Should school personnel be armed? Lawyers don’t think so.
After a spate of school shootings in Michigan, Florida, and other locations in the United States, it’s not surprising that some would call for more guns to be inside of schools whether for protection or deterrence.
So, I thought it might be interesting to share how the legal community weighs in on arming teachers. I took a quick review of gun-related policy positions held by the American Bar Association, the ABA. It’s worth a look. The legal community ends up defending those policy decisions, no matter whether for or against gun reform, restrictions, laws, or any other change to the status quo.
In 2019, the ABA announced is briefly stated policy.
The APA announced its opposition to the possession by any “schoolteachers, principals or other non-security school personnel” of a “firearm in, or on the grounds of, a pre-K through grade 12 public, parochial, or private school.”
The policy also includes opposition to the “use of government or public funds to provide firearms training to teachers, principals, or other non-security school personnel, or to purchase firearms for those individuals.”
The ABA released the policy shortly after the 2017 Florida shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They note similar strong opposition from educators, among them the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of School Resource Officers, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
The ABA’s reasoning was based on research showing “arming teachers will increase the risk of students being shot, not reduce it,” the ABA says in its policy paper, noting that a diverse group of law enforcement and education practitioners debated the issue before the ABA released its finding.
I found this part of their reasoning particularly compelling.
“The law enforcement professionals concluded that a large portion of the population and policy-makers who support arming teachers make incorrect assumptions about how effective armed teachers would be in an active shooter situation,” they say. “The round-table participants identified 22 factors that an armed teacher would have to assess quickly and act upon in an active shooter situation. It was noted that evidence supporting the value of arming teachers and school officials is nonexistent. They concluded that the chance of a teacher or other school official using a gun to end an active shooter situation is "remote," and that allowing teachers to carry guns in school creates an undue risk to students and creates the potential for teachers to use a gun in situations that do not warrant lethal force.”
The ABA went on to cite the study I co-authored while I was at the FBI, noting that in that research, there was only one successful armed civilian intervention, and the civilian in that incident was a highly trained U.S. Marine. “
The ABA listed what it deemed significant risks, including most notably the increased risk to bystanders, and the risk that responding law enforcement will mistake the armed teacher for a hostile intruder.
“Despite their training, a comprehensive study of the New York City Police Department found that in a gunfight, NYPD officers hit their intended target only 18% of the time,” the report noted. “It also found that they engaged in ‘reflexive shooting’ or ‘contagious shooting,’ without assessing the need to use deadly force, upon hearing certain cues, such as the words ‘he's got a gun’ or upon hearing the sound of gunfire. Other research of police firearm discharge data confirms that in high stress situations the vast majority of shots miss the intended target. A recent example of bystander death is when a fugitive entered a Trader Joe's store in the Los Angeles area. The store manager was shot and killed, not by the fugitive, but unintentionally by a police officer. There is no data to suggest teachers would perform any better.”