Teachers Need a Higher Salary, Not Guns

Putting guns in classrooms is not the answer to gun violence

Last week the GOP-controlled Tennessee legislature passed a law allowing teachers to carry guns on school grounds, bucking recommendations from top education and school safety experts from across the country.

We already ask more from our schoolteachers than we do from almost any other profession, and we give them just the bare minimum to do it. The answer to school shootings is not to ask our teachers to become armed bodyguards for our children.

Republicans clearly haven’t thought this through.

A teacher with a handgun would simply be no match for an attacker with an assault rifle. Even if they could somehow abandon their classroom in the middle of a school shooting, it’s hard to imagine they would be able to get to the scene in time. Even if they did, it’s unlikely their meager amount of training would be enough to stop the shooter.

In fact, research concludes “an armed teacher is more likely to impede responding law enforcement than to stop an active school shooter.” There’s also the very obvious possibility that a student could gain access to the gun, which makes our schools more dangerous, not safer.

Tennessee State Rep. Gloria Johnson said it best in a recent interview we did together:

“Teachers already do four jobs. They’re teachers, they are social workers, they are nurses and they are counselors. And you wanna give them the job of security also. But you’re paying them poorly for one job.”

Johnson, a public school teacher for years who actually experienced a school shooting firsthand, slammed Republicans for passing the bill:

“When you arm teachers, you are bringing the gun battle into the classroom… We need to stop guns from ever getting to the schoolhouse door.”