Anti-Gun Group Opposes Reducing Training Quota For Teachers :: 07/21/2020

With schools a preferred target for mass shooters, it only makes sense to have people you can trust with firearms on school campuses to help protect our children. That’s at an absolute minimum.

However, as we saw in Parkland, school resource officers may not always be the best option to achieve that goal. They’re people, after all, and while some will do what is required, others won’t.

Yet the teachers are there and are a potential target. Armed teachers can protect themselves and, by extension, protect our children. However, some anti-gunners don’t like the idea of making it easier for schools to have armed teachers. Shocking, I know.

A bill that would give Ohio’s local school boards the power to allow employees to carry guns in school buildings gets its first Senate hearing in almost two months on Tuesday. But gun control groups say the bill also eliminates required weapons training for those workers.

Susie Lane teaches first grade in Middletown and is with the group Moms Demand Action.

On a conference call with reporters organized by that and other gun control groups, Lane noted the bill says armed teachers and other volunteers don’t have to go through the same training that police officers who carry in schools do.

“Allowing school staff to carry firearms in school is dangerous. Allowing this to happen without extensive training and ongoing training is irresponsible,” Lane said.

That claim is hilarious because armed teachers are allowed in a number of states and there haven’t been issues, including in states with no training requirement.

Of course, those states often also don’t have a lot of school shootings. Just something to think about.

Look, I’ve seen some stuff on the kind of training armed teachers are being required to go through in some states and it’s kind of extreme. They’re training them in ways even law enforcement officers aren’t being trained.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing and if states want to help make that training more accessible to teachers, I say go for it.

The problem is that there’s no evidence that such training is required. Several states only require the level of training that goes into getting a concealed carry permit and they haven’t had any issues.

So what’s so dangerous? Well, Lane is a teacher and an anti-gunner. To her, the mere presence of a gun is scary, which is why you can’t take her word on just how dangerous a bill like this actually is.

Nor should you take fearmongering from students as evidence, either.

Ottawa Hills High School senior Zack Maaieh was also on the call. He opposes guns in schools, saying they can make students of color feel unsafe – especially Muslim students like him.

“This isn’t about politics. It’s about protecting students. And I don’t want to go to school with teachers carrying guns they have no idea how to use,” Maaieh said.

In other words, Maaieh wants to feel safe, regardless of whether that makes him any safer or not.

Armed teachers aren’t going to be whipping guns out at every opportunity. They’re not going to start gunning down students just because they’re legally armed.

All this is fearmongering masquerading as a political position. Until they can show us that lawfully armed teachers represent a problem, they’re not going to sway much of anyone.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He's also the host of Unloaded TV on YouTube. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/07/21/gun-control-group-opposes-bill/