Jacob Morgan

Professor Kruse

American Government

October 26th, 2018

Should Teachers Have Guns in the Classroom?

I personally believe that with all the violence that is happening in today’s world and in

schools, it is a reasonably smart decision to train and arm teachers with handguns for protection

of their students and themselves. This is a very controversial topic because there are so many

people that are opposed to gun ownership in the first place, let alone guns in the classroom. For

this assignment, I have done research looking for arguments against arming teachers.

Teachers across America have come forward with their reasons as to why they do not

support guns in the classroom. A major argument is that teachers are in their position to educate

and nurture students, not to be a “security guard”. Teachers and educators argue that the

relationship between students and teachers should be one built around trust, and having a gun in

the teacher’s possession causes fear for the students. Critics say that minority students who may

be taught to be cautious around police officers or law enforcement by their parents would now

come to distrust their teachers who are supposed to be their mentors.

Another argument against guns in the classroom is that the gun’s very presence poses a

threat to everyone in the school. Some critics argue that teachers might have “knee jerk

reactions” to situations that fall short of mass shootings. What if the teacher were to reach for

their gun to break up a student fight? Misuse of the firearm is a major area of concern for those

opposed to armed teachers. Others say that having a gun puts teachers under a lot of extra stress

because what would happen if a student purposefully or even accidently found the gun and got
hold of it? All of these unanswered questions and scenarios have to be taken into consideration

before teachers are allowed to carry firearms in school.

Lastly, many teachers are concerned that the mass training and instilment of firearms in

the classroom is a huge expense by the US Government of federal funds that could be used in

many other ways to help teachers and educators. Why spend money arming teachers when that

money could go towards bettering the students’ education? Requiring every county police

station in the nation to create a training program to arm teachers is simply deemed unreasonable

by many Americans.

Personally, I feel that the benefits of having teachers with firearms for the protection of

their students outweighs the possible what-if scenarios that critics come up with. They say that

teachers are supposed to nurture and instruct, but not to protect? That simply does not make

sense to me. I feel that knowing my instructor has a firearm in case of emergency, would leave

me feeling more peace and security within the classroom setting. If the 2nd amendment has

placed guns in our possession to protect us from danger, why should we remove that layer of

protection from our children in the classroom?