By Andi Anthony, Putnam City High School
Parents send their kids to school every day with the assumption they’ll safely learn while they are there, but for the past several years that assumption has started to fade.
According to data from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, there have been more than 2,000 school shootings in the United States since 1970. The center is the Naval Postgraduate School sponsored by FEMA. In this era of school shootings, some people have questioned whether teachers should be able to protect themselves and their students with guns in school.
Some states, including Oklahoma and Texas, have passed laws allowing qualified and gun-trained school employees to carry. In Oklahoma, this extends to only private schools, colleges and universities; in Texas, all public and private schools are included.
Despite this legal quandary, not all teachers want to carry a gun.
“I’m not for it, to me it’s just another safety issue,” longtime Oklahoma teacher Bobby Howard said. Howard has taught in Ponca City for two years, Piedmont for 10 years and Norman for 14 years. “It’s just one more dangerous thing you’re putting on campus, so I don’t see how it would be beneficial.”
Howard has a unique perspective. He currently works at the American International School in Abu Dhabi. Howard said living there for the past year has opened his eyes to some significant differences.
“In Abu Dhabi it’s very hard to get into our school, and there are no guns allowed in the country, yet the concern at my previous (Oklahoma) schools was that anybody could just walk right in.”
This sparks the question of whether adding more guns in schools to prevent school shootings would do more harm than good.
The most recent and deadly incident involved an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The shooting resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary. Fifteen people were hospitalized with injuries. This shooting has been the deadliest since Sandy Hook in 2012, in which 20 children and six adults died.
A survey conducted by the labor union Texas American Federation of Teachers was taken two weeks after the Robb Elementary shooting. The survey involved nearly 4,000 K-12 teachers in Texas, and found the majority don’t want to be armed while in class or be expected to intercept a gunman during a tragic incident.
The survey tallied 5,100 responses, including 3,673 high school teachers. Of the K-12 teachers, 76% answered no to the question, “Do you want to be armed?”
Teacher Hannah Dannen, who lives in Ennis, Texas, expressed her concerns. She explained that her number one job as a teacher is to make her children feel safe, loved and protected at all costs.
“I wouldn’t want to carry a firearm unless I’ve been properly trained, that’s not my job,” Dannen said. “My job is to educate and impact the lives of the kids I teach and to protect them. I think there’s a bunch of steps that should be taken before teachers carry themselves.”
Parents as well as teachers are affected. Parents can choose to homeschool their kids if they feel it is necessary.
Shawn Sheehan, a teacher of eight years who lives in Lewisville, Texas, has a strong parental perspective.
“We would unenroll our student from a campus that allowed the classroom teachers to carry or have access to firearms,” said Sheehan, who was Oklahoma’s 2016 teacher of the year.
“My kid’s safety while at school is always on my mind, and you know, it’s stressful because you feel so powerless in those situations … I would feel significantly less safe if my children’s teachers had firearms.”
While these tragic cases affect communities far and wide, students are affected the most. Several students have been present for these horrific shootings, and students have lost their lives without getting to live them first. Some students now feel a lack of security while at school.
Senior Mackenzie Duggan, who attends Mustang High School, said she has absolutely worried about her safety while at school.
“There’s been a few times where we’ve had some people trying to get into the school or even students calling out bomb threats or saying they have a gun,” Duggan said. “My school has had about four or five shooting/bomb threats while I’ve been there, at least once a year…It’s a very unsafe environment sometimes.”
