged and frustrated by school shootings and the unnecessary loss of life. The NRA wants Americans to believe that only more guns can prevent tragedies. That is just not the case. Since Australia changed its gun laws in 1996, it has had no more mass shootings, while there have been scores in the United States. We know how to reduce gun deaths, but who will lead the effort?”

Not President Trump. He panders to the NRA, which gave his campaign $30 million.

Our own Lloyd Lofthouse explained in detail why it was absurd to arm teachers. He wrote as a Marine who became a teacher. Trump is unlikely to read this blog, but perhaps he saw this article which was published in the New York Times.

Anthony Swofford, now a college professor in West Virginia, said “I Was a Marine. I Don’t Want a Gun in My Classroom.”

He writes that as a Marine, he received “hundreds of hours” of training to use his assault rifle.

By contrast, the shooter at Stoneman Douglas High School had zero hours of training.

Swofford writes:

“There is no reason that any civilian, of any age, should possess this rifle.”

He scoffed at Trump’s proposal to arm teachers. Trump said that coach Aaron Feis could have shot the killer and saved his life and the lives of students.

Swofford responds:

“This is absurd. More likely, had Mr. Feis been armed, he would not have been able to draw his weapon (a side arm, presumably) quickly enough to stop the shooter, who with an AR-15 would have had the coach outgunned. Even if the coach had been able to draw his weapon — from where? his athletic shorts? — any shots he managed to fire would have risked being errant, possibly injuring or killing additional students. As some studies have shown, even police officers have missed their targets more than 50 percent of the time. In firing a weapon, Mr. Feis would have only added to the carnage and confusion.

“What if a history teacher had also been armed? And an English teacher, and a math teacher, and the janitorial staff members? In this National Rifle Association fever dream, a high school would concentrate so much firepower in the hands of its employees that no deranged individual with a weapon would dare enter the premises.

“This sort of thinking also has no grounding in reality. People attack heavily armed institutions all too often, as with the mass shootings in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas and in 2013 at the Washington Navy Yard. Assailants in such cases aren’t typically worried about losing their lives in the process. Usually, losing their lives is part of the plan.“

Arming teachers, he says, is “lunacy.”

”President Trump on Thursday specified that he wants only certain teachers — “highly adept people, people that understand weaponry” — to be armed. I will immodestly state that among professors in the United States, I am almost certainly one of the best shooters. But I would never bring a weapon into a classroom. The presence of a firearm is always an invitation to violence. Weapons have no place in a learning environment.

“Last month, the State Legislature in West Virginia, where my university is located, introduced the Campus Self-Defense Act. This would prohibit colleges and universities from designating their campuses as gun-free zones. If this act becomes law, I will resign my professorship. I will not work in an environment where professors and students pack heat.”