Above The Noise

Talk to any high school student, and chances are they probably have an underlying fear of school shootings. I am scared of the idea that somebody can walk into my school with a loaded firearm and shoot people. It's scary to just know it could actually happen in the world, and around us. It's always impossible to rule out the possibility of a school shooting.

You just never know if you're going to be the next school. And even though school shootings are statistically pretty rare, the reality is that they do happen, and when it does happen, it's tragic and horrible. There's no debate about that, but what there is a debate about, is how to best prevent them, and one idea that's pretty controversial is arming teachers with guns. There's been lots of talk by politicians on how to best reduce school shootings and mass shootings in general.

Common talking points have been things like stronger background checks, banning assault-style weapons, and arming teachers with guns. It's that last one that's been gaining traction. Some teachers in Florida can carry guns inside the classroom. -

Narrator

Two school districts near Dayton, Ohio have a confidential team of teachers and staff trained to fire back at an active shooter. It's a small force of volunteer school staff allowed to carry a concealed firearm. -

Announcer

Just in 2019, five states introduced legislation that would allow teachers to carry guns on campus. But not everyone's crazy about the idea. With many wondering if it would actually make schools safer. So we talked to some students to see how they feel.

I definitely would feel safe having my teacher possess a firearm. I feel that if teachers know how to effectively and safely handle a firearm, then they should be able to do so in order to secure the environment. I would not feel safer if my teacher had a gun. I'd feel more threatened, if anything.

I would feel more safe with knowing my teacher had a gun at school, in certain situations. It'd be kind of weird to have, you know, to try to be learning math while your teacher has a gun strapped to his/her hip. Walking right next to you while you're trying to do the Pythagorean theorem. So today we're going to just going to jump right into it.

Should teachers be armed at schools? All right, so first off, I don't want to feed into the media frenzy and increase student's panic and anxiety around school shootings. I mean after all, we are called "Above the Noise." Yes, there has been some high-profile tragic shootings at schools, but the odds of a student getting shot and killed at school are still really, really low. As David Ropeik, an expert on risk, puts it, "you're more likely to die from traveling "to and from school, dying from a sports-related "injury at school, or catching a deadly disease at school." Just look at these numbers for a second.

In the U.S. from 2010 to 2017 just over 20,000 15 to 19 year olds were killed in car crashes, and 72 people were killed in school shootings. And when it comes to gun violence, students are more likely to be shot outside of school than in school. But it's not hard to understand why students have this underlying fear and anxiety about school shootings.

For one, kids are growing up practicing active-shooter drills every year like fire drills. Then there's the wall-to-wall media coverage of school shootings every time they happen. All this can fuel and increase anxiety, but I think we can all agree that one school shooting is one too many. Which is why you see policy-makers in a frenzy right now trying to figure out the best ways to prevent this stuff from happening.

And the idea of arming teachers with guns really started to gain mainstream attention after President Trump tweeted his endorsement of it. The idea is to arm a select group of teachers, so just so we're clear, not every teacher's going to be armed with a gun, like Mrs. Smith over here who's never handled a gun in her life. (gasps) The idea is that teachers will volunteer for the program, and then ideally, go through some type of training.

There are already schools that under some circumstances do let some staff and teachers carry guns. We want to hear from somebody who's actually trained some teachers for this purpose, so we sat down and talked to Bryan Proctor, who's trained teachers and educators at about 60 school districts in Texas. What's the experience and training like? We're not training teachers to go find the bad guy.

We're not training them to be SWAT team members. We are literally training them, if that bad guy comes in the room, here's how you defend those 20 to 30 kids that you have. We run real-life real-speed active shooter events with real bad guys, role players, and all that mess. We can actually gauge to see what they would really do under a real situation, and we run multiple types of these things.

Yeah, I was watching some of the videos, and I was like, "I don't know "if I'd be able to keep my composure in these heists." -

Bryan

It's intense. Yeah. -

Bryan

It's extremely intense. Sure. I know I could tell you about the training that I do, just in the two days we do it when we certify these people, it is more intensive training than I ever did in 20 plus years in law enforcement. The thinking is that if a potential shooter knew that teachers had guns, they'd be less likely to carry out an attack, but in the event that they are on campus, teachers can react quicker, hopefully minimizing damage and deaths.

Without that firearm there, that teacher has a pencil or a pen. And so it's not going to work out very well, and hasn't in the past, as we've seen multiple times. You can see why this would be appealing to schools in remote areas where police and paramedics might take a while to get there, or in communities that are in rural areas where growing up with guns is just a part of the culture. Teachers and educators that do this are the most selfless people I've ever met in my life.

These are people that actually decided that your life is more important than their life. And so they are going to do anything and everything they can to make sure that you live through the worst situation that you could possibly ever undergo. And to be fair, President Trump isn't saying this should be some federal law, he thinks the decision should be a local one. Like in Florida you can volunteer for the program after you pass a background check, a psychiatric evaluation, and do 144 hours of training with the sheriff's office.

Supporters of this policy point to when the good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. Like when a former police officer and a former national guardsman confronted and shot a shooter in a restaurant in Oklahoma. Or, when an armed bystander shot a gunman who had opened fire on a park in Florida. But allowing teachers to carry guns might be more complex than it seems.

Where and how do we store the guns? What type of training do the teachers actually get? What happens if something goes wrong, like if a student gets ahold of a gun, or if a teacher accidentally kills an innocent bystander? And each place that allows teachers to carry guns has different rules about all of this.

It's not surprising that a lot of people oppose this idea, including a lot of teachers. In a Gallup poll following the Parkland shooting, 73% of teachers said they opposed arming teachers. In a 2018 Quinnipiac poll found that 58% of U.S. voters oppose allowing teachers and school staff to carry guns.

If you think about it, operating a gun is much harder than operating a projector, and we know how hard that is for some teachers out there. I mean, think about it. Police and military get extensive weapon training. According to a report from the Department of Justice, in 2013 police academies on average spent about 168 hours on weapons, defense tactics, and the use of force.

When does a teacher get that kind of time? Many feel like there's just too much potential for something to go wrong if we bring guns on campus. In fact, if my teacher had a gun, I think I would feel substantially less safe in their classroom. Just if maybe some kid just loses it one day, being there's a gun in the classroom.

There's already been times when guns have accidentally gone off in schools, like in California where a teacher trained in law enforcement accidentally fired his gun in his classroom. And what if a teacher accidentally overreacts or misinterprets a student's actions, and then they shoot at a student unnecessarily. I think we can all name at least one teacher who we would not want to have access to a gun. I think there'd always be some part of me that's kind of scared of that teacher.

Especially knowing that they could take my life at any moment. And this is especially an issue for students of color, where research shows that they get punished more than white students for the same type of behavior. Could these students also be more likely to be shot by teachers? There's highly trained police officers that shoot people accidentally all the time, so some think that the same could happen with teachers.

Anyone could get shot by any teacher, on purpose or by accident. You don't know, there could be racist teachers up here in Northern Cali. Opponents also doubt the theory that arming teachers would stop a shooter. There's been shootings on military bases where plenty of people have guns, and that didn't stop the shooter.

Then there's the argument that arming and training teachers is expensive. I mean, school budgets are already tight, so there's concerns that by arming teachers you're taking money away from the art's program, or providing students with lunches, or getting your teacher that new projector, or any other educational resources. So we can all agree that school safety is really important. Do you think schools would be safer if teachers were armed with guns?

As always, I'm your host, Miles Best, and stay in school and stay "Above the Noise." Peace out, y'all. This is the gun show, right here. Right in there, that's welcome to the gun show, they say. That's not appropriate.

(girl laughs)